Note: the facts available for this album do not include a track list, so no individual song titles are named here. Where a guide would usually point to specific tracks, this one describes what to listen for instead.
Bhakti Fest arrived on October 23, 2012, as an eight-track compilation. That format matters. It is not a studio statement built from a single concept but a gathering of pieces, which suits a title that evokes a festival: many voices, many moments, one shared field of attention.
John de Kadt is a musician, poet and storyteller whose work, in his own framing, is devoted to slowing the world down and returning to the tempo of nature. For more than twenty-five years he has told ancient myths from indigenous cultures and mystical traditions, treating story as ritual and ceremony. He calls this practice DrumStory, performed with an array of percussive and melodic instruments from around the world. He is also a founding member of The Rememberers and the creator and producer of BlessFest, a music, healing and sacred arts festival.
Within that arc, Bhakti Fest reads as the kirtan-leader side of his work. It sits alongside the storytelling and the festival-building as another route to the same destination: a pause, a remembering, a return to a slower pulse.
With only eight tracks and no detailed credits to lean on, the safest way to describe this album is through the sensibility behind it. De Kadt's background in global percussion and melodic instruments suggests a sound grounded in rhythm, in hand-played textures, and in voice used as invitation rather than display. Expect the pacing that kirtan tradition favors: patterns that settle in, repeat, and gather intensity gradually rather than driving toward a hook.
The mood to anticipate is communal and unhurried. Compilations of this kind tend to move between stillness and lift, and the sequencing of eight tracks gives you room to feel that arc without it becoming exhausting. Listen for how the music treats repetition. In devotional practice, repetition is not redundancy; it is the mechanism by which attention softens and drops.
Since I can't responsibly name tracks, here are three things to track as you move through the album:
The opening track. The first piece sets your tempo. Notice how long it takes before you stop anticipating the next change. That moment of surrender is the album's real entrance.
The midpoint. On an eight-track program, the fourth and fifth tracks are where a festival-style sequence usually deepens or lifts. Pay attention to whether the energy rises into call-and-response or settles into something more inward.
The closing track. Devotional sets are designed to land you somewhere. Notice whether the last piece leaves you energized or quiet, and let that tell you how the album wants to be used.
Bhakti is the yoga of devotion, and kirtan is its sung, participatory form: a leader offers a phrase and a community answers. Bhakti Fest takes its name from that world and from the festival culture that has grown around it, where kirtan, yoga and sacred arts share a stage. De Kadt brings an additional lineage to this setting. His work with myth and ceremony places him closer to the ritual, storytelling end of the spectrum than to the pop-inflected end, and that orientation is worth keeping in mind. The album is best heard as a devotional offering rather than a polished product, and as a compilation it also works as a doorway into the broader scene it represents.
This album is for the listener who already believes in slowing down but struggles to do it. It suits someone in a transitional moment: after a demanding season, during a period of grief or recalibration, or at the start of a practice they want to build. It will also resonate with people who attend retreats, yoga classes, or sacred-arts gatherings and want to carry some of that atmosphere home. If you need hooks and novelty, it may feel patient to the point of invisibility. If you need a counterweight to speed, that patience is the point.
Hear it through once, in order, in the evening, with the phone in another room. Headphones will help you notice the hand-played textures and the grain of the voices, but speakers in a dim room work beautifully if you want to sing along quietly. Try pairing it with a simple ritual: a candle, tea, a few minutes of stretching or sitting before the first track begins. Don't skip around. The compilation's eight tracks are short enough to take in a single sitting, and the cumulative effect of staying with the repetition is where the album does its work.
If you listen a second time, let it play in the background of a quiet task, like cooking or walking, and notice how the tempo of your own movement changes to match it.
