Light of Consciousness Magazine Music Review: Liberation’s Door Review

Light of Consciousness - August 2009

Liberation’s Door

by Snatam Kaur

CD: 73 Min

Snatam Kaur’s spirit and radiant voice shine in this new release of Gurmukhi mantras, Shabds (traditional Sikh prayers put to music), and sweet devotional songs.  The words of Guru Arjan blend gracefully with the Prayer of St. Francis of Assissi in Servant of Peace.  Liberation’s Door, a lofty chant about faith, is composed from teh words of Guru Nanak.  Crimson, from teh words of Guru Ram Das, is the only solely English track in these primarily Punjabi songs.  Mother’s Blessing, delightfully sung by Snatam Kaur in Spanish, is translated from the words of Bibi Bani, wife of Guru Ram Das.  Richly layered instrumentation throughout includes guitars, keyboards, sarod, santoor, flute, sax, esraj, tabla, cello and percussion.  Snatam Kaur pours her heart and soul into this offering that will captivate you with its sublime beauty.

Snatam Kaur’s ‘Charan Sat Sat’ from Sukhmani Sahib on New Album, Liberation’s Door

In continuation of my interview with Snatam about her upcoming release, Liberation’s Door, she talked to me about an incredible experience she had in the studio while recording the vocals for the track Charan Sat Sat.  In listening to Snatam speak, I realized the depth of devotion and meditation that she experiences with her music, and I am just beginning to understand why so many people are so deeply touched by her music – because it comes from such a pure place within her that is transmitted to you as you listen.

Karan: Can you tell me where the chant ‘Charan Sat Sat’ comes from?

Snatam Kaur during her visit to record 'Liberation's Door'

Snatam:

The words are taken from Sukhmani Sahib which is a beautiful prayer written by Guru Arjan Dev.  Guru Arjan was an amazing poet and teacher.  He gave his life standing up for religious freedom during the reign of emperor Aurangzab by not bowing down to change his faith.  He was tortured and killed for keeping his faith.  I had always known this story and was inspired by it. 

When I was recording this track, I was trying to get into a deep space so I could sing from the purest place possible.  Each time I sang it,  I would go deeper and deeper, trying to connect with the words but also trying to connect to the life growing in my womb so my baby’s soul could be there and present with it too, since she was a part of me and a part of the process of recording the music. 

As I was chanting, I suddenly felt this shift in the space around me and had this experience of being taken to see what it was like for Guru Arjan when he was on his way to the Emperor’s Palace to face his death.  I was literally transported to that place and time – I found myself as one of the disciples carrying Guru Arjan along the road to the palace, and I knew that we were all walking to our deaths.  As I was experiencing that, I kept chanting and everyone with me was chanting.  With each chant, we knew that victory was in the power of Guru Arjan’s sacred words.  We knew that the prayer we were singing would live well beyond us.  With each recitation, we chanted more powerfully because these words were our only defense.  We felt carried forward in knowing that these words would ring through the planet through time and space for all to hear it. 

Then suddenly, I realized I was not only marching towards my own death, but also the child in my womb.  I became very emotional at that point feeling my child did not have a choice in the matter.  Then I felt this soothing presence that I recognized as the soul of my child or some wise soul telling me that my child had already given herself to the guru and was making that choice for herself.  It was a really emotional moment, but I kept singing through it.

It was a beautiful experience for me to tune into that time of Guru Arjan, because I have always known the stories, but that kind of intensity of what it must have been like to fearlessly go towards your death while having the strength of the sound current carry you there was really powerful.  Guru Arjan’s mission was to bring forward the sound current as the teacher that we show our reverence to.

Karan: What did you take with you from that experience?

Snatam: I really felt how strong the words and the sacred sound current are – even more powerful than weapons or swords. 

—————————————————————————

Listen to Charan Sat Sat 

See the entire album: Liberation’s Door

- Karan

Snatam’s Upcoming Album: Liberation’s Door

So, it’s been 2 years since Snatam released her last major release album, Anand.  After Anand, she spent a good amount of time touring.  We then released  Snatam Kaur Live in Concert and she continued touring.  During her tour, she discovered the wonderful news that she was pregnant.  She was very busy during her pregnancy!  She recorded and released a children’s yoga DVD, Shanti the Yogi, and a chilren’s CD, Feeling Good Today!   But then she needed to start to slow down a bit as her pregnacy moved forward,  and during that time she began to work with GuruGanesha on a new album.  This album has all of those amazing creative juices that race through the body during pregnancy infused into every note.

Snatam finished recording right after Jap Preet’s (her daughter’s) 40-days were done.  But after she finished her part of the process, that’s when the rest of us really kick into gear to make it ready to share with the world.

