Reimagining Devotion: How Kirtan Lounge Is Shaping A New Era Of World Music
Kirtan Lounge reimagines devotional music by blending ancient chants with global influences, creating a modern world music sound rooted in tradition and collaboration.
Lounge serves as a platform for ideas, cultures, and collaborators to merge and create something new, yet continuously changing and evolving with each new release. At its core, Ananta Govinda and Gopi Kallayil share a common vision, one that celebrates tradition and innovation. This begins with discovery, often through something as simple as a melody, memory, or a devotional piece of music that touches them enough to revisit and explore.
Where Influence Meets Intention
Ananta Govinda’s musical influence plays a defining role in the direction and intent behind Kirtan Lounge. Although his formal education in classical piano provided a foundation, his interest in cross-cultural sounds and music opened new avenues and ideas, allowing his creative self to flourish in unexpected ways. Artists who incorporated Eastern and Western sounds and styles left a lasting impression, opening the door to a new way of thinking about and approaching music.
Ananta remembers hearing music with mantras and spiritual themes incorporated into new and different sounds, allowing a new dimension of storytelling through music to emerge. This eventually led him to study music at the Ali Akhbar School of Music, where he learned more about ragas and traditional music composition.
Influences can be seen throughout the compositions and pieces created by Ananta and Gopi, often incorporating a sense of movement and progression, not only through intent but also through a sense of evolution and discovery. This music engages with tradition, allowing old forms to take on new and exciting shapes without losing their essence.
A Collaborative Core
The foundation upon which Kirtan Lounge is built is collaboration. Regularly, they bring together artists from different backgrounds, each contributing their own perspective to the creative process. Gopi’s own experiences, including travel and exposure to different cultures, often inject new ideas into the mix. A melody that is overheard while traveling, or a chant that is found in a far-off land, can be the starting point for an entirely new production. From there, the process becomes an exploration, each contributing their own layers, eventually creating the final product.
This creates an element of uncertainty with the music. Each song is unique, yet they are all connected by the intention behind them. The intention is always to maintain authenticity, and each collaboration is allowed to develop as they see fit, without being forced into an expected form.
Building a Modern Sound from Ancient Roots
Another element that is very much part of Kirtan Lounge is the ability to connect the ancient with the modern. Traditional chants and elements form the foundation upon which most compositions are built, yet modern production techniques are also used to bring them into the contemporary world.
Their most recent single, “Achutam Keshavam,” is an example of this. The song is built on the foundation of an ancient bhajan, yet, through layered instrumentation and production, it is given an expansive feel while maintaining the essence and spirit of the original chant.
The vocals are another element that adds to the song. The high pitch and tone of Karnamrita Dasi are contrasted with the deeper tones and resonance of Gopi, creating an element of progression and exploration. The song builds gradually, with each element allowed to find its own place within the structure as a whole.
An Expanding Creative Universe
Kirtan Lounge continues to expand with the release of more music. Some future plans for the project include releasing more music in the “Mantraverse” series and remastering some of the music they have already created. Yet they remain malleable and open to change.
Watch and Listen to Kirtan Lounge’s “Acutam Keshavam” on YouTube:
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