Hello friends,

I have sad news. On April 18th of this year our Bhakti world lost one of its brightest lights. David Newman left his body after a short illness, and his death sent waves of sadness & grief through the international Bhakti community. He was so young, and had so much left to give. But it was his time, and no one understood that better than David did. We hosted him for a kirtan & a workshop back in the spring of 2018, and he was a delight — deeply spiritual and also funny with a wicked sense of humor. Over the years I’ve seen David offer kirtan at many different festivals, but perhaps my favorite was when he wore the cheese hat at Bhakti Fest Midwest. That set is linked in the show notes, and I’ll also post the link to a GoFundMe for Mira and Tulsi, David’s wife and daughter. Please contribute if David’s music has moved you in any way.

Last month we hosted Shantala here in Corvallis, and at the end of the kirtan Benjy & Heather offered their cover of ‘Tulsi’s Bliss’, from David’s CD ‘Stars’. Benji & Heather have led several pilgrimages to India with David, and they were close. When David got sick they composed the chant you’re about to hear and sent it to him, hoping it would lift his spirits. They performed this as the last chant of their kirtan here in Corvallis, and are accompanied by Jared May on bass and Johanna Beekman on vocals. It moved us to tears. I hope you also are moved by it.

So … getting back to the New World Kirtan podcast, I have been thinking so much about the path forward, and have come to the conclusion that it may be the time for a podcast that features mostly music has come and gone. I’m running into copyright issues, and the artists make money when I post playlists that feature their music on Spotify, but not when I play it on the podcast. This conclusion makes me so sad, because I have loved producing the New World Kirtan podcast for you. We started in 2008, when no one knew what a podcast was, and now there are so many that claim our attention. I want to thank each and every one of you who have listed to these offerings of kirtan music and interviews with kirtan artists over the years. Many of you continue to download the NWK podcast, and I’m always astonished at the weekly download numbers. We’ve been on a journey together over all these years, together through all the years of the great festivals with live recordings & artist interviews, We’ve gone through my mother’s death together, and two elections and learning about the kirtan scene in China, and when Kirtan went to the Grammy Awards. We were together during all the health stuff that happened to me and don’t think for a minute I didn’t feel your prayers. Thank you. Thank you for your emails. Thank you for being such a great audience.

I hope I’ve contributed in some way to making your life better through this magical music. I’ll continue to be here, and I’ll post when something momentous happens in the kirtan world. I loved David Newman, and I couldn’t let his death pass without remembering his beautiful spirit and his music. I interviewed him several years ago, I’ll put the link in the show notes, and I’ll also include some links I’ve recorded of his performances in various festivals over the years. Savor his energy. He was special, and he will be missed.

Your memory is a blessing, dearest David Newman. Travel Well, my friend. Travel Well.

And until next time, dear hearts — Namaste.

A Conversation With David Newman

David Newman Live at Bhakti Fest Midwest

The post Travel Well: A Tribute To David Newman. December 31, 1963 — April 18, 2024 first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

Hello friends,

Happy Autumn!

In this edition we’re featuring artists playing at next week’s Bhakti Love Reunion, October 13-15 in Weldon, CA — that’s near Lake Isabella. Three full days of Yoga, kirtan, music, dancing and great food — doesn’t that sound awesome? I am SO excited to be going, I haven’t been to a festival in such a long time, and many of the artists we all love will be there. Jai Uttal & Donna De Lory are headlining. There’s a lot more detail on the website, here’s the link. And if you enter NWK when you buy your tickets, you’ll receive a 20% discount!

I hope to see you at the Bhakti Love Reunion! Ben Leinbach said it best; “It’s gonna be a great hang.” Indeed!

Enjoy this magical music, dear listeners, and until next time — Namaste.

The Music

Jai Uttal: Dust & Tears; Ode To The Mystics

Ananda Rasa Kirtan: Mulani – Dub Kirtan; Jagadambe Jay Ma Durga (feat. Prajna Vieira)

Radhika Vekaria; Kali

Johanna Beekman & Ben Leinbach: Yoga Soundtracks Vol. 2; Beauty We Love (featuring Girish)

Donna De Lory: Sky Is Open (Mac Quayle_Donna De Lory mix)

Jaya Lakshmi: Live at the Altar of Love; This Is The Day

Kamini Natarajan; Jab Te Mohi

Michael Hathaway: Offering; Servant (featuring Jai Uttal)

Joss Jaffe: Dub Mantra Sangha; Ganesha

Larisa Stow, Soon Soon

Mikey Pauker & Johanna Beekman; Help Us Love

Masood Ali Kahn; Ganesha (featuring Deepak Ramapriyan)

Katie Wise & Bhakti Explosion: Lovolution; Lokah Love

The post The Bhakti Love Reunion! first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

Hello friends,

This set is devoted to the Divine Mother, with the exception of one chant, the title track from Shantala’s remarkable new CD ‘Five’. The whole CD is great, but I’m kind of obsessed with this track & have been playing it on loop. Heather Wertheiimer composed the chant over the course of the pandemic, and the mantra ‘Namah Shivaya” pulses like a heartbeat behind a five-line English prayer for our planet. The chanting flows in a layered musical tapestry that features the Grammy-winning violinist and singer Lili Haydn from Opium Moon, and she brings the piece into a beautiful new dimension. The other talented musicians who contributed to this remarkable track were Greg Barnett on bass, lead guitar, vocals, and vocals by Luna Marcus & Sarah Maines.I must have listened to it a hundred times, and it never fails to move me.

