Ajeet Kaur: The Voice of an Angel

Ajeet Kaur: The Voice of an Angel

Ajeet Kaur is a recording artist, yogi, and teacher. Growing up with the practice of Kundalini Yoga and the devotional experience of kirtan awoke Ajeet’s love of music as a form of healing and connection at a young age. Ajeet now tours the world both with her own band and with beloved chant artist Snatam Kaur. Her recordings, concerts, and workshops are an offering of her own devotion and her desire to share healing with everyone. Her first album, Sacred Waters, has reached many hearts. Her second album, At The Temple Door, features Todd Boston, Snatam Kaur, and Sukhmani Kaur Rayat.

OMTimes Magazine had the Pleasure to Interview Ajeet Kaur, one of the brightest emerging stars of Kirtan and Mantra Music.

Liane Buck: Ajeet, you are one of the rising stars of the conscious music here in the United States and also globally. I would like you to tell our audience how did you start your journey?

Ajeet Kaur: Yes. So, it was really, one of those things in life where you can never plan the best parts? It just kind of guides you and I feel like the ideas that I had for my work and what I wanted to share with the world was very different. But, then, music was always just my love, and my own personal practice, and yoga as well.

And it just kind of happened that one day at a yoga conference; somebody asked me, like, five minutes before if I would go up and sing a little chant while people were coming into the hall, you know? And there were, like 2,000 people together getting ready for this meditation course and I really hadn’t sung very much in public. So, I just kind of said, okay, sure, I’d be happy to do it. And I went up, and I just played a really simple chant, but I really loved it. I had so much fun doing it, and it kind of woke up this just desire in me to do it more.

And then, there was a booth with Spirit Voyage, which is now my record label. There’s a booth where they were selling music. And some people who were at this conference ended up going to the booth, and they were saying, oh, could I have the CD of that girl who sang at the beginning? And I guess enough people went, asking for my CD that didn’t exist that the record label said well, let’s make a CD. And so, I started recording music really just because it was by chance, you know? It was just people asking if I had a recording and I didn’t. And so, we decided to make them one. And then, that one made its way to people enough that we just kept making them.

Liane Buck: That’s Fascinating, it is amazing how the Universe conspires.

Ajeet Kaur: Yeah. I feel really grateful that it came about that way because I feel like my work in this way is really about the people who I’m making the music for. I feel like I never really wanted or planned for this to be my work. But, now, that I understand what people experience with the music, once I hear from them what they’re using the music for while they’re giving birth while they’re dying, while their family members are, transitioning in these significant ways. I’m just amazed. Every day I’m amazed by the way that conscious music and mentor music is supporting people through these very, very big life moments. So, really, I’m just honored to be making this style of music that people use in such profound ways.

Liane Buck: Oh, wow. Ajeet, based on that, would you refer yourself as ecstatic chanter?

Ajeet Kaur: Yeah, I would definitely say ecstatic chant is a beautiful way of describing what we do because I feel that while chanting, I receive more bliss and joy on an entirely another level than any other part of my life. I believe it brings that to me. And my experience is that our audience or the community that I’m chanting with, we go together into that place. We all go together into a place of such freedom and bliss when chanting.

So, I definitely feel like ecstatic chant is a great way of describing it.

Liane Buck: I know you are a Kundalini instructor. How did you start your journey; your spiritual journey?

Ajeet Kaur: Yeah. Well, as with everyone, I’m sure it’s a long story because we all have very long winding stories. But, my mother is a student of Yogi Bhajan. So, she met Yogi Bhajan, her spiritual teacher, in her 20s. So, I’ve been doing Kundalini Yoga since I was in her belly.

And as a kid, I watched her practice. And she–both of my parents had a very kind of let me do my own thing spiritually. They both had very strong spiritual paths themselves. But, they really wanted me and my brothers to find our own ways spiritually. So, as a kid, it was mostly just watching my mom in her practice and then doing a little bit with her when I felt like it. But what I feel like my own personal kind of initiation experience was when I was around eight or nine, I started having tough health issues. And all throughout my childhood, I had very fragile health and a lot of difficult, painful health issues.

But, when I was, like, eight and nine, I started being diagnosed with things, making more sense. And my mom got me to lots of doctors and with–not really very much of an impact.

So, I ended up going to this beautiful healer, who’s a Mexican meditation teacher and healer in the Kundalini Yoga tradition. And he healed me using a very simple gentle meditation healing. And I received so much relief from my physical pain. And then after that, he kind of said, okay, now, I’ve healed you, I need to teach you how to heal yourself. And I started learning with his meditations and doing meditation and yoga practice every day to help myself stay in that level of health and being pain-free.

