Manish Vyas – Atma Bhakti – Healing Sounds of Prayer (New Earth Records, 2015)
Let me say at the outset you not only want Manish Vyas’s Atma Bhakti Healing Sound of Prayer you need it. Composer, multi-instrumentalist and singer Manish Vyas from Gujarat, India is the artist behind such recordings as Healing Ragas, Shivoham, Sattva, Prasad and Prem Joshua and Manish Vyas: Water Down the Ganges with the German fusion musician Prem Joshua. He has collaborated with Deva Premal, Snatam Kaur, Ramdass and Maneesh de Moor. While that all might seem like a mouthful, it’s very clear from the opening strains of Atma Bhakti, you aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.
The serene, soul soothing song found on Atma Bhakti is elegant, quietly comforting and will surely blunt the edges of a chaotic day and maybe, just maybe, allow you to find your happy space and ignore that jerk in the neighborhood with the leaf blower.
Finding inspiration in the environs of an ancient temple, Mr. Vyas summons up an air of a restful, mindful space by way of vocals, chant, the swar-mandal (a harp from India), tanpura (a plucked, stringed instrument from India), keyboards, bells and gong.
Joined by Milind Date on bamboo flute, Atma Bhakti overflows with serenity, but not a Kenny G type of serenity, but rather revolves around a profound sense of consciousness through the use of chant, enhanced by Mr. Vyas’s vocals and additional vocals by Jay Dave, Krishna Jani and Singdha Pious.
Composing and arranging the music of Atma Bhakti, Mr. Vyas has conjured up that ancient temple through a set of three extended tracks that simply allow the listener to fall into that meditative space.
Mr. Vyas points out succinctly, “There is a very meditative atmosphere in the music.” Adding, “The material I select to sing is always on a higher plane going to a higher dimension. That has always been my preference, to work on music that lifts you from the level of the mind and takes you higher.”
Mr. Vyas indeed succeeds as listeners are transported by way of the quiet, almost spare, opening track “Atma,”riding the lines of his own vocals, keyboards, flute and the occasional use of bells.
The sound of a gong opens the track “Bhakti” or “mantra ‘shivaya namaha om.’” As instrumentation fills out the track, “Bhakti” deepens the lure with vocals, swar-mandal and tanpura.
Closing out the CD with “Vedic Chanting,” with an opening of street sounds, Atma Bhakti entrances the listener with a potent form of Vedic chant long used by priests in India and considered one of the oldest forms of oral tradition, so much so that Vedic chant has been proclaimed a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization).
Atma Bhakti’s beauty and depth is one of those rare musical journeys that gently remind us of the healing power of music and voice, nudging our mind into a mindfulness we often ignore. My advice is to settle in and slip on the headphones and take this journey.
Buy Atma Bhakti – Healing Sounds of Prayer
Author: TJ Nelson
TJ Nelson is a regular CD reviewer and editor at World Music Central. She is also a fiction writer. Check out her latest book, Chasing Athena’s Shadow.
Set in Pineboro, North Carolina, Chasing Athena’s Shadow follows the adventures of Grace, an adult literacy teacher, as she seeks to solve a long forgotten family mystery. Her charmingly dysfunctional family is of little help in her quest. Along with her best friends, an attractive Mexican teacher and an amiable gay chef, Grace must find the one fading memory that holds the key to why Grace’s great-grandmother, Athena, shot her husband on the courthouse steps in 1931.
Traversing the line between the Old South and New South, Grace will have to dig into the past to uncover Athena’s true crime.
