About the Album

When the pandemic took over in 2020, with no options for live performance, chant artists Madi Das and Dave Stringer started writing together, zooming weekly, jamming, swapping ideas. The music from these sessions was fresh and electric, eastern chants with a country twang, Sanskrit with soul! Together they dug into their backgrounds to create songs that would progress the genre and make chant music more broadly accessible.
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Over the next two years, they reunited the band from Bhakti Without Borders, often recording remotely, to develop a fresh new sound that would be Mantra Americana. The new album pushes deeper into rhythm and harmony with the addition of a vocal quartet, and a rich blend of banjo and tabla, harmonium and harmonica – a unique subgenre that can only be described as Country & Eastern.

The band

Singer

Madi Das

Born to an American mom and German dad, Madi Das grew up in the Vaishnava tradition of Bhakti Yoga. At age 7 he went to boarding school in India where he studied sacred chants, became fluent in Hindi, and made lifelong friends. Now living in Melbourne, when he's not sharing music with his community, he works in film production. In 2015, his debut album Bhakti Without Borders was nominated for a Grammy. Mantra Americana is his long-awaited follow up album.

Musician/producer

Dave Stringer

Dave Stringer is a Grammy™-nominated record producer and composer who has been widely profiled as one of the most innovative artists of the modern Yoga movement. He’s both an inspiring singer and a captivating public speaker, resolving neuroscience, yoga philosophy, and music into a participatory theatrical experience. Stringer’s sound invokes the transcendent mysticism of traditional Indian instruments with the exuberant, groove-oriented sensibility of American gospel and the ringing harmonies of Appalachia. He is featured in the upcoming documentary films Mantra: Sounds Into Silence and The Power of Mantra and has toured extensively, leading concerts, workshops, and retreats all over the world.