“With every chant and every beat, ‘Shiva Shambho Kirtan’ turns an ancient spiritual practice into a joyful celebration that invites everyone to sing along and feel connected.”
Music can bring people together without them having to share a language or indeed a background at all. Sometimes it’s as simple as a beat, a repeated phrase and the desire to just get involved. Vidura Barrios brings that to life on “Shiva Shambho Kirtan” which is a very much a modern world music take on the traditional Indian practice of kirtan. It’s a vibrant devotional piece built around Sanskrit chanting, some very organic instrumentation and a very strong, driving rhythm. It’s a track that allows you to experience the spirit of the music simply by singing and celebrating with others.
At the core of “Shiva Shambho Kirtan” is the chanting of the various names of Shiva, namely Śaṅkara, Hara and Śambho. Each of these names has a specific meaning which is what gives the song its significance. Śaṅkara is the name of the auspicious one, Hara is the one who removes suffering and obstacles and Śambho is the one who brings happiness and bliss. The chanting is essentially the repetition of these lines “Jaya jaya Śaṅkara, Hara Śiva Śaṅkara” and “Śambho Śambho, Jaya Śambho” and it has a very natural flow to it which draws you in. It’s a very accessible song even for someone who doesn’t know a word of Sanskrit. The words are unfamiliar but the feeling of being in the chorus, of moving with the beat is something that we can all relate to. One of the most attractive things about this recording is its sheer energy. Devotional music is often thought of as being quite quiet, quite meditative. Kirtan can of course be very much the opposite. “Shiva Shambho Kirtan” is very much of that nature. There’s a real sense of momentum in the rhythm which makes it feel less like something you’re just watching and more like something you could get involved with. You could sing along, you could clap along to the beat, you could just let the repetition take you out of your own head. There’s a real sense of celebration in the whole thing which serves to remind us that spiritual practice doesn’t have to be all serious. It can be full of joy, full of movement and full of a sense of togetherness. The production is key to realising this vision. Barrios wrote the piece, Kento Tachibana did the production and arrangement. It’s all organic instrumentation and vocals so it has that very human quality which is appropriate to the communal nature of kirtan. There are multiple voices in the piece with vocals from Lakshmi Marfil Delgado, Anjali Bhargava, Tachibana and Barrios. That’s a very important element in that it really does underpin the notion that kirtan is something you do together rather than something you do by yourself. It’s a way of bringing the traditional devotional basis of the music into the modern musical context, taking it out of the purely meditative realm and into something that can be experienced in a more contemporary way, whilst still being very much rooted in its spiritual purpose.
For Barrios this is a release that has been in the making for over 20 years. His connection to the traditions is very personal, having practised meditation for most of his life and spent ten years living and practising in a meditation ashram. He is the founder of Inner Splendor Media, an independent music company he set up in 2006, and has spent that time creating recordings for meditation, relaxation and spiritual exploration. That’s the context in which “Shiva Shambho Kirtan” was made. It’s not about presenting Indian devotional music as something exotic or something you have to go to India to understand. It’s about sharing the joy he’s found in the practice with a much wider audience, including people who may have never even done any chanting before. The track is a prime example of the universal function of repetition and rhythm in music around the world. Chanting provides a means of focus, of getting into a shared rhythm and of expressing emotions that are difficult to articulate in normal speech. In this recording the repeated invocation is the very heart of the piece. Each recurrence of the chant reinforces its communal quality, moving the listener from passive reception to active participation. The meaning is firmly grounded in the Indian devotional tradition but the invitation to join in is open to all. “Shiva Shambho Kirtan” is about making a real spiritual tradition feel accessible and alive. Vidura Barrios pays tribute to the devotional roots of kirtan whilst giving it a very contemporary, organic feel through the use of natural sounds and group vocals. It’s a song that you’re encouraged to get involved with rather than one you just sit back and listen to. It could be a moment of spiritual contemplation, it could be a piece of devotional music, it could be just a very uplifting song to sing along to. The point is that joy can be found in the act of singing and at times the most powerful thing you can do is just sing the same words over and over again.
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