Snatam's New Release "Liberation's Door"

Thomas Barquee, the incredible producer, brought in musicians from LA to Calcutta to create the perfect support for Snatam’s vocals.  GuruGanesha, whose guitar and vocal accompaniment is so much beloved on Snatam’s tour and all of her live music, added his special spark to this music, taking part in both writing the music and recording vocals and guitar on the album.  Sopurkh, Snatam’s husband and an extremely talented graphic designer worked with Snatam to create this beautiful album cover. 

We will have this album ready in time for Summer Solstice , but stay tuned  you’ll get to hear sneak peeks here over the next few weeks!  And I promise, you will be awestruck!

You Can Pre-Order the Album Now for Shipping as soon as it arrives (our stated release date is June 18th, but we are trying to get them in as early as the 8th, so if you pre-order, you’ll get the first ones out the door)

Click Here to Pre-Order Now!

As Promised, we have the first sound clips – take a listen!!

Track 2: Liberation’s Door (Mokh Duaar) 

Track 8: Ardas Bhaee 

- Karan

A Spiritual Practice

(I read this great article on www.grammy.com about Kirtan – they interviewed GuruGanesha for the article.  Very cool!  Check it out!  – Karan)

Yoga’s music movement is gaining popularity while broadening horizons and sales

This article taken from GRAMMY.com
Alan di Perna

While many sectors of the music industry are learning to live with decreased sales and diminished expectations, one niche music market that’s remarkably robust is the growing yoga/chant genre. The expanding popularity of this genre is directly tied to the explosion of hatha yoga over the past decade, with yoga studios springing up in a number of cities across the United States and Europe.

“It’s part of a whole cultural movement that includes yoga, meditation, devotional chanting, and ayurveda [traditional Indian medicine],” says Bette Timm, head of alternative music retail promotion company Bette Timm Marketing.

As a product of the yoga and spirituality boom, leading chant artists such as Krishna Das and Deva Premal are enjoying album and concert sales rivaling artists in more mainstream genres.

Deva Premal

“Deva Premal has sold, between her four albums, over 750,000 units, which is not something to sneeze at in anybody’s world,” says Parmita Pushman, owner of White Swan Records, the label that released Premal’s second album in 2001. “The highest-selling Deva Premal album is her first one [on White Swan], The Essence, which at this point has sold about 300,000 units. And I imagine Krishna Das is up in the same numbers. With all the problems in the music industry, and with so many segments of the industry going down, this is one market that has been immune to that.”

The music performed by these artists is largely based on kirtan, an ancient Indian form of rhythmic call-and-response devotional chanting that creates an ecstatically meditative mood. While the paradigm is ancient and South Asian, some of the genre’s top performers express the mantras while drawing upon other musical styles. Das sticks close to the Indian tradition and also incorporates the harmonium, African percussion and electronic influences, while Premal employs ambient New Age style synths in her music. Jai Uttal, a GRAMMY-nominated kirtan artist, explores Brazilian rhythms on his latest album, Thunder Love, and MC Yogi has created a sensation by setting mantras to hip-hop grooves on his debut album, Elephant Power.

With the genre infusing a variety of musical textures, the audience has reflected both baby boomers and a younger demographic. “I go to a concert by Krishna Das or Deva Premal and half the audience is the older spiritual crowd,” says Terry McBride of NuTone Music, a label specializing in the yoga/chant genre. “But the other half are people who have heard this music in a yoga studio and they’re all 25 to 40 and about 80 percent female.”

Yoga studios are an important component to the genre. “When my partner and I started White Swan in 1991, yoga studios weren’t really playing music,” says Pushman. “Yoga teachers have become the radio stations for this music. They’re the DJs. And that provides a vital way to reach listeners, which is one thing that more mainstream labels lack these days.”

Yoga/chant CDs are also sold at other non-traditional outlets such as New Age stores and gift shops at meditation or spiritual centers. “The problem is that a lot of the sales don’t go through [Nielsen] SoundScan,” says Pushman. “So they get short shrift on the music industry’s radar.” And while digital sales are up across genres worldwide, CDs are still a major focus for the yoga/chant genre. “People aren’t buying the music for one song they love, but rather for an experience that fits their life, such as a yoga class or meditation,” says Pushman. “So they tend to buy whole albums and they tend to actually like buying CDs.”

Compared with pop music, “kirtan music clearly has a longer shelf life,” adds GuruGanesha Singh, founder of the Spirit Voyage label and manager of Spirit Voyage’s flagship artist Snatam Kaur. “As an artist like Snatam Kaur gets embraced by more and more people around the world, they’re going back and buying the whole discography. It’s not likely to go in and out of style.”

