World Kirtan
Chants to Live By
Explore the ancient spiritual technology of chant — infused with iAwake’s resonant entrainment technology. Join our local Torrey World Kirtan group, as we explore chants from around the world (old and new). Combining the power of chant with the power of entrainment is well, a NEW experiment. We think it’s brilliant! Check it out.
These are beautiful contemplative tracks. ~ Heather Thomas
Listen to the Samples Now
Use of headphones will provide the most optimal experience, but are not required.
The clips are short so you may not feel the full power of the entrainment embedded in the tracks but you’ll get a taste!
Don’t be fooled – this is not just beautiful music – it is the design and technology infused in the soundtracks AND the music that evokes the powerful response.
Why chant?
- Evokes ecstasy and bliss (drug-free)
- Opens the heart
- Focuses the mind
- Awakens … quickens, yet deepens the silence
- Releases stress & stuckness
- Heals
- Connects you to the Great Mystery, God, Allah, Great Spirit
Additional Info
About
Track Details
01 Bowl Invocation
02 Sri Ram Jai Ram (Hindu)
03 Heart Sutra Chant (Buddhist)
04 Shema Yisrael (Jewish)
05 Neesa Neesa (Native American)
06 Zikr of the Tender Heart (Sufi)
07 Thank You For Hearing Me (Contemporary)
08 Om Doong Durga (Hindu)
09 E La Hu Ea (Hawaiian)
10 Zikr of Hazrat Inayat Khan (Sufi)
11 Om Mani Padme Hum (Buddhist)
12 He Kehau (Hawaiian)
13 May All Beings Be Well (Buddhist)
Full package includes:
- 13 tracks (total of 63:25 minutes)
- Tracks accessible on the free iAwake Technologies app for iOS and Android
- Downloadable audio files available in MP3 and WAV formats
- User Guide (downloadable PDF)
- Ongoing support (responsive email, active Facebook forum, FAQs, videos, audios)
About World Kirtan
Sound or vibration is the most powerful force in the universe. Music is a divine art, to be used not only for pleasure but as a path to God-realization. Vibrations resulting from devotional singing lead to attunement with the Cosmic Vibration or the Word. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).
~ Yogananda Paramahansa
Chant as a spiritual technology and practice.
Chanting is at the heart of all sacred traditions worldwide, and for very good reasons. What meditation accomplishes in silence, chanting accomplishes in sound: it wakes up the emotional center and sets it vibrating to the frequency of love and adoration while feeding the body with that mysterious higher “being food” of divine life. Sacred chanting is an extremely powerful way of awakening and purifying the heart because it allows us to experience, beyond the distortions of our own personal passions, the power and profundity of the divine passion itself.
— Cynthia Bourgeault, author of Chanting the Psalms, is an Episcopal priest, author, hermit, teacher and wisdom school founder.
Why tech the chant?
Why not?! Chanting is best done live, in community, as the field it generates is powerful — and being buoyed by the voices around you is, well, incredibly beautiful and moving. Adding our resonant entrainment technology to the chants provides some of that deeper, more compelling quality in a different, yet sometimes startlingly powerful way. Try it out and see what you experience.
The Story of the Development of World Kirtan from the producer, Pamela Parsons Dupuy
Welcome to a new experiment at iAwake: world kirtan (chant) meets sound tech.
This has been a project close to my heart and soul for more than a year. My goal was to share a core spiritual practice of mine, devotional singing of chants from around the world and combine it with the startling sound technology iAwake produces.
Kirtan is a sanskrit term that comes from the Indian Hindu tradition, referring to devotional chanting, generally of a call and response structure. Our group borrows from this term but adds “world” to connote that we draw on chants from many sources, both traditional and new, from around the world. We also don’t typically do call and response, but sing together, in a circle, like a choir.
Kirtan groups have taken off in the US and around the world – the bass player for a kirtan I attended in Boulder, CO in August 2016 commented that there were 4 kirtan groups in Boulder, CO alone. Krishna Das, Deva Premal, Snatam Kaur Khalsa, Kirtan Rabbi and many more kirtan artists are coming online in this neo-spiritual music expression. Ours is unusual in that it is not primarily Hindu but World, with a strong Sufi influence because the world kirtan leaders come from Dances of Universal Peace (DUP), one of the streams from the Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan’s lineage. Many of the chants we sing come from members of DUP. I am/we are forever grateful to Bernie Skydrummer and Joy Morris for developing, facilitating and helping to birth this new form of kirtan.
We began recording last August of 2015 and Javi Otero, our former CTO and one of our sound wizards, just completed adding the sound tech to the tracks this August 2016.
