New Prabhupada Tapes Discovered!

BY: MADHUDVISA DAS

Oct 03, 2010 — LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA (SUN) — Many years ago at ISKCON New York the temple authorities were having a maha clean up. In the process they discovered a box of old Prabhupada reel-to-reel tapes which were at one time a part of the New York Temple tape library. The temple authorities ordered Prahlada Priya Prabhu to dispose of these tapes at the dump. Of course he was reluctant to throw these Prabhupada reel-to-reel tapes in the dump. So instead he kept them all these years.

By Krishna's arrangement Prahlada Priya Prabhu delivered these tapes to someone who notified us of the discovery and we were able to convert these tapes to digital format and publish them on the web for all the devotees to hear at: KrishnaStore.com

At this link you will find all the newly discovered tapes and you can listen to them and/or download them free of charge from this location.

It is a very interesting collection. Much of it was recorded in the New York temple. One of the reels contains a lot of material from India and includes many recordings made at the first Mayapur Festival and includes an amazing conversation between Srila Prabhupada and Sridhar Maharaja. Some of the material has already been released by the Bhaktivedanta Archives and is therefore included in the current Prabhupada MP3 set. But there is quite a lot of completely new material. There are many very interesting things in this collection.

In addition there are many reels of tape containing kirtans by the devotees. There are four almost complete morning program recordings. These recordings allow one to step into a time machine and be transported back to ISKCON New York in 1972. At least for me it was a wonderful experience hearing these kirtans. So far I have not uploaded the kirtans to the web but if there is enough interest I am happy to do this. I know this is rare material because both Yadubara Prabhu and myself were looking for this type of recording to include on the various sound tracks of the ITV Prabhupada DVD set and his Following Srila Prabhupada DVD set. At the time we could not find many recordings like this...

Of the approximately 40 reel-to-reel tapes in the box we found 19 of them contained Srila Prabhupada speaking. Six of these are very interesting because they contain Srila Prabhupada dictating parts of the second and third cantos of Srimad-Bhagavatam. Before hearing these tapes we were unaware that dictation tapes even existed for Srimad-Bhagavatam. It is very nice to hear Srila Prabhupada speaking the Bhagavatam. The other thirteen tapes are lectures and conversations with Srila Prabhupada. There are a couple of never-before released kirtans lead by Srila Prabhupada. These are also rare and a great find. There are some really great new classes.

It is amazing that these tapes were handed to us just after the Bhaktivedanta Archives have flatly refused to allow any devotees access to the 500+ similar tapes they have.

Strangely, although Bhaktivedanta Archives already have more than 500 unreleased tapes like the ones we have discovered, they are very anxious to get these tapes also... You can be sure that if Prahlada Priya Prabhu decided to donate these tapes to the Archives they would be locked up with the other 500+ tapes and we would not get to hear them...

Many devotees believe this is a sign from Krishna and Srila Prabhupada that we should continue to demand the Bhaktivedanta Archives release the complete, unedited collection of recordings of Srila Prabhupada. So far the Bhaktivedanta Archives have completely ignored the voices of more than 2,400 devotees who signed the petition to release the Prabhupada audio they have locked up:

PetitionOnline.com

Even though the Archives have large amounts of unreleased Prabhupada audio recordings, and even though they have a full time staff member whose job is to work on this audio, they have not released a single new Prabhupada recording in the past 20 years!

So the release of new Prabhupada audio at KrishnaStore.com is a cause for celebration. This is the first new release of Prabhupada audio for more than 20 years!!!

So if you do happen to have any old Prabhupada tapes in your possession, please allow us to digitize them and release them to the devotees. DO NOT GIVE ANYTHING TO THE BHAKTIVEDANTA ARCHIVES UNTIL THEY CAN GUARANTEE THAT THE MATERIAL WILL BE RELEASED TO THE DEVOTEES.

There is no meaning to an archive if they do not allow interested persons access to the material they have archived...

We are hoping that in some way the release of these tapes to the devotee community will inspire the Bhaktivedanta Archives to release the unreleased Prabhupada audio they have been keeping locked up for so long.

Personally I would like to thank one thousand times Prahlada Priya Prabhu for his intelligence in not following the New York Temple authorities' order to destroy these tapes, and also for his foresight in not delivering these tapes directly to the Bhaktivedanta Archives, where they would simply be locked up and no one would ever have heard them...

Again, if you have access to any old Prabhupada recordings on any format, please contact us, not the Bhaktivedanta Archives...

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!

Please also see the related article,
Clarification on Prabhupada Tapes by Prahladpriya das (ACBSP)