Live performance also plays a key role in CD sales. “I really see a huge difference between the artists who are touring and the ones who aren’t,” says Timm. “It’s really hard to sell CDs if an artist is not touring. Whereas those who are out touring consistently and have been doing it for a while are doing great.”

“We’re seeing consistent increases in attendance at concerts, especially over the last eight to 10 years,” says Singh. “We’ve been averaging audiences of maybe 300 to 400 in the U.S., 400 to 600 in Canada and 600 to 1,000 or more in Europe.”

The involvement of Nutone Music’s Terry McBride is a development that may help catapult the genre to a new level. As CEO of Nettwerk Music Group, architect of Lilith Fair and an instrumental force in launching the careers of artists such as Sarah McLachlan and Barenaked Ladies, McBride began attending yoga classes a few years back and became an avid yoga practitioner. He revived Nettwerk’s defunct world music imprint NuTone in 2008 as a new outlet for yoga/chant music, signing artists such as Bhagavan Das, Donna De Lory, Wade Imre Morissette, David Newman, Uttal, and Wah!

“What I see missing and what I’m going to work on over the next couple of years is a more mainstream touring circuit for this music,” says McBride. “We’re going to market this music in ways that it hasn’t been marketed yet.”

Perhaps his most adventurous plan is to create a Lilith Fair-style festival based around mantra music, yoga and wellness. “The initial thought for this would be sort of a half-day festival, like from noon till 10 at night,” he says. “It would combine spiritual music — someone like Krishna Das or Deva [Premal] — with a more mainstream musical artist like Michael Franti. And that would be combined with sessions led by some of the more well-known yoga teachers. The whole thing would be something that resonates with what today’s society is looking for, because there will be a lot of people coming to these events searching for something. And I’d love for them to find it.”

For all the artists involved, kirtan is a spiritual practice first, and a profession second. Newcomers should realize that it is by no means a fast track to stardom.

“Unfortunately some people do try to get on the bandwagon,” says Timm, “but it’s not really what’s in their hearts so it doesn’t have the right essence. But I think the music itself tends to weed those people out.”

So while the market for this genre will continue to grow in the future, it will most likely do so on its own terms. “You can’t force a flower to bloom any faster than it’s going to bloom,” says Singh. “It feels to me that this genre will grow at a slow and steady pace, like a good spiritual practice. We’re in it for the long term.”

(Alan di Perna has been writing about music for more than 20 years and is currently west coast editor of Guitar World magazine.)

Joy is Now Review – Yoga Journal May 2009

GuruGanesha’s latest release, Joy is Now, is an incredible album, and I was so excited to see the review in the most recent issue of yoga journal. 

Here is the review:

Joy is Now by GuruGanesha Singh and Snatam Kaur:

GuruGanesha Singh is best known as the guitarist for Sikh chant singer Snatam Kaur.  But on Joy is Now, GuruGanesha steps into the spotlight with a set of kirtan compositions that showcase his lyrical guitar playing and relaxed singing style.  On most tracks he alternates lead vocal lines with Snatam, an exchange that creates a winning contrast.  The compositions also leave ample space for improvisation.  Instruments like sitars, sarods, flutes, esrajs, and violins dapple the music with traditional Indian tonalities that twine with GuruGanesha’s guitar.

The songs are varied in mood and style.  “Peace Has Begun” is jazzy, while the title track is a study in blissful acoustic psychedelia that wouldn’t have been out of place on a late ’60s album by GuruGanesha’s longtime heroes, the Grateful Dead.  the final two selections, “Sat Narayan” and “Guru Ram Das Love Song,” are more vocally driven and closer in style to Snatam’s own albums.  On Joy is Now, GuruGanesha and Snatam offer an agreeable blend o fthe new and the familiar in teh world of kirtan, taking you deep into the quiet hear of devotion and meditative awareness. 

- Reviewed by Alan di Perna

 

Listen to Sound Clips from this album here:

Song Title	Length
1. Peace Has Begun	–
2. Hari Om	–
3. Joy is Now	–
4. Aad Sach	–
5. Sat Narayan	–
6. Guru Ram Das Love Song	–

Click Here for More Information and to Purchase the Album

Mantras that Rock!

As the chants and mantras that many of us have been using for years make their way into the public consciousness, there’s a wave of sound that is emerging filled with the beats and modern sounds that we are more accustomed to hearing on the top 40′s charts than in our yoga studios – and many of us are loving it – and a great by-product of this phenomenon is that people who are used to listening to the top 40′s charts are starting to pay attention to mantra.