I hope you’re enjoying this beautiful early summer wherever you are. It’s an honor to have you as a listener. Until next time my friends. Namaste.

Here’s the link to Ziva Meditation: https://cd371.isrefer.com/go/ZOPreview/JaiMa/

Bhakti Love Festival: https://bhaktilove.com/

The Music:

The post Hello Summer! first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

I’m feeling blessed by a lot these days. Those of you who listen to the New World Kirtan Podcast are one of my biggest blessings — this community has enriched my life in ways too numerous to count. Thank you for being here. And we’ve been here together for quite a long time — the first edition of the podcast was posted in 2018 before anyone really knew what a podcast was. I was always trying to explain it! We’ve been through quite a journey together — my mother’s illness & death, my own surgeries & health challenges, several momentous American elections and the COVID-19 pandemic, to name a few. Kirtan & Bhakti Yoga were my anchors through all of it.

To honor our journey, I’m rerunning some of the most downloaded episodes of the NWK Podcast over the years. We’ll begin with Om Shiva from 2013, to celebrate the Hindu festival of Maha Shivaratri on February 18. This podcast has been a journal of sorts, and I have to say I loved listening to my 2013 self talking about how I’d like o build a kirtan community here in Corvallis. How far we’ve come!

I’m blessed to have you as a listener, dear one. Until next time. Namaste.

THE MUSIC

The post A Set For Maha Shivaratri first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

Hello friends,

I hope this finds you healthy & doing well.

If the dark days are getting you down, take heart because on Wednesday we celebrated Imbolc, an ancient Celtic holiday that celebrates the beginning of Spring — it was traditionally celebrated by the lighting of fires to honor the sun goddess Brigid. This holiday traditionally marks the midway point between winter solstice & the spring equinox, so the light is coming back big time now. There’s a set to the Divine Mother to celebrate Imbolc up on Spotify at the New World Kirtan page if you’d like to listen. Life is good here, I hope the same for you.

This edition of the podcast is an interview with Dave Stringer, Madi Das & Sean Johnson about the very exciting news that Madi & Dave’s CD ’Mantra Americana’ has been nominated for a Grammy award!

Dave, Madi & Sean will tell you about the process behind getting the Grammy’s New Age category renamed to include chant for the very first time, how the pandemic helped with that process & led to the birth of the Auricle Collective — as you probably recall, I’ve been telling you about that project in the last several podcasts. Then we’ll hear about the mashup of musical influences that gave birth to this extraordinary album ‘Mantra Americana’, and how Dave & Madi feel about going to the Grammys for the second time. The music so rich musically, I know you’re going to love it!

Now it’s Saturday, and the Grammys are tomorrow night, so let’s send the guys all our love and best wishes. And if you have a minute, don’t forget to give the New World Kirtan podcast a rating on iTunes, it will help more people to find us. Until next time, my friends — Namaste.

MANTRA AMERICANA

The post Kirtan Goes To The Grammy Awards! first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

It has been a glorious summer & fall here, one of the most beautiful I can remember. But now the rains have started, and the leaves are falling. The Corvallis kirtan community continues to grow, and we’ll be starting live kirtan concerts again in December. It feels good to be returning to this magical practice.

Let’s enter the way back machine for a moment and recall, back in April, me telling you about the Auricle Collective — a community of more than 156 musicians rooted in singing, chanting & music as art and spiritual practice. These are the musicians that fuel our Bhakti Yoga practice. If you were able to participate in the Spotify Experiment, explained in the 2 previous podcasts, we are deeply grateful. Here are some of the results.

Since the launch of The Experiment, we have generated over 2,000 Spotify followers for our kirtan artists, with an average growth of 280% in followers from before the Experiment began. This means that our artists’ music will be circulated more widely through Spotify’s algorithms, and whenever any Auricle artist releases new music, many more listeners will be notified. We now have 1,00 subscribers to the Auricle newsletter and have heard from many artists from around the world who wish to join the Collective. This is a fantastic beginning, and we’re excited to see the impact expand and the ripple effect over time. We’re so thankful for your support in making this possible!

The Spotify Experiment is now ongoing; anyone can follow all of our artists with one click at any time.  Click on this link, and please continue to share!

Here’s some more exciting news — sacred chant has been designated as a new category for the Grammy awards! The next few podcasts will be featuring music from our Grammy-nominated artists, so stay tuned!

The music in this week’s set is the third and last of the podcasts with all new music from Auricle Collective artists. Please enjoy, and if you think of it, please give the podcast a rating on iTunes, it will help more people to find us.

Vote. Believe in the vision, and what a beautiful world we’ll create. Much love to you all, and until next time — Namaste.

