The Spirit Behind the Voice: Deva Premal and Miten
Deva Premal and Miten met in India in 1990 and soon began a journey into love and creativity that has taken their inspiring blend of song, mantra and meditation to a worldwide audience.
They have released a string of acclaimed CDs with sales of well over half a million, and their concerts and ecstatic chant workshops are met with rave reviews throughout Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States.
Their music transcends all the usual musical boundaries, with fans including rock icon Cher, who featured one of Deva’s most popular chants, the Gayatri Mantra on her Farewell Concert Tour; world renowned author and motivational coach Tony Robbins and even His Holiness The Dalai Lama who, after hearing Deva & Miten sing for a private audience, exclaimed, “Beautiful music, beautiful…!”
Best selling author Eckhart Tolle notes: “As you listen to the music of Deva and Miten, the sacred space that lies beyond the mind emerges naturally and effortlessly. Pure magic.”
German-born Deva Premal is a classically trained musician who grew up singing mantras as bedtime songs. Her mother plays viola da gamba and her father was an artist and a devotee of the spiritual path, including Zen and Yoga. He taught himself Sanskrit and Deva notes that “When my mother was pregnant with me, their welcome was to sing the Gayatri Mantra throughout the pregnancy.”
“As I grew up we continued to chant the Gayatri Mantra together regularly before sleep. I didn’t really know what I was singing… and why. I just did it because I was told to. It wasn’t until much later that I came to appreciate these precious times.”
As a teenager, she moved away from the confines of both her classical music training in voice, violin and piano, and the mantra practice, and began to explore on her own. At age 11, her search brought her to become a disciple of the enlightened mystic Osho, and later, she went to the ashram in India to begin studies in body work, including massage, shiatsu and cranio-sacral therapies.
It was in Osho’s ashram that she and Miten met. “Although I was 20 years old and he was 42, our hearts immediately connected,” she says. “I knew he was one of Osho’s musicians, but that was about all I knew–apart from the fact that I felt good whenever we were together. We laughed a lot… and still do. He writes the most beautiful songs, some of which I knew from the ashram celebrations.”
Miten was born in London and grew up in the 60’s. “At that time, England was alive with rock ‘n’ roll music and the sound of The Beatles,” he recalls. “Everywhere you went it was on the street. It was a time of innocence, a time when you could sense the possibility that life has no boundaries.”
