German-born Deva Premal is a classically trained musician who Brew up singing mantras as bedtime songs. Her mother plays viola da gamba and her father was an artist and a devotee if the spiritual path, including Zen and Yoga. He taught himself Sanskrit and Deva notes that "When my mother was pregnant with me, their welcome was to sing the Gayatri Mantra throughout the pregnancy.
"As 1 grew up we continued to chant the Gayatri Mantra together regularly before sleep. 1 didn't really know what I was singing'" and why. I just did it because I was told to. It wasn't until much later that I came to appreciate these precious times"
As a teenager, she moved away from the confines if both her classical music training in voice, violin and piano, and the mantra practice and began to explore on her own. At age 1 l , her search brought her to become a disciple of the enlightened mystic Osho, and later, she went to the ashram in India to begin studies in body work, including massage, shiatsu and crania-sacral therapies.
It was in Osho's ashram that she and Miten met in India in 1990 and soon began a journey into love and creativity that has taken their inspiring blend if song' mantra and meditation to a worldwide audience.
"Although 1 was 20 years old and he was 42, our hearts immediately connected,” she says. "I knew he was one if Osho 's musicians, but that was about all knew—apart from the fact that l felt good whenever we were together. We laughed a lot... and still do. He writes the most beautiful songs, some if which I knew from the ashram celebrations."
Miten was born in London and Brew up in the 60's. "At that time, England was alive with rock 'n' roll music and the sound if The Beatles,' he recalls. "Everywhere you went it was on the street. It was a time if innocence, a time when you could sense the possibility that life has no boundaries. "
He later went on to establish a successful career Jar himself in the 70's as a singer/ songwriter, touring with such bands as Fleetwood Mac, Lou Reed and Ry Cooder. During this time he released two well-received albums, one produced by The Kinks, another by noted Los Angeles producer Bones Howe for Ariola Records. This period if his life was exciting, but lift him unfulfilled.
Miten lift everything he had known before, even selling his guitars, and after discovering Osho when a friend gave him a book on Zen, dropped out if his career and into a life as a member if a meditation community. Here he found a new approach to music: "It was an amazing revelation. I wasn't prepared Jar the healing power if the music that was happening around Osho. This turned my head to what real sacred music was - even though it was western in style, it still had the most uplifting and spiritual nature, especially the 'Music Groups' and the Sufi dances. I was hooked on Sufi dance and never missed an opportunity to participate. All this music, along with a life if communal integration, deeper relating, and Osho's discourses and meditations, healed me from whatever wounds l'd been carrying around music, and life in general."
By 1990, when he and Deva met, he was leading the music for thousands if people attending the evening meditations at the ashram in India, and eventually invited Deva to join. Later they began offering voice workshops and concerts in Europe. Deva recalls, "At this point, I played a supporting role, singing second voice, playing keyboards, and co-leading the workshops. I was very shy to sing alone, but encouraged by Miten, I became more confident and eventually discovered my voice.
"One day I heard the Gayatri Mantra being sung by a friend in England. it was a different version to the one 1 had grown up with, and knowing the text so well, I was touched and excited by what I heard. I felt re-connected. This time I could feel the power if the mantra as never before, the strong effect it had on me, and the sacredness if it.
"We began featuring it in our concerts. At last I had found my song! 1 had found something that felt like 'mine. ‘I felt at home with it, and I watched as it touched people night after night.
Their concerts and workshops are more than music - they are invitations to share in a deep moment if meditation.
As Deva says, "Without the silence that follows the chants.vou get only half the story. It’s like the climax if a good story. The silence is there because it exists in the music. It just needs to be exposed and acknowledged. It’s so easy to overlook the silence inside the music ... and it's that which is healing us ... if we allow it to be there. This is really one if the main reasons Miten and I sing - to bathe in Silence. It’s our nourishment. It’s what keeps us on the road. For me there is nothing more precious than having sung with an audience, ecstatic with bliss, and then entering the deep silence that the mantra brings ... so deep, that with closed eyes you really feel there is 'nobody' there at all ... all personalities dissolved for a tiny sacred moment."
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