Kirtan, which means celebration in Sanskrit, is a yoga practice that has roots in ancient India but has been spreading around the world, morphing to adapt to new environments in much the same way that other eastern philosophies permeated the western world.

Benjy Wertheimer, a multi-instrumentalist who, with his wife Heather, performs as the group Shantala, will bring the tradition of kirtan, or sacred chanting, to Calgary for the first time.

The performance of kirtan is based on a call-and-response format, allowing an audience to participate with the musicians through singing, chanting, dance and meditation, and — while they may carry echoes of Hindu traditions — are open to people of all religious backgrounds.

“Usually, in the western world, when people hear of yoga, they think of asana practice — the poses. [Kirtan] is a yoga that aims first and foremost at opening the heart, where will sing ancient mantras as a call-and-response,” explains Benjy.

The Portland, Oregon-based pair first met at a songwriting workshop in 1998 when they were both playing other styles of music. There, a friend asked Benjy to play the esraj, a bowed, 19-stringed instrument from North India. That’s when the pieces started to fall together.

Benjy plays the tabla, congas, percussion, esraj, guitar and keyboards, and is a vocalist specializing in Indian classical music. Heather is a singer-songwriter, guitarist and a yoga teacher. “Through yoga retreats and workshops, people just started asking us to lead kirtan,” says Heather. “We just started doing it. It wasn’t something we sought out… the path adopted us and we’ve just been so in love with it ever since.”

Quieting the mind through meditation is no easy feat, but through music, chanting and rhythmic drumming, kirtan offers a different approach to spiritual experience. It has sometimes been compared to American Gospel for the way it can rouse a community into ecstatic expressions of joy. “It’s this beautiful ocean of sound,” says Benjy. “Kirtan is the yoga of complete devotion.”

Benjy, who has a background in ethnomusicology and Indian classical music, says the practice and performance of kirtan has evolved over thousands of years. “The roots of kirtan are very ancient. One part of it — the mantra [sacred sounds or phrases such as ‘om namah shivaya’] — goes back thousands of years, depending on which scholar you listen to.

“As a very focused devotional practice, there was one known as Chaitanya [a Bengali saint] who, back in the 1500s, developed kirtan in much the same way as we see it today — as a call-and-response as opposed to an individual practice. It went through yet another flowering in recent times, and most people have seen it spreading around the world,” says Benjy. “In the North American melting pot, Indian devotional chanting has taken on flavours of rock, folk, reggae and even contemporary trance.”

Singing in both Sanskrit and English, audiences can expect to hear the names of Hindu gods and goddesses (Krishna, Ram, Hanuman and others) interspersed with English lyrics and the multi-layered sounds and unusual rhythms of Indian music.

“Something that deeply inspires me,” says Benjy, “is seeing people who at one time or another were told that they couldn’t sing or they weren’t musical. And this represents an environment where it’s completely safe and supported to just sing your heart out.”