Note: the title is a single, released October 25, 2022, with one track. Where the facts are silent, as with instrumentation and collaborators, this guide describes what to listen for rather than asserting credits.
Krishna Das was born Jeffrey Kagel in 1947. He came to devotional music through New York in the 1970s and the teachings of Neem Karoli Baba, and then through a transformative period in India immersed in bhakti yoga. He returned to the United States and began leading kirtan, blending traditional Indian melodies with Western musical sensibility. Decades on, he is one of the best-known voices of kirtan in the West.
This release is a different kind of entry in that story. It is a single, not an album-length statement. The title tells us the chant appears "From 'Ram Setu,'" a screen context rather than a retreat hall or a concert stage. For a performer whose reputation was built on long, accumulating call-and-response evenings, a single connected to a film is a compact doorway. It carries his lineage to listeners who may have arrived through the screen and not through the practice.
The chant itself is the center of gravity: the mantra Om Namah Shivaay, a salutation to Shiva, one of the most widely chanted phrases in the Indian devotional world. What you can expect from Krishna Das is a deep, weathered, soulful voice, more plea than performance, with phrasing that leans into the syllables and lets them breathe.
Listen for the qualities that define his work generally: unhurried pacing, repetition that functions as a slow build rather than as a hook, and a mood that sits between yearning and steadiness. The Western influence in his kirtan tends to show up in harmonic warmth and a song-like emotional shape, while the melodic and rhythmic grammar remains rooted in Indian devotional tradition. Because the release is tied to a film, expect the production to be somewhat more cinematic and polished than a live kirtan recording would be. Treat that as a listening question to test with your own ears: where does the arrangement widen, and where does it pull back to leave the voice exposed?
There is only one track here, and it is the whole case: "Om Namah Shivaay (From 'Ram Setu')."
What makes it land is the economy. A five-syllable mantra gives the voice nothing to hide behind and nothing to explain. Every repetition is a small variation in weight, breath, and emphasis. Follow those changes. The first pass often feels like an invocation, and later passes can feel like settling in. The track works when you stop tracking the words and start tracking the texture of the voice.
This sits squarely in the bhakti tradition, the path of devotion, and in kirtan, its sung, communal form. Krishna Das's own genres run through devotion, meditation, satsang, and spiritual teaching, so the chant is better understood as practice than as entertainment. The Shiva mantra is also a bridge: it is ancient, simple, and used by people with very different relationships to Hinduism, yoga, and meditation.
The film framing adds a modern layer. Devotional music has long traveled through cinema in India, and this single places Krishna Das's Western-born kirtan voice within that stream, joining a folk-sacred tradition with a popular medium.
- The newcomer curious about chanting. A single, short entry point with a mantra that is easy to learn and sing along with.
- The lapsed or occasional practitioner. Someone who used to chant and wants a gentle reminder of the feeling.
- Anyone in a transitional or tender moment. Grief, burnout, a sleepless stretch, or a need for steadiness. Krishna Das's voice has always carried a lived-in quality that suits those moments.
- Listeners who came through the film. The chant offers a way to carry the story's emotional register into daily life.
It will land less for listeners who want the full, extended, communal build of a live kirtan. A single is a taste, not the whole meal.
Choose an evening, after the day's noise has settled. Use headphones so the grain of the voice is close, and turn down the lights. Listen once without doing anything else. On the second pass, sing quietly under your breath, even if you feel self-conscious; kirtan is meant to be participated in, not only heard. If you keep a practice, play it as a bookend to meditation or a few minutes of silence afterward.
Then let it repeat a few times. The point of a mantra is what happens after the novelty wears off, and that is where this track does its best work.