Wah! rocks with sultry mantra grooves

Wah!’s latest release Love Holding Love, is so filled with rich electronic grooves, smooth loungy rhythms and sultry vocals, I find myself playing her music in settings I would never have considered using mantra music before.  I think of Wah! as the Maddona of sacred music.  With a sound somewhere between Sade and Morcheeba, this album is as likely to be played in a yoga studio as a coffee shop or pub. 

Some Sample Tracks from Love Holding Love (Click to Listen):

Ganesha ~ Maha Deva ~ Hanuman ~ Sacred Patterns ~ Heart Sutra Soulshine

Hip Hop Mantras by MC Yogi

Earlier this year, Parmita from White Swan Music, told me about this young hip-hop singer who was coming out with a CD Elephant Power of hip-hop music with mantras and hip-hop rhymes partnering with well known chanters including Krishna Das, Jai Uttal, Bhagavan Das and many more.  I was a bit skeptical at first, but the more I played the CD, the more I liked it.  You might not be able to sit down and meditate wtih this CD, but you will find yourself having a blast listening to it!

Some Sample Tracks from Elephant Power (Click to Listen):

Elephant Power wih Bhagavan Das ~ Rock On Hanuman with Krishna Das ~ Krishna Love with Jai Uttal ~ Krishna Dub Remix featuring Sharon Gannon

Martyrs of Sound shares electronica and trance chants.

Martyrs of Sound just released their second album Uncoiled which brings an incredible modern sound to the Anand Sahib bani with compelling electronic beats supporting a recitation and overlaid by floating female vocals.  Their down-tempo sound  is as lush and heady as it is deep and filled with the sacred. 

Some Sample Tracks from Uncoiled (Click to Listen):

Ananda ~ Govinda

Dev Suroop's mantra rap

Last year, Dev Suroop released the CD Kundalini Beat in which she mixed hip-hop beats with favorite kundalini mantras.  I talked to her producer, Liv Singh, about the inspiration behind this album.   With the explosion of the hip-hop genre, Liv has been getting more and more clients asking him to produce hip-hop albums.  Being exposed to their music introduced him to teh excitement and raw energy that hip-hop contains.  Liv Singh said, “Hip Hop is a powerful medium for communicating ideas. I started to feel like it would be be a great way to present a Kundalini mantra album.”

Liv has worked with some well-known hip hop artists including Bizzy Bones, DMX’s producer and Bruce Walker from Dreamworks reocords.  Just before starting Kundalini Beat, he was finishing an album with PBR (Playboy Rich).  Jay Boo from PBR worked with Dev Suroop to teach her some of the basics of hip-hop, and then offered one of his beats to be used on the album.  PBR’s beat master, Rock, created the beats that are used on the Ong Namo track from this album.  One of the things about hip-hop is that it’s born of an improvised stream of consciousness lyrics style, so in creating the lyrics, they tried to keep with that style, writing lyrics while they were in the studio.

After they had finished the album, they sent a copy to us here at Spirit Voyage to review.  Hargobind felt like he’d really like to hear the same beats and rhythms behind just the mantras, so the album became a double album, with English lyrics mixed with mantra on one disc, and purely mantra on the other.

Click on track names to hear samples from Kundalini Beat:

 One Spirit Beyond ~ Liberation While Alive ~  Ong Namo / I Bow ~ Fearless ~ Aad Gurey Nameh

 

If you’re looking for mantras presented with some main-stream rock / pop sounds, try these:

Shiva Machine by Girish

The Lover and the Beloved by Donna de Lory

Mantra girls pop mantra

Ra Ma Da Sa – Healing Meditation – Free Download

Earlier this year, Snatam asked us to help her figure out how to make her Ra Ma Da Sa available for free to everyone around the world so that there could be a tool available for anyone who wanted it to start a healing meditation for themself, their loved ones, and the planet.  I am happy to say that we have now figured out how to make that possible!!

This beautifully and deeply meditative version of Ra Ma Da Sa is made to use for a daily 11-minute meditation.  

Click here to go to our site and add it to your shopping cart.  You can then put it on your I-pod, mp3 player, or even burn it to CD.

September 29th – The New Moon: The new moon is a great time to start a meditation.  A lot of the mental and emotional blocks that you might normally encounter are not present at this time.  In fact, during the entire period between the new moon and the full moon, it is an ideal time to start a regular meditation practice, so now is the time – start the healing!
Here are instructions for practicing this meditation:

Healing Ra Ma Da Sa Meditation: Heal Yourself, Heal Your Loved Ones, and Heal the World.

Posture: Sit in easy pose.

Focus: Eyes are closed and focused at the third-eye point. 