THE MUSIC

The post Thoughts of Peace, Words of Love — More Fresh Tracks From the Auricle Collective first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

OK, guys — time is running out! Let’s all come together and support the Auricle Collective by clicking on this link.

I hope you all enjoy more new music from the talented artists of the Auricle Collective. Be well, enjoy the summer, and until next time — Namaste.

THE MUSIC:

The post More Fresh Tracks From The Auricle Collective! first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

Hello dear friends,

I hope life is good for you as we head into midsummer.

If you recall, back in April, I told you about the Auricle Collective. This community of more than 100 musicians is rooted in singing, chanting & music as art and spiritual practice. It includes the musicians that fuel our Bhakti Yoga practice.

Remember the olden days when we were all downloading our music? Then, a single song cost 99 cents. Now, in the streaming era, a song has to be downloaded 315 times for an artist to make the same amount of money. In other words, Spotify & other streaming services are making it much more difficult for artists to earn a living from their music. How can we support the artists we love?

Well, we can’t change this system, but we can still work together to influence it. And the Auricle Collective is asking us to do just that, as it has designed an app and created an experiment to see if we can hijack the algorithms to feature & recommend our kirtan artists more often. By joining our voices together, we’ll have the ability to amplify each other powerfully. Instead of working for the algorithm, we’ll be making it work for us. How to join in this experiment? It’s really simple: click on this link to open the app, log in to Spotify and follow all your favorite artists with a single click. If all of us do this it will send a massive pulse to amplify the algorithms that recommend & feature music on Spotify. It will take you just 5 seconds to fire off a love explosion in service to spiritual music, and just think — by doing this you’ll not only help lift up your favorite artists, but you’ll also increase the visibility of many emerging artists in our community & introduce yourself to some amazing music you haven’t heard yet. Isn’t that cool? So let’s give it a try and see what happens!

The music in this week’s set is all new music from Auricle Collective artists — some of it hasn’t even been released yet. The artists have sent me lots of their new music, so there will be several more of these Fresh Tracks sets coming your way. Please enjoy, and until next time, my friends — Namaste.

THE MUSIC:

The post Fresh Tracks From the Auricle Collective! first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

Happy summer, my dear friends! I hope you’re enjoying life as much as I am. My health is almost back to normal after the accident, and I’m working on regaining fitness now. Our son was married last weekend, and it was a beautiful love-filled & life affirming celebration. And next week we’re starting a big garden renovation, and I’m so excited about that. I’m not a big Instagram person, but I’ll be posting pictures there as things progress if you’d like to follow along.

I also wanted to let you know that all our Friday sets are now posted on YouTube on the New World Kirtan Podcast page under playlists — I’ll put the link in the show notes. There are also some live performances of artists there you might enjoy. And unlike Spotify, it’s free. Our podcasts are also available on Soundcloud.

The Auricle Project has some big news that I’ll tell you about in the next podcast — it will be a Fresh Tracks set filled with new music from your favorite artists. 

In closing, I’d just like to say one thing. It’s a strange time we’re living in. If you’re feeling discouraged, anxious or afraid — take heart. There’s plenty of good news out there too – acts of kindness and friendship, feats of generosity and sacrifice. But a  hard reality of our time is that we are surrounded by anger-generating machines. And anger is a thief — don’t let it steal your perspective or your peace of mind. Go outside more — you can feel God’s rhythms there. And be well, my friends. Enjoy life, and until next time. Namaste.

New World Kirtan Podcast on Spotify.

New World Kirtan Podcast on YouTube

New World Kirtan Podcast on SoundCloud.

THE MUSIC

The post A Surprise Package first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.

Several weeks ago I was on a Zoom call with over 50 kirtan artists to hear more about something called the Auricle Collective — this is a project spearheaded by Dave Stringer, Seán Johnson and several other Kirtan artists. Singing kirtan connects us by the thread of sacred music as a spiritual path. The goal of the Auricle Collective is to share our resources to promote & support our kirtan artists, who are making music that is participatory, devotional and that has the intention of shifting consciousness.

On the weekend of May 14 & 15, the Auricle Collective will launch an experiment designed to massively stimulate the Spotify algorithm and increase the streams and income for Kirtan artists. Your participation is important because it will help gather data about the audience for Kirtan — it will also expand the reach of this podcast. I’ll be telling you more about this as the project progresses, so stay tuned. 

Through singing, we experience the Divine in ourselves, and in one another. When we join our voices together, we become a mighty force of Love that has the power to change so many things. We need this music. The world does too. 

And that brings us to this edition of the podcast. It’s hard for us to imagine the horrors the brave people in Ukraine are going through these days. It’s easy to feel helpless against the wave of all that hatred. What can we do to help them? Stand in the light, do our spiritual practices, sing kirtan, and visualize a wave of Divine Love flooding over Ukraine and Russia. We can do our best to shift the energy and turn the world to love. Visualize that as you sing this set to Shiva — the Hindu deity who destroys in order to create. Om Namah Shivaya.

Thanks for listening to the podcast, dear hearts, and until next time — Namaste.

THE MUSIC

STREAMING SERVICES RANKED

The post For Ukraine first appeared on New World Kirtan > Calming Chants for a Crazy World.