Deva Premal

Deva Premal (born 2 April 1970 in Nürnberg, Germany) is a musician known for her meditative spiritual new-age music, which puts ancient Buddhist and Sanskrit mantras—as well as chants in other languages—into atmospheric contemporary settings.

Premal met her partner in life and music, Miten, at the Osho International Meditation Resort in Pune, India in 1990, where she was studying reflexology, shiatsu, cranio-sacral therapy, and massage. They have been touring together since 1992, offering concerts and chant workshops worldwide.

Best known for her top-selling chant CDs, Premal is a classically trained musician who grew up singing mantras in a German home permeated with Eastern Spirituality. Her albums have topped the New Age charts throughout the world since her first release, The Essence (1998), which features the "Gayatri Mantra." Premal and Miten's record company, Prabhu Music, reports sales of over 900,000 albums.

Deva Premal began her journey with mantra in her mother's womb, as her father chanted the "Gayatri Mantra"—one of the most sacred mantras of Sanatana Dharma—to her daily. The mantra continued to be her bedtime lullaby after she was born. Many years later, she heard a friend singing the Gayatri and was inspired to put together an album highlighting its sacredness. Premal and Miten recorded The Essence (1998) in her mother's apartment in Germany, where she was born and where she first heard the Gayatri Mantra.

Deva Premal brought this journey with the Gayatri Mantra full circle in July 2005, when she and Miten chanted it for her father as he was dying; "We kept singing for what must have been over half an hour, when suddenly the monitor showed that he was about to leave. I continued to sing, and the last sound he heard as he passed on was his beloved "Gayatri Mantra." Finally we ended with the mantra Om and the circle was complete. He had welcomed me onto this planet with the "Gayatri," and I accompanied him out of this physical existence with it. What a blessing this was for me! It was the first time that I was present at a death, and to be at my father’s is a memory I will cherish all my life."

In an interview with Sam Slovik of LA Yoga Magazine, Deva Premal discussed the potent effect many notice when chanting mantras:

“The meaning is secondary. The word table is not the table...with Sanskrit, the word ananda is the sound vibration of bliss. In sound the energy of bliss. We have to say bliss; we have to make it smaller by putting it into an English word. Just the sound; ananda, If we were sensitive enough, we'd just feel the entire scope of that energy that's contained in this sound... It's working on a cellular level. It's much deeper than the mind. It's not a language that you need to understand the meaning of before you use it. It's a deep Universal sound code that connects us all.”

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