Mantra: Ra Ma Da Sa, Sa Say So Hung. The mantra should be sung in one complete exhalation. As you chant the first Sa, your navel point is pulled in so that this syllable is abbreviated.  You should also pull your navel point in as you chant Hung.  Hung should be vibrated at the root of the nose. The rest of the syllables are drawn out in a strong, powerful chant. Strive to keep your chant at full volume (loud but not raucous) throughout the meditation.

Meaning of Mantra:
Ra=sun energy
Ma=moon energy
Da=earth energy
Sa=infinity, universal energy
Sa=repeat in second half of mantra
Say=the personal embodiment of Sa
So=the personal sense of merger with Sa
Hung=the Infinite, vibrating and real.

The mantra literally means: “I am Thou. It is also used to mean, The service of God is within me. “

Mudra: Bend the arms and bring the elbows against the side of the rib cage. The palms of the hands are parallel and face the sky  (see picture of Snatam above). The elbows are snug at your sides with the forearms in close to your upper arms. The hands are at a 60 degree angle, halfway between pointing forward and pointing to the sides.

Time: 11 minutes.

End: Inhale deeply, hold your breath and visualize the person you want to send healing to (it can be yourself). Make that image in your mind very clear and see a glowing green light around the person. Keeping that person in your mind, exhale. Inhale deeply, hold your breath and continue to send the person healing green light. Still keeping that vision in your mind, exhale. For the last time, inhale deeply, hold your breath and see the person very clearly, see the green healing light bathing the person, bathing every cell in the body. Exhale and relax.

Go to Spirit Voyage to download.

In Search of a Yoga Paradise for Snatam

About a year ago, I approached Snatam about putting on a yoga and music retreat in some beautiful paradise spot where people could really get the opportunity to delve deep into the music and yoga practice that she has made into her life.  I also felt that it would be a really special experience to be with her and her family and for a week-long vacation.  

Yelapa

In July, we were finally able to fix on the dates, so I boarded a plane to Mexico to go scout out locations.  I flew to Puerto Vallarta and had a 3-day schedule mapped out where I was going to visit about 15 different potential beach resorts for the weekend.

My first stop was Yelapa.  I had rented a car and was planning to drive all around from one place to another.  The night before I left, I called Jarrett at Los Naranjos in Yelapa and asked for directions to his center.  Jarrett laughed, he said I might be pleased to know there are no cars in Yelapa.  The only way to get there is either by boat, or a serious trek through the jungle.  While this caused my plans to have to change dramatically at the last minute, I was really excited at the prospect of finding a retreat location in a place where no car has ever been.  This sounded right up Snatam’s alley!

So, upon landing in Puerto Vallarta, I took a taxi to the pier and a 35 minute boat ride to Yelapa.  The boat ride was amazing.  We traveled south along the coast, and the landscape was magnificent.  The beaches were beautiful and sandy, and as soon as the sand ended, lush jungle began.  I felt like I was traveling back in time as the city disappeared behind us.  Along the way, we passed a few little fishing villages on the edge of the jungle.  Then suddenly there was a cove that turned into the junglescape and as we turned, the village of Yelapa sat nestled along the beach with the jungle rising up behind it.

Watching the sun set in Yelapa

My fabulous host, Luke, at Hotel Lagunita, met me at the pier and showed me to my room.  It was late, I was tired, so I sat on the beach and watched the sunset and felt so beautifully at peace.

Los Naranjos

The next morning, I woke up early, ready to begin my day of exploring the various hotels and retreat centers in Yelapa.  My first stop was Los Naranjos, which was about a 10 minute walk up a lovely cobblestone road from the beach.

Los Naranjos is run by Jarret, who is an American musician with a beautiful heart.  It’s an amazing sanctuary nestled along the side of a mountain.  Everything is built into the earth, keeping the natural environment integrated into every room.  It felt like spiritual Robin Crusoe escape.  Jarret explained that the entire village of Yelapa is a part of a larger property owned by the indiginous community.  No individuals can own property in this area, so everything is rented from the native people.  Jarret said that his property has been a meeting place for the native tribes for centuries.  He is certainly a worthy caretaker.  The property was beautiful, the gardens lush, and the eclectic mix of indoors, outdoors, and old world were so inviting.   I loved the hanging beds!  I was sorry to discover that they could only house about 18 people, as we were hoping to have 40 come for Snatam’s retreat.

Casa Los Suenos

After I left Los Naranjos, I visited Casa Los Suenos.  This was like a vibrant, quaint Mexican village in one big sprawling homestead.  With lots of vibrant colors, a half indoor-half outdoor kitchen to die for, and views off the side of the mountain that took my breath away, I was imagining yoga and singing filling every nook and cranny of the place.  Their rooms were huge, fit for kings, with lovely details and artistry. Unfortunately, it also was too small for our group, but I left longing to return.

