Jim Gelcer's "Song of Will" is a short devotional kirtan track, a little under six minutes long, taken from the album Bhavagan and posted to YouTube in March 2012 under the channel Pat O'Connor. The upload is brief and sparse: a video titled "Song of Will," a one-line description calling it "inspirational kirtan music," and a pointer to the album's availability on iTunes and Amazon. That thinness is itself worth saying plainly up front. This article does not pretend to know more about the recording's making than its public listing says. What it can do is explain the tradition the track belongs to, so a listener arriving cold knows what they are hearing and why it might matter.
Kirtan is a devotional practice of singing sacred names and mantras, most often in a group and most often in call-and-response form. A leader sings a line; the room answers. The repetition is the point. Rather than building toward a single climax the way a pop chorus does, kirtan tends to circle, returning to the same phrase until the singers and the listeners settle into it. Practitioners describe the experience as meditative, and the form has deep roots in Indian devotional traditions, where singing God's names has long been treated as a direct path to devotion.
That is the context a track like "Song of Will" steps into. Because kirtan is built on repetition and participation, it translates unusually well to recordings. A studio version cannot replicate a crowded room, but it can preserve the cycle of call and response, the steady pulse, and the way a simple melodic line can carry a listener for minutes at a time. For someone new to the genre, that repetition can feel either hypnotic or monotonous, and it helps to know which mode you are in before you judge the track.
The phrase "inspirational kirtan" in the video description places the piece on the uplifting end of a wide genre. Kirtan ranges from austere, slow chanting to bright, dance-driven sessions. Calling a track inspirational suggests an emphasis on lift and encouragement rather than on penitence or long silent contemplation. The title, "Song of Will," points in a similar direction: the word "will" is commonly read in devotional contexts as surrender of one's own will to something larger, though the description itself does not spell out the lyrical intent, and listeners should hear the track on its own terms.
It is worth being careful here. Nothing in the upload establishes the instrumentation, the lyrics, the recording setting, or the stories behind the album. Anyone who writes confidently about those details is guessing. What is verifiable is the basic frame: this is a kirtan recording, it belongs to the Bhavagan album, and it is available through mainstream digital storefronts.
The description directs listeners to iTunes and Amazon, both of which carry the album for purchase or streaming in their respective catalogs. The video's own description also links to the artist's website, jimgelcerkirtan.com, which is the most direct place to check current release details, tour dates, and any newer material. Because the upload is from 2012 and has a modest view count of 1,901 at the time of this writing, it works best as an entry point rather than a complete picture of the artist's work.
Give it the full six minutes. Kirtan rewards attention that stays with a repeated phrase rather than one that looks for a hook. Notice where the call ends and the response begins, and whether the pulse holds steady or shifts. If you come to the track expecting the arc of a conventional song, you may find it static; if you come expecting a sustained devotional space, the repetition does its work. Listening with headphones, or in a quiet room, tends to bring out the detail a phone speaker flattens.
If "Song of Will" has caught your ear, start with the full Bhavagan album on iTunes or Amazon and listen to the track in sequence with the rest of the record, which will tell you more about its character than any single upload can. For background on the practice, look for introductions to kirtan and call-and-response devotional singing from reputable sources, and compare several recordings to hear how different artists handle the same tradition. The video is a small doorway. The album and the wider practice are where the music opens up.
