Chanting brings me into the space of love within, which to me is my guru.
-Neem Karoli Baba
Mantra Artists Deva Premal and Miten Gather Community and Share Devotion
“In the space of no-mind, truth descends like light.” – Osho
A flock of seekers gathers in front of the Wilshire Ebell Theatre as the sun sets on Miracle Mile in Los Angeles. It’s a reunion of smiles. Silver-topped yogis arrived early to reconnect to people they hadn’t seen since before Covid. Old friends, teachers, and students, among them community icons including Shiva Rea and Donna De Lory, are here.
Younger devotees rolled in as the lights fell. The members of the ongoing worldwide sangha who had been chanting and connecting digitally came to share voices in real time with other humans.
Deva Premal and Miten (DPM) touched down in L.A. to bring the light and seal the North American leg of their 2025 tour before heading to north to Canada and then on to Europe. The perpetually transcontinental travelers returned in time to establish some peace, where the ashes from recent wildfires have settled into a cloud of fear and anger that has spilled into the streets.
Always welcomed, anticipated, and appreciated, DMP are part of a tribal order, a sort of Western mantra singer dynasty who opened the portal and carried the light to so many over the decades; Jai Uttal, Krishna Das, and Snatam Kaur are their contemporaries.
Deva Premal and Miten are here to transform song into meditation. “When voices are raised in harmony magic happens. The power of mantra is a door that leads us into a space of inner peace and meditation.”
“Any opportunity to be in person with mantra artists is a transformative, spiritual, rejuvenating experience,” LA Yoga Magazine Editorial Director Felicia Tomasko says; the flow of musicians touring and connecting with people in person was interrupted during the pandemic. “It feels like we’re still in the midst of a transition into a new future.” To set things off in a positive direction, they gifted 150 tickets to people who were negatively affected by the LA fires.
Deva Premal and Miten’s stated purpose is, “To create gatherings where fellow travelers can congregate and bathe in the scared and powerful energy contained within a mantra practice. Our vision is firmly based on the foundation and joy of meditation.”
This is the mantra artists’ first return to the US since 2019. They played Canada and Mexico in 2023, but not the U.S. Manager Hannah Green (Prabhu Music) says the audiences have been more welcoming than ever. “It really has been a phenomenal tour – reconnecting with friends. We stopped touring in March, 2020, due to travel restrictions and resumed European touring as soon as we could, which was in September 2022. During that window, (from March 2020 – September 2022), they continued to host in person groups in Costa Rica.”
Chant and Be Happy
-Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
L.A. YUGA
“Los Angeles continues to be a spiritual hub for the modern era and seekers who have been following Deva for decades will always come together in song and mantra vibrations that will reverberate long after the show,” Tomasko imparts.
In L.A., this part of Turtle Island some call Mexico, all devotional paths meet. Yogananda, Vivekananda, Prabhupada, Osho, Yogi Bhajan and Thích Nhat Hanh are all part of the sacred landscape. In this post-Covid, post-George Floyd city, humble by nature, still roiling, the gathering at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre feels like cosmic triage.
Disciplic succession is the path, Mantra is the teacher, DPM are stealthy sanyasis, creatures of the duty-free realms, micro-napping in business-class lounges at international airports, practicing pranayama in recycled air while seemingly effortlessly navigating this Kali Yuga.
Chanting is half the battle
-Paramahansa Yogananda
ABOUT MANTRA
Deva and Miten are also teachers and they have refined their skills over the years. It goes with the territory and is part of a larger energetic exchange.
From their website —
Thousands of years ago the Rishis of ancient India began receiving what can only be described as healings sounds during their meditations. So began a scientific investigation into sound and its effect on the mind and body. Sacred Sanskrit is the sound equivalent of the manifestation itself.
We use language to define our world. In almost every language, words describe our experience. What makes Sanskrit so unique, so universal, and so transformational, is that it is based on the energy of sound rather than its descriptive qualities.
A mantra that is central for Deva Premal and Miten is the Gayatri, a Sanskrit mantra that Deva’s father famously chanted to her in the womb.
GAYATRI MANTRA
Am Om bhur bhuvaha svaha Tat savitur varenyam Bhargo devasya dhimahi Dhiyo yonah prachodayat
Praise to the source of all things. It is due to you that we attain true happiness on the planes of Earth, astral, causal. It is due to your transcendent nature that you are worthy of being worshipped and adored. Ignite us with your all-pervading light.