Hotel Lagunita

I got back to Hotel Lagunita and, after a delicous lunch, was shown their whole property.  Their Palapa style huts were nestled  along a lovely curve of the beach.  The rooms are all reached by cobblestone paths.  The greenery is so lush and vibrant.  Each room was a bit different, but they mostly had 2 queen size that sat on rich brick-colored terra cotta floors.  The walls were stucco and the ceiling stretched up towards the sky with grand wooden beams.  The windows are made of wood and reed, and keep out sight but not sound.  There was a rustic charm that I immediately fell in love with.  Mosquito nets hangs above every bed, and there’s something very romantic about having them draped around you as you sleep.  I never felt a mosquito while I was there, but I used the nets anyway.

Because there are no glass windows, you could hear the water and the crickets all through the night.  The ocean breeze blows through the rooms all day and night, connecting you with everything around you.

Hotel Lagunita has a natural water swimming pool constantly fed by an underwater source and flowing out into the ocean. 

Hotel Lagunita’s restaurant is right on the beach, and in the evenings, the lovely candle-lit thatched roofs cover various seating areas.  Listening to the waves and watching the sun set was a daily miracle.

While I was there, a beach wedding was underway, and the love and hope and romance that was in the air was infectious.  I truly fell in love with Hotel Lagunita.

After two days in Yelapa, I took the boat ride back to Puerto Vallarta and I rented a car and drove north to the town of Sayulita.  In the town, I visited 6 diferent hotels, none of which I felt were right for our retreat, but outside of Sayulita, I visited 2 beautiful retreat centers.  The first was Haramara.

Haramara Retreat

Haramara is an incredible retreat center that sprawls from a mountain top all the way down to the beach.  Haramara was made to be a yoga and meditation retreat center, and it shows.  Alicia was my host for the day and she seemed as inspired and amazed by the property as I was.  It took over two hours to hike up and down to all of the amazing rooms, and we even got lost once or twice, the property was so large.

At the very top of the mountain are two beatiful yoga rooms with 360 degree views that overlook beatiful jungle covered mountains on one side and ocean on the other.  You feel like you are on top of the world in these yoga rooms.  The rooms where you stay are all palapa huts with very upscale furnishings, richly polished wooden floors and the most amazing bathrooms I’ve ever seen, all with outdoor showers.  There is no electricity in the rooms and as the sun sets, candles and lanterns glow throughout the retreat. 

The restaurant features all vegetarian food, and I was fed a beautiful and delicious vegan meal.

Haramara was not available for our upcoming March retreat, but I left with the certainty that we would be hosting a retreat there in the future.

Villa Ananda

The last place i visited was Villa Ananda.  Villa Ananda is a beautiful sprawling house with an Ayurvedic Spa in a gorgeous building next to it.  The house sits right on the beach with a gorgeous pool facing the water.  The house has soaring ceilings, a beautiful open floor plan, with a little indoor fountin and pond in the living room.

It’s a luxurious spot for a retreat, but was a bit too small for our group, so I’m keeping it in mind for future retreats.

After visiting Villa Ananda, I packed my bags and traveled to New Mexico to show Snatam and her husband, Sopurkh, the photos of all the places I had visited so we could decide which one was right for us.

We ultimately agreed that Hotel Lagunita would be the right place for this retreat, and we’re super excited to be getting everything organized and ready for this first of it’s kind retreat with Snatam Kaur, GuruGanesha Singh and their families.

Click Here to see the details about this upcoming retreat.

Snatam Kaur in Mystic Pop Magazine

A Prevailing Peace
by Naila Francis
Source: Mystic Pop Magazine: http://www.mysticpopmagazine.com/newsite/July-aug08/page40july-aug.html

It’s an experience Snatam Kaur offers in her music — and embodies in her life.

She is one of the world’s most beloved New Age artists, performing at more than 100 venues from across the U.S. and South America to Asia and Europe each year, and selling more than 50,000 albums annually, all of them retaining an impressive perennial hold on the Top 20 lists of New Age Retailers.

Yet Snatam Kaur, chant artist and peace ambassador, takes little credit for her success. That the music she performs, a blend of traditional Sikh mantras and contemporary sacred songs, has profoundly affected thousands who’ve heard her — one, a veteran of the Iraq war, wrote to Kaur confessing that it was through her music that she was first able to cry over her experiences — she attributes to a power well beyond her talents.

