New American Kirtan by Michael Zeligs (Album Review)

Today is the release date of Michael Zeligs’ much anticipated newest album, “New American Kirtan” (download it for free here). It is the culmination of many years of work that Michael has spent mastering his voice, honing his message, and clarifying his intentions as a musician. First, I would like to discuss what those intentions are, and then I would like to open up to a larger meditation on the function of spiritual music in the 21^st century.

            Michael has long spoken of his vision of group-oriented performances in sacred spaces from cathedrals to forests to temples to homes to the open air of the plains and deserts. He imagines great choruses where everyone joins in, everyone’s voice counts, everyone feels a sense of belonging, and everyone experiences the chorus of which they are a part as nothing short of a prayer. It is with that in mind that he has released this album, which he describes as “the roadmap” to “going to work with groups and raise the bar on audience participation.”  

            The album is forty-five minutes long and consists of six songs. Each song is a slow, richly layer meditation that adheres closely to a single message which it conveys gradually, with patience and a building sense of heart-penetration. The instrumentation is carefully sparse, controlled to create the powerful foundation of an atmosphere upon which the lyrics, delivered in Michael’s angelic singing voice can remain the focus. Michael’s voice resonates so strongly, in fact, it almost feels like he’s singing a cappella. Each song is saturated with a deeply-felt message of spiritual hope, faith, and work (which Michael considers inseparable from love).

Each song on the album (but the early ones in particular) follow a specific narrative, which can be summarized in three parts: wandering lost, finding direction and working hard to follow it, arrival at our collective destiny. This is a storyline as old as scripture. In Om Shrim Ganesha, the first song on the album, the first verse relies on imagery of a sailor lost at sea. He or she experiences the turbulence of the waves and the hopelessness of having nothing but sea surrounding him or her in all directions. He or she is searching for a route to follow home to solid ground. The second verse describes a bird taking flight, both by the beat of its wings and with the aid of the wind carrying it along. It ultimately finds true north and follows it unswervingly to its destiny. The third verse describes Michael’s oft-dreamt of chorus singing together “in fierce voices” in praise of the divine: the homecoming. The album’s second song, Oh Divine Gardener, follows the same story. Michael first calls out for help and guidance: “Divine gardener, help me see there’s a place for me in all of this”. He then sings of following the signs of the gardener’s work “hot on your trail in my dance of bliss”, and it leads to the eternal chorus sang this time as “All shall join us in our joyous avenue/ In cadence with the soul melting melody/ The music of the spirit”.

I’m interested in this narrative of wandering lost, finding direction, and homecoming because I think it tells us a lot about the function of spiritual music in the 21^st century, particularly in the United States. Michael himself is a major player in a growing movement of spiritual revivalists not only in the Bay Area, but across the rest of the country. The movement comes out of a sense of aimlessness and materialistic emptiness that seems to permeate much of our culture. Like the sailor lost at sea, looking for a way home to solid ground, we’re lost in a sea of alienating, mechanizing consumerism, and are searching for a spiritual tradition that we can actually believe in and use as a solid foundation on which to build the rest of our lives. As I’ve often heard those of my generation put it: “the life we’re supposed to be living” which always feels like it’s right around the corner, but is never (or rarely) our actual lived experience.

Part of the problem, I think, is that we’re a culture naturally skeptical of old dogmatic traditions, we have a scientific, materialist outlook toward metaphysics, and the more we are exposed to the various ways of being, the less any one of them seems to be able to support their claims to Objective Truth. And so we drift, trying to do some work here, trying to do some there. So many of us complain that we don’t know what to do with our lives, don’t have a solid foundation. So many complain of the loneliness that has come with the breakdown of strong community and so many activists burn out quickly as their efforts seem futile in the face of a massive machine, unfazed by all the hard work they have done.

The message for the 21^st century spiritual practitioner seems to be twofold: do the work you love and it will carry you like a bird flapping its wings; have faith in the flow of life (the divine) and it will carry you like a gust of strong wind. The goal is always the same: it’s about returning home (which Michael calls True North). What is home? Home is community. Home is a sense of purpose and participation. Home is a meaningful existence.

Michael is careful not to preach any specific dogma in his music, only to describe the process of connecting with the sacred, which seems to me (and I’m quick to disclaim that this is definitely just my own interpretation) to really just be the process of feeling at home in one’s own life: to love life and the world around us, to enjoy the unfolding process, and to have faith that the world knows better than we do what it’s all about.

One final topic I want to discuss before I wrap up is the role of Sanskrit on “New American Kirtan”. Kirtan obviously conjures up Sanskrit and Hinduism from the start, and there are a couple songs that include Sanskrit phrases. To me, this is all intended to posit the album where Michael wants it to be: It’s not a Hindu album, it’s an American one. The songs are in English and they involve synthesized beats, beat box, and other instruments one would have a hard time finding in Mother India. But the tradition is still there. Kirtan is participatory. Songs in kirtan can last ages and are endlessly repetitive, often with the same mantra over and over for the better part of an hour. Kirtan is devotional, but it’s also meditative for the practitioner. It’s a vehicle by which to communicate with the Divine and return to a sense of embodied hope that can inspire an individual to shake off some of the dust from his or her life and live the way they always subconsciously knew they wanted to. Michael is attempting to replicate that feeling but in a reinvented way that speaks to the American audience he intends to be working with. Sanskrit references enable him to pay homage to the genre, but his usage of English enables him to make it fully his own. And for that, Michael deserves a lot of respect.

          Ultimately, this kind of spiritual music is not about religion or dogma, but instead the feeling of community, uplifting sounds that fill a listener with optimism and courage to step forward from out of the rut of confusion in order to live the life he or she really wants. The music inspires one to look inward and participate in the beauty of the world. Michael’s new album is beautiful, just as his voice is beautiful, and today, the release date, is an important and exciting day.