With intentional catholicity, they offer the Mangala Charan Mantra Aad Guray Nameh calling upon the universal energy to surround us with a field of white protective light and transform the theatre into a church of all religions.
AAD GURAY NAMEH
(Dakshina) Aad guray nameh Jugaad guray nameh Sat guray nameh A Siri guru de——vay nameh.
I bow to the Primal Guru, I bow to the Guru woven through time I bow to the True Guru, the identity of the self. I bow to the Great Guru whose great glory will always be. Guru: that which brings us from darkness (GU) to light (RU). (Snatam Kaur Khalsa)
MANTRA AND SONG AS CEREMONY
The evening at the Wilshire Ebell is a ceremony, the mantras are offerings, the theatre a shrine and the audience a circle where everyone joins in the chants. Each Sanskrit mantra projected on a screen behind them onstage is an invitation to practice. Some new mantras, and many familiar to people here tonight.
The band is a tightly configured set up; Deva and Lady Phyl (Joby’s daughter) on keyboards and vocals, Miten on guitar and vocals and Joby on bass, strings, percussion, and vocals. The sound is a seamless, unbroken. The words are white light passing through a prism, contacting the Divine through mantra, returning us to our true nature; to love, light, and compassion.
Chanting brings me into the space of love within, which to me is my guru. -Neem Karoli Baba
It’s a practical magic that travels well, which is good as the four are currently touring across 11 countries with some 18 concerts. It’s also a big undertaking, but each destination stop along the path has a community to whom they are essential.
THE INEVITABLE BLOSSOMING OF THE HEART
Joby Baker has been collaborating with Deva and Miten for decades. He toured with them in 2019 and produced and plays and sings on Deva’s new release, The Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart. (The album released June 6, 2025)
DPM’s 2019 tour supported Miten’s release, Temple at Midnight. This time it’s Deva’s, The Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart, “a heart-opening journey of mantra, transformation, and divine connection that honors collaborations with soul friends across the globe.”
The second half of the evening brought Deva Premal front and center on stage. “She taught the entire audience a new language, but one we already knew, one of gratitude. ‘Afepakian’ means thank you in Maleku, the language of an indigenous community in Costa Rica, where they have been living and teaching for years,” Felicia Tomasko recounts, “She invited the audience to join in on sharing the vibratory qualities of gratitude. And she shared with exquisite grace, that the spirituality of mantra can be found in so many languages.”
This release, like her others, is part of an existing body of work which is an elemental part of the western mantra soundscape. Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart is a warm embrace. Sparse and spacious, organic and intimate, all parts humbly, sinuously conspiring to open the portal. Strings, percussion, bass, vocals delicately threaded to affect a heart opening.
“The 2025 audience welcomed them with open hearts and open voices in a melodic tribute to the power of the spirit.” Tomasko says. “Deva Premal, Miten, Joby, Lady Phil offered their gift to the world: Song. And their latest launch, The Inevitable Blossoming of the Heart, a welcome and timely addition to our collective playlist.”
“Darkness is not to be fought with – a lamp has to be lighted. In the presence of light, there is no darkness.”
-Osho
THE END
The Dwapara Yuga ended when Krishna returned to his eternal abode in Vaikuntha. Now 5,126 years into the Kali Yuga, with only 428, 287 years to go and Kalki, Vishnu’s final Avatar, is nowhere in sight, but Deva and Miten to bring the light and the essential heart of their guru and that’s more than a lot.
DPM have been holding the light, carrying it from here to there and then back again. Farther along on their path, deeper in the disciplic succession their chanting is more nuanced, more connected, more willing and available… or is it just us here in this American town?
Repeating the Om continually is the only true worship. It is not a word, it is God Himself
-Swami Vivekananda
Deva, Miten. Joby, Lady Phyl and the crew are in Europe by now leaving a trail of light in their wake. And though the city is under siege, Los Angeles knows how to come together, like they came together at the Wilshire Ebel. Deva Premal and Miten will be back.
Award-winning journalist, documentary director and long-term LA Yoga contributor Sam Slovick is the director, writer and producer of the Radicalized documentary, currently working on the Kirtan Road Dogs documentary.