Released on August 16, 2019, DEVOTION is a ten-track album that arrived in a busy year for Wah!. That same year brought Queen of Mantra, its instrumental companion, the single Ganeshaya, and the Chill Yoga Music 2 compilation. Among all of that, DEVOTION is the record whose title states the theme outright. It comes from an artist who says she was the first woman to bring kirtan, the call-and-response chanting of India, to the West in the 1990s, and who has played bass in her joyful rock band at yoga festivals and centers since 1997. That claim comes from her own website and is not independently documented. Her Savasana CDs, which her bio says have sold over 100,000 copies, are the best-known part of her catalog. DEVOTION is a different offering: a full-length album that puts the bhakti impulse at the front.
I can't give you a track-by-track account of the arrangements, but the larger picture of Wah!'s sound is well established. Sanskrit mantra is sung over a harmonium foundation, with her own voice carrying the melody and the call-and-response shape of kirtan. In her online concerts she adds Ableton Live, so the layers are assembled electronically rather than played by a large ensemble. That gives her recordings a warmer, more produced feel than unamplified room singing, closer to a modern studio record in places.
Her years on bass guitar with a rock band also matter. They bring a sense of pulse and groove to her work that many chant artists don't have. Pacing across her catalog ranges from the slow, spacious movement of the Healing Concert to dance mixes that push the tempo. Her devotional albums generally favor a measured, mid-tempo approach. Expect repetition, sincerity, and a mood of steady, open-hearted warmth rather than ironic distance or high-BPM energy.
The track list for DEVOTION is not part of the facts I have, so I won't name individual songs from it, and I'd rather leave the gap than guess. What I can say is how to listen for what makes a kirtan track land:
- The call and the answer. Notice how her lead phrase settles before the response arrives. The pull of the music lives in that exchange.
- The slow build of repetition. A mantra that feels plain in the first minute often feels different by the fifth. Let a single track run its full length before judging it.
- The harmonium bed. Its sustained tone is the floor everything else stands on, and it's where the mood is set.
Check the album page on Spotify for the actual sequence, and choose your own signature tracks after a first complete pass.
Wah!'s work belongs to bhakti, the devotional path in which sung names of the divine carry the practice, and her form is kirtan. DEVOTION, by title and by material, sits squarely in that lineage. The available record names no specific teacher or line of succession, so it's best to hear the album as her own contemporary expression of the tradition rather than the product of a named school.
It's also a Western yoga-world version of that tradition. The band arrangements, studio production, and wellness-market context set it apart from traditional unaccompanied kirtan, and some purists may read that as a departure. Others will hear it as a bridge: a way for people who first meet chanting at a yoga studio or festival to enter a devotional practice. Her sound-healing vocabulary adds another layer, extending the tradition into the language of vibration and wellbeing.
DEVOTION is for listeners comfortable with repetition and devotional sincerity. It suits yoga students who want something richer than background music, people who already love Wah!'s Savasana or mantra recordings and want a full album of devotional material, and anyone looking for a calm, heart-forward counterweight to a stressful stretch. The bumper sticker fans made, "Less Stress More Wah!", captures the spirit well.
It will land less well for those who want purely traditional, unaccompanied kirtan, scholarly depth on Indian devotional texts, or fast electronic energy. If you're skeptical of wellness language, you can set that aside and simply listen to the singing.
Give DEVOTION an unhurried evening. Play it start to finish, in order, ideally on headphones so the harmonium's sustained tones and the layering of voice are easy to follow. Dim the lights, put the phone out of reach, and let the first two or three tracks do their work before you form an opinion.
If you want a ritual frame, treat the album as a single sitting: a few minutes of quiet beforehand, then listen, then a few minutes of silence afterward. Sing along quietly if you feel like it. Kirtan is meant to be participatory, and the response half of the call-and-response is yours to take.
Once the album is familiar, you can pair it with Queen of Mantra (Instrumentals) to hear the harmonium-led structure on its own, or move on to Prabhuji for a longer devotional set.
