Life & Legacy
Shyamdas was born Stephen Theodore Schaffer in Connecticut in 1953. As a teenager in the early 1970s he traveled to India, and unlike most seekers of his generation he stayed — settling in the Braj region of Vrindavan and Govardhan, taking initiation in the Pushtimarg, the Path of Grace founded by Vallabhacharya, and giving himself to its practice for the next four decades.
He learned Sanskrit, Hindi, and Braj Bhasha — the sweet dialect of Krishna's homeland — deeply enough to translate its devotional literature: the works of Vallabhacharya, the poetry of the Ashtachhap singers including Surdas, and the stories of the tradition's great devotees, published in volumes like The Ocean of Grace. No other Westerner carried this lineage's scholarship and its song at once.
And he sang. Shyamdas's kirtan — harmonium-driven, Braj-flavored, overflowing with stories told between chants — made him a fixture of the Western Bhakti world as it blossomed: leading retreats in Braj, appearing at festivals and on recordings with Krishna Das, and mentoring a generation of Western chant leaders in the roots of the tradition they loved. He died in January 2013 after a motorcycle accident in Goa; the Shyamdas Foundation continues to publish his translations and recordings.