Soundtracks
The soundtracks were developed by our local world kirtan group, Torrey World Kirtan, led by Bernie and Joy, with contributions from singer/songwriter, Will Barclay. We have been singing many of these chants for years, but we are not professional singers (except for Will Barclay). The instrumentals are sparse and simple – the focus for our group is joining in voice and feeling and surrender to the sacred divine through sound. This is a central spiritual practice for many of us, and we’ve come to love World Kirtan as a way to honor that there are many rivers but one ocean, to help promote respect for traditions different than the one we grew up with, and as a way to express and experience devotion, surrender and ecstasy, personally and communally.
This project was recorded at 96 kHz, 24 bits, using 2 Neumann U89 microphones in a Mid/Side (M/S) configuration, recording in our meditation room in Teasdale, UT.
For tracks infused with iAwake’s Resonant Entrainment Technology (both tech and non-tech versions are available):
All tracks employ monaural and (musical) binaural entrainment to target alpha brainwaves, so these tracks will work with speakers only (ideal for group use) but the tech effects will be enhanced with headphones because of the binaural entrainment.
Our hope is that listeners to these soundtracks will be inspired to chant along with us, and perhaps start their own local world kirtan groups.
How to Use
Download the iAwake App
First, download the FREE iAwake App, login with your email and all your tracks will be right there. You can stream them, but we’d advise downloading them (from within the app) to ensure an interruption-free experience, and to be able to listen offline.
How to Use These Tracks
- Listen with headphones for optimal entrainment experience.
- Sing along with the chant. Notice its effects. Allow yourself to become immersed in the sounds.
- Chanting is a powerful way to prepare yourself for meditation – so listen to/chant with 1 or several chants before your sitting practice
- Try harmonizing along with the chanting – can be a powerful ecstasy-driving effect
- Try closing your eyes while listening and/or chanting along – this can deepen your experience
- Play the tracks on speakers to experience a more ambient effect.
- Play them with a group through speakers and join us in the chant!
Technology
Ancient Technology of Chant
Chanting is a spiritual form of practice in many religious traditions, from Vedic Hindusim, called kirtan (call and response singing), African spirituals, Gregorian chants of Western Christian monks, zikrs of Islam/Sufism, Jewish chants – ancient and modern, Buddhist chants from Tibet, Japan, China, etc., and now, in the last 50 years, a neo-spiritual tradition has emerged, that has come through the cross fertilization of East and West, the 60’s cultural revolution, civil rights movements, modern or re-envisioned spiritual movements, etc.
Modern Psychoacoustic Technology
Target Brainwave Frequencies
Alpha Waves
Deep relaxation, grounding in the here and now, releasing stress.
Psychoacoustic Technology
- Resonant Beats – World Kirtan contains a wide range of naturally occurring harmonics and beating frequencies that have been binaurally recorded* by playing sustained notes on a shruti box whose difference in frequency match the alpha brainwave range (headphones required for optimal effect).
- Monaural Entrainment – the recording contains various layers of monaural sound pulses targeting the alpha range that have been arranged to intensify the effect of the naturally occurring beats and harmonics explained above (suitable for both headphones and speakers).
- 3D Entrainment – this album has a variety of experimental 3D protocols aimed at engaging more parts of the auditory system by using special 3D programming techniques that render virtual sound fields audible, and whose dimensions, proportions and qualities have been carefully modeled to create a nearly subliminal and ever-evolving entrainment texture that harmonizes with the fundamental frequencies of the Resonant beats (headphones required).
* Binaural recordings (not to confuse with binaural beats, of which Resonant beats are a special category) use a matched and specially placed pair of microphones in order to mimic the way sound arrives at our ears. Playback of such special recordings on headphones can enhance realism and depth as well as naturally expand the stereo image of the material.
Creator
Javi Otero is the creator of The Spark and the technology for World Kirtan, iAwake’s previous Chief Technology Officer, experiential practitioner supporter, and good friend. His products represent a new experiment in brainwave entrainment called fractal entrainment – complex, innovative, and ever-changing sonic scenes to infuse states of natural resonance.
He is an artist (poet, photographer, musician, composer, recording artist), acoustic stimulation researcher, sound engineer and inventor currently exploring and developing new fractal stimulation protocols. His main research focus is on how to further harvest the transformative power of sound energy and resonance. His regular practice involves cold water, breathing and stretching (Yin•Yang Yoga), subtle energy entrainment, meditation, gratitude, improvisation, photography, video, poetry, sound, and music. His work outside iAwake blends art and research, and he belongs to various projects and groups including an international research team dedicated to health and well-being applications of whole-systems modeling in which he is making geometric processes audible, using sound purely as mathematics in motion.
Beautiful singing, easy to join and become one with the tracks, I like that they are all different/different traditions. ~ Scott Marshall
I was immediately moved to a place of profound peace, love and devotion! ~ Barbara Marcel