“Our music is dedicated to opening the heart and healing and giving people the opportunity to sing and to pray for peace on the planet,” says Kaur, who performs her Celebrate Peace concerts with guitarist and vocalist GuruGanesha Singh, master tabla player and composer Manish Vyas and multi-instrumentalist Ram Daas Singh. “The experience of praying for peace has very, very deep effects. When that prayer comes from your heart, you not only feel its energy in what you’re praying for, but you heal yourself in the wake of the wave.

“It’s completely within the sacred chants and I know that,” she says of the presence that seems to pierce right through the heart of listeners and connect them with the Divine. “That’s why I keep very humble. I keep my head bowed.

“There’s a real magic that happens when we chant these words and I don’t question it anymore. At times I’ll sing the translations or be inspired to sing lyrics that relate to the translation, but for the most part I just let the sacred chants do their work. It’s kind of a medicine balm, a healing balm. I believe that we bring these sacred chants to life when we sing them and that these chants have lived for thousands of years before me and will continue to live for years after that.”

Kaur, who was raised in Trinidad, Colo., and Bolinas, Calif., grew up in the Sikh lifestyle, practicing yoga, meditation and chanting from a young child and studying with the late Yogi Bhajan, renowned for introducing Sikhism and Kundalini yoga to the West. It was Bhajan, in fact, moved to tears after hearing Kaur sing when she was 18, who encouraged her to continue spreading the Sikh teachings and lifestyle through music. Yet for Kaur, the chants she grew up with were such a natural part of her every day that she never considered sharing them as a career, even though she also studied music, taking up classical violin in school and teaching herself guitar.

“I was fortunate to grow up in a household where my mom sang the Sikh chants every day. So I grew to know that hearing and listening and saying the sacred chants would bring me joy and I grew to know that when there were times of challenge, I could go to those sacred chants for healing,” she says.

A trip to the Golden Temple, the spiritual and cultural center of the Sikh religion, in Amritsar, India, when she was just six years old reinforced those beliefs.

“Growing up in America, I went to public schools and generally I was the only Sikh child in the whole school but through these experiences of going to India and listening to the sacred music and just feeling the heart and the warmth of the people and learning about the Sikh history, I gained a real sense of my identity,” she says.

Since her father served as the manager for the Grateful Dead for several years, music remained an influential part of her upbringing beyond the Sikh tradition. She even wrote and performed a song, “Save Our Earth,” with the help of the Dead’s Bob Weir, at an Earth Day concert in San Francisco before thousands while still a teen. But with her intentions set on a career in health care, Kaur got her degree in biochemistry and landed a job as a food technologist with the Oregon-based Peace Cereal after college. Inspired by her commitment to bring the practices of her tradition to others outside of her work and by her voice — Kaur would often sing on the factory floor — the company’s management encouraged her to embark on a recording career.

For Kaur, the process of making her first album, “Prem,” a collection of chants inspired by the sacred writings of the Sikhs on the experience of love, proved transformational.

“It was a really powerful time in my life because I realized how important it is to love yourself and to have that inner connection of love for your own soul and for the light of divinity that is within each of us,” she says. “When I got into the studio and experienced making music, it was very, very healing for me on a personal level and I just had an aha moment, an inner discovery of ‘Wow, this is something I could give to other people because of the great gifts they had given to me.”

Today, Kaur, who lives in New Mexico with her husband, serves as an ambassador for the United Nations affiliate 3HO (the Healthy Happy Holy Organization) and spends much of the year on the road doing concerts and workshops.

Her music is a stirring blend of Eastern and Western influences that both soothes and uplifts, her crystalline vocals evoking a radiant purity of heart and spirit, while her words, whether sung in Gurumukhi, the sacred language of the Sikhs, or English, resonate with the possibilities of a life of greater peace, love and devotion. Her CDs, which include “Anand,” “Grace” and the latest “Live in Concert,” are intended, she says, to allow audiences to continue that inner awakening and celebration of divinity experienced at her performances.
“I really believe in the power of people singing and singing positive affirmations. Essentially that’s what we share with people, through the music and through our prayer for peace. And it’s with those positive self-affirmations,” she says, “that we become agents of change.”

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Naila Francis is an editor and writer with a Philadelphia area daily newspaper and an ordained interfaith minister.

Get all of Snatam Kaur’s music at Spirit Voyage Music

Yoga + Joyful Living : Yoga Rock Stars

Yoga Rock Stars

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Yoga Rock Stars
A Special Report by Anna Dubrovsky

There’s a rave-like atmosphere in the ballroom of a Florida hotel and a group of musicians onstage, but this gathering of hundreds isn’t a party or performance. It’s a spiritual practice. The yoga conference participants singing and dancing late into the night are engaged in bhakti yoga, the yoga of joyful devotion to God.

