A Thousand Suns

A Thousand Suns by the GuruGanesha Band with newcomer Paloma Devi is just such an album. Blessed with a profound sense of spiritual devotion and a high level of artistry, it is the very oceanlike nectar of infinite bliss rendered audible—an immensely satisfying and inspiring musical experience.

Helmed by mantra music patriarch, guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter GuruGanesha, A Thousand Suns features the debut of the supremely gifted vocalist Paloma Devi, along with a dazzlingly accomplished ensemble of musicians including bowed-string wizard Hans Christian and keyboard/production polymath Thomas Barquee. What they’ve forged together is nothing short of breathtaking.

Coming from a long and successful run with singer Snatam Kaur and a much-beloved string of solo albums, GuruGanesha is no stranger to the mantra idiom. But A Thousand Suns may well be his finest hour, a crowning achievement. In recent years, he has expanded his instrumental palette to include electric as well as acoustic guitars, an artistic growth spurt that has placed a rich, sun-dappled array of evocative tones at his command. His touch on his chosen instruments is steeped in understated assurance and gentle expansiveness.

But for all its moments of solo guitar grandeur, A Thousand Suns is, above all, an ensemble effort. Instrumentally, GuruGanesha is well matched by the polychrome genius of Hans Christian, whose masterfully-handled cello, saranghi, nyckelharpa, sitara, and other stringed instruments alternate and intertwine with GuruGanesha’s guitar leads in gloriously-crafted antiphony and harmony. Vocally as well, the album is solidly grounded in the give-and-take heartplay of call-and-response kirtan chanting, setting GuruGanesha’s baritone in yin yang contrapoise to the beguiling voice of Paloma Devi.

This young woman is clearly poised to become the next superstar of mantra music, ready to take her place alongside the genre’s other great divas. She is possessed of a voice that drips with the sweet perfume of devotion—a voice that speaks directly to the heart in a language so intimate and tender it’s as if your own soul singing to you. Her crystalline purity of tone is embossed with glints of contemporary r&b, salsa and pop. This is a voice for the ages, but also a voice for right now—multicultural, compassionately engaged, a balm for our troubled times. It quivers like the softly beating breast of a heavenward ascendant dove. It shimmers like the finest, gossamer cloth-of-gold. It leaves the listener defenseless and enraptured.