Deva Premal spreads the Gayatri Mantra around the world….
Om bhur bhuvah svaha
Tat savitur varenyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yonah prachodayat
Through the coming and going, and the balance of life,
the essential nature, which illumines existence, remains.
May all perceive through subtle intellect
the brilliance of enlightenment.
The Gayatri Mantra is perhaps the oldest prayer known to humanity. As a prayer to the sun, provider of life to Earth, it is, at its core, a plea for the enlightenment of all sentient beings on the planet. In ancient India, the Gayatri Mantra was the exclusive property of a chosen few, passed down from Brahmin to Brahmin for many generations, and always completely forbidden to women.
Breaking with a tradition that he probably didn’t even know existed, Deva Premal’s father, Wolfgang, sang the mantra to his unborn daughter throughout the nine months she was in utero, and welcomed his baby into the world with the most holy sounds of the Gayatri Mantra. As time went on, the prayer became the German-born singer’s bedtime song, which she chanted every evening throughout her childhood. Thirty-five years after being welcomed by it at her birth, Deva Premal completed the circle by chanting the mantra to her father on his deathbed, sending him on his spiritual way with the venerable sacred verses.
In 1998 Deva Premal recorded the Gayatri Mantra on her debut album, The Essence, and it has become a perennial favorite of her fans and a high point of her concerts ever since. With Miten, her personal and musical partner of over two decades, she continues to travel the globe to spread their message of compassion, meditation and transcendence, sharing the transformative healing energy of the Gayatri Mantra with ecstatic souls everywhere.
During their world tours, Miten and long time collaborator, Nepalese bansuri flute maestro Manose, shot video segments of Deva singing the Gayatri Mantra in far-flung locations around the world. Some sites were exceptional places dense with resonant significance, e.g., Berlin’s monumental Holocaust Memorial, Ground Zero of the 9/11 massacre in New York City, the Shiva Temple in Rajasthan, India; Macchu Picchu in Peru, the Strawberry Fields memorial to John Lennon in Central Park, and the site of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas. Locations also included Buckingham Palace and the glorious Wells Cathedral in England, the Grand Canyon, the Dead Sea in Israel and other natural wonders.
Shooting in 32 countries from 2008 through 2010, the pair of musicians-turned-cameramen captured engaging performances of Deva singing the beloved song on city streets, in open desert, in the ocean, by tropical waterfalls and at sacred sites – as well as by the bedside of a dying friend at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. All this was skilfully edited together from footage, marrying the soothing melody of Deva’s interpretation of the mantra with dazzling footage of her in some of the planet’s most beautiful places.
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