Bhakti yoga isn’t a recent import. Many Westerners got their first taste in the 1960s, when shaven-headed Hare Krishna devotees took a bhakti practice called kirtan to the streets. Kirtan is the chanting of God’s names and attributes, often in call-and-response fashion. In 1969, Beatles guitarist George Harrison produced a recording of the Hare Krishna mantra, and bhakti debuted on Britain’s Top of the Pops. Around the same time, former Harvard psychology professor Richard Alpert returned from India with a new name—Ram Dass—and the message that psychedelics were poor substitutes for divine love. He taught ancient Hindu chants to hippies.

Recent years have seen another surge of Western interest in bhakti yoga and particularly devotional chanting. Longtime “kirtan wallahs” such as Jai Uttal and Krishna Das (Americans both) have graduated from living rooms to concert venues that seat many hundreds, achieving the status of rock stars in the yoga community. These days, it’s rare to find a yoga conference without communal chanting on the program. The Omega Institute’s annual “Ecstatic Chant” weekend grew so popular that this year the retreat center scheduled two chant-a-thons. There are kirtan camps for those seeking in-depth study and kirtan ringtones for cell phones. The Canadian music company that manages Avril Lavigne and Sarah McLachlan recently signed half a dozen chant artists to its label. “It’s a bull market,” quips Shyamdas, who has led kirtan for a quarter of a century.

Read More of this article at Yoga+ Joyful Living’s website

Anna Dubrovsky is a contributing editor of Yoga+. Last year, after returning from seven months of yoga study in Chennai, India, she settled in Pittsburgh, where she also teaches yoga.

Spirit Voyage Artist’s Featured in this Article:
Snatam Kaur

Click to See Snatam Kaur's Profile

Snatam Kaur’s day begins at a time when many musicians are heading to bed. At 4 a.m., she and her husband begin morning sadhana, two-and-a-half hours of Kundalini Yoga and chanting and prayer in the Sikh tradition. When she’s on tour, they’re joined by bandmates and crew. “As an artist, a lot of my inspiration comes at that time, a lot of the tunes and ideas for future albums,” says Snatam, who has churned out six solo albums since 2002. “It’s my well that I draw from.” Snatam’s parents turned to Sikhism shortly after she was born. She learned kirtan from her mother and musical improvisation from her father, a former manager for the Grateful Dead. Her kirtans include Gurmukhi chants drawn from Sikh scriptures and English aphorisms composed by her spiritual teacher, Yogi Bhajan, who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West in the 1960s. Between chants, she teaches yoga and meditation. “I look at each concert as a full experience of healing. The words that we share are considered to be a technology of transformation—almost like opening up a medicine cabinet.”

Home Base: Espanola, New Mexico
Website: www.snatamkaur.com
Can’t Miss: Snatam will be among the musicians performing from the world’s most mystical sites as part of Project-Peace on Earth, a globally telecast event scheduled for September 2009. www.project-peaceonearth.org
Coming Soon: She will release a children’s album that includes “Feeling Good,” a song Snatam wrote at 15 and rediscovered while flipping through old journals. An accompanying DVD will feature an interactive yoga class for children.
Click Here for Snatam Kaur’s Music

Dave Stringer

Click to see Dave Stringer Profile

Dave Stringer didn’t go to India in 1990 to find a guru. He went because he was broke and couldn’t refuse a job shooting films for the first Siddha Yoga ashram. “All the images of people sitting in meditation ‘blissed out’ were actually a turnoff
for me rather than an enticement,” he says. At the ashram in Ganeshpuri, the skeptic became an enthusiast in short order. “The experience of chanting, which was at first total nonsense to me, was strangely compelling, not only musically but in terms of how I felt—completely ecstatic,” says Stringer, a trained jazz musician. About a decade after returning to Los Angeles, he traded his career in film editing for one in kirtan. “I don’t ask people who come to my kirtans to believe in it. I ask them to suspend their disbelief for a long enough time to give it a go and see what happens.”

Home Base: Los Angeles, California
Website: www.davestringer.com
Can’t Miss: Stringer will lead chanting at the Big Island Retreat with Ram Dass and friends in Pahoa, Hawaii, Nov. 5–10, 2008. www.ramdass.org
Coming Soon: His fifth album is scheduled for release in September. Stringer’s spring 2009 tour will be recorded for a live album to be released the following fall.
Click Here for Dave Stringer’s Music

Also featured in this article:
Krishna Das: Bhakti With a Dash of Blues
Deva Premal & Miten: At Home in the World
Wah!: “If It’s Playful, I’m There.”
Jai Uttal: In the Footsteps of the Minstrels
Seán Johnson
Wade Imre Morissette
David Newman aka Durga Das
Shyamdas
Benjy and Heather Wertheimer, aka Shantala