Album Notes

This is Sada Sat Kaur's first album.

That, in and of itself, should be a source of astonishment. For over 30 years she has toured the world, chanting mantras and singing kirtan in ashrams, concert halls, schools, public parks. In India, audiences have been known to flock to the American homeopath and yoga teacher as if she were the Beatles. "We play to crowds of 200,000 people," she says. "They want to touch you and get your autograph. They hear that these American Sikhs are going to sing, and you can't even see the end of the sea of people."

For decades that sea never managed to hoist Sada Sat toward

a recording studio-until now. On this, her debut album, you'll come across ancient chants, chants performed in the centuries-old language of Gurmukhi, but you'll also pick up traces of her youthful immersion in bluegrass and folk. In the studio she leaned toward producer Jeremy Toback and said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but I really like country music." Voila, in marched roots-music virtuoso Greg Leisz, who's graced recordings by everyone from Joni Mitchell to Lucinda Williams to Wilco, and who can be heard here exploring the astral plane on banjo, pedal steel, lap steel, and dobro. Twang chant? Maybe the Ganges and the Mississippi aren't so far apart, after all.

Sada Sat Kaur's voice has a way of simultaneously calming and invigorating you, and that makes sense, too. "One thing that I love about Kundalini Yoga chants is that they're not only bhakti energy, which is devotional, but they're shakti, which is the power," she says. "They're juicy. They're gutsy." Doing yoga is not necessarily a prerequisite for appreciating it, either. For anyone who feels bombarded by noise, stress, and distraction at every corner-and isn't that the habitual plight of the 21st-century humanoid?-the chants of Sada Sat Kaur act as something of a sonic antidote. "We have so many thoughts going on all the time. We call it the monkey mind, because it's always jumping around," she says. "When you chant, you're giving your mind something to focus on that's going to transform you and uplift you." In other words, Sada Sat's transformations are yours-and that, it turns out, is yet another source of astonishment.

---Jeff Gordinier