It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)

"It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)" is a song by English musician George Harrison, released as the final track of his 1974 album Dark Horse. Harrison was inspired to write the song while in the Hindu holy city of Vrindavan, in northern India, with his friend Ravi Shankar. The composition originated on a day that Harrison describes in his autobiography as "my most fantastic experience",^[1] during which his party and their ascetic guide toured the city's temples. The song's choruses were adapted from the Sanskrit chant they sang before visiting Seva Kunj, a park dedicated to Krishna's childhood. The same pilgrimage to India led to Harrison staging Shankar's Music Festival from India in September 1974 and undertaking a joint North American tour with Shankar at the end of that year.

Despite the devotional nature of the song, Harrison wrote it part-way through a period of divergence from the spiritual goals he had espoused in his previous works, particularly Living in the Material World (1973). "It Is 'He'" serves as a rare example of an overtly religious song on Dark Horse. Recorded between August and October 1974, the track features an unusual mix of musical styles and instrumentation – including gospel-style keyboards, folk-rock acoustic guitar, Indian string and percussion instruments, and Moog synthesizer. Besides Harrison, the musicians on the recording include Billy Preston, Tom Scott and Emil Richards, all of whom played in his 1974 tour band and contributed to Shankar's concurrent release, Shankar Family & Friends.

"It Is 'He' (Jai Sri Krishna)" continued Harrison's fusion of the Hindu bhajan tradition with Western pop and rock. The song failed to gain the favourable reception afforded his earlier productions in that style, however, such as "My Sweet Lord", "Hare Krishna Mantra" and "Give Me Love". With his spiritual pronouncements during the tour proving similarly unwelcome to many music critics, Harrison subsequently withdrew from making such public statements of Hindu religiosity until producing Shankar's Chants of India album in 1996. "It Is 'He'" was the last overtly devotional song released under Harrison's name until the posthumously issued "Brainwashed" in 2002.