And then, once I had started healing myself more, he really empowered me to heal myself.

And then he said, okay, now, you need to heal other people. That was really the kind of progression for me; first, he healed me and then he taught me to heal myself with yoga. And then he said, okay, now, you’ve been able to…

Liane Buck: Pay it forward.

Ajeet Kaur: Yeah. Pay it forward. Exactly. Yeah; that became the beginning of my daily practice; it really came out of that relationship.

Liane Buck: This is how you explain the healing power of your chants, and this is your paying forward to the world?

Ajeet Kaur: Yeah. I feel in my own life, the music and the yoga, and especially the meditation and deep meditative base have been my own greatest source of healing.

So, I just feel like it’s a very natural unfolding to share that space and with the intention of other people–just from the music being able to drop into that healing space that’s so present in the music.

Liane Buck: What experiences have you witnessed in your journey in Kundalini? Just gives us, some examples.

Ajeet Kaur: I would say the most powerful thing for me is just experiencing when a group of people comes together, like, in the–in my experience of leading Meditation-Yoga to groups, it’s just incredible when these larger groups of people come together and chant together.

Sometimes, I get to a point when I’m chanting; we call them concerts, but I feel like they’re really more like, healing ceremonies. It feels to me like a ceremony.

And there comes a point where often I just have to stop. I can’t even say anymore because the energy and the power of that many voices together just it often brings me to tears, brings many people to tears and or laughter, whatever. There’s incredible power. It’s just very powerful when a big group of people chants together. So, I would say for me; that’s really the most beautiful experience of this chanting work is going through these big groups of people coming together to chant. It always just brings me to such a state of awe in our power when we come together.

Liane Buck: I truly believe that the style of music that you and other artists are performing right now, the Ancient tradition of Kirtan, it is what actually going to change the frequencies, what is going to transform the bulk of the energy that we need to transmit to this planet. I think that mantras and sacred chants are like transmitters that can help us open our hearts to the language of the Universe. This leads into my next question. When you sing, one can feel your perfect connection with the divine. What is it like and how it feels like to share this connection with others?

Ajeet Kaur: In this practice, I feel like I am not the one doing anything. And that’s what I love so much about this practice of chanting is that I am healed, and I am opened in so many ways and on so many levels in a way that’s just great, you know? I can’t think of any better word to describe it. And it’s not me, it’s not my teacher. It’s not any person. It’s just connecting back to who we are in our essence, which is these incredible free spirits and these creative beings.

And when we chant, it releases something. It opens up some doorways where we just experience what we already are. So, I don’t feel that I do anything or anybody does anything. It’s just like we open ourselves and we guide the ceremony, and it’s beautiful to witness. Every time, it’s just really profound to see how the chanting opens me and opens everyone else. But, I really don’t feel like I do anything.

Liane Buck: Okay. You are very modest, and I understand that. (laughter) What is next for you? What are your plans?

Ajeet Kaur: So, we just recorded another album in Bali. So, we’re going to be releasing a new album in the fall. And I definitely feel this album is very much kind of woven in with the most shamanic tradition.

So, I believe a lot of that kind of energy in my own practice and in this time of connecting back to the native people of the land who really knew how to heal the planet and ourselves kind of in a flow with the world and with the earth and in the community.

So, I brought a lot more of that. Again, I felt like the album took me for a ride and showed me what it wanted to be. But, where it led to was very much like a ceremonial earth experience. Lots of native instruments. I feel probably for me this album is the one that’s condensed with the intention of bringing healing on a very ceremonial level. So, that’s my next plan is very excited to share that album with everyone, somewhere between September and October.

Liane Buck: Do you want to send a message to our conscious audience?

Ajeet Kaur: Yes. I would just love to say that we’re all in this together and let’s remember that we’re all in this together. And each of us has important work to do in bringing consciousness and healing to our planet and to our own selves and our communities. So, let’s just support each other and encourage each other and bring as much creativity and healing to the world together in a way that’s celebratory and is fun that we’re each sharing our own gift and our own creativity in our road to healing.

Liane Buck: Awesome. Thank you so much, Ajeet. It’s such a pleasure being able to talk to you.

Ajeet Kaur: And thank you for the work that you’re doing to share all of this music and all of the conscious efforts of creativity with the world. We’re very grateful, I feel all of the chant artists, and all of the other teachers are–we’re so grateful to people like you who are helping us to share this message with the world and get these healing.

To learn more about Ajeet’s music and course schedule visit: http://ajeetmusic.com

Cover and feature photos are courtesy from Arterium,  by Arterium www.arterium.net