The First Church in Cambridge, MA was filled with special spiritual energies with devotion or Bhakti taking center stage on Saturday June 27, 2015 as Deepti Navaratna  presented the second concert in her “Dialogues with the Divine” series. 

“The Carnatic Alchemy project is a cultural entrepreneurship effort that works towards disseminating South Indian classical Carnatic music to modern day and mainstream audiences. As a part of that project, The Dialogues with the Divine series was created to find connections between the soulful quality of Carnatic music and the rich and varied musical styles of all the major world religions. 

"Today's concert - The Alchemy of Bhakti - is a wonderful opportunity for all us to share, to connect and open our hearts and minds to the all-encompassing fact that our similarities far outweigh our differences," said Anandini Sekar, who served as the master of ceremonies for the event. 

Deepti joined  with artist and musician Ms. Nedelka Prescod and her Boston-based acapella quartet, “Earth Tones”, to present South Indian classical and Christian songs and Negro spirituals which were thematically linked. 

In the spirit of bringing the community together across cultures and generations through music and devotion, the concert opened with young Ritwik, Pranav and Kavya performing Sri Ganananatha. 

Deepti then took the stage and opened with a verse from the Isavasa-upanishad referring to the omnipresence of the Divine. She presented a number of  Bhakti laden compositions including Narayananu Nama by Narsi Mehta, Udipi Kandeera, Main Hari Charanana Ki Dasi and Bramham Okate in the Carnatic style.  She was accompanied on the Tabla by Amit Kavthekar and Mohankrishnan Poornachandran on the Guitar. This was interspersed with several powerful spiritual presentations by the Earth Tones in the Gospel traditions. 

While the Carnatic tradition is a solo tradition with a focus on improvisation, the Gospel tradition places a lot of emphasis on harmonization. In an interesting experiment, Deepti along with Anika Sekar presented a harmonized version of the famous Mangalam - Ramachandraya Janaka. The grand finale was a surprise where Nadelka along with many members of the Indian community presented a Gospel number. 

There was also an interfaith discussion led by Venkat Pula of Chinmaya Mission of Boston, Dr. George Abraham of Indian Gospel Melodies, Ruth Bersin of the Refugee Immigration Ministry and Ranjani Saigal of Ekal Vidyalaya.

The event was mystical and magical . Kudos to Deepti for conceiving  such a brilliant concept. The expertise of the each professional musician shone through brilliantly. Deepti’s own presentations displayed fine musicality and were filled with emotion and great sweetness. Nadelka and the earth tones powerful voices filled the church with its spiritual appeal. 

The concert clearly established the fact that good music is surely a path to spiritual enlightenment - be it in the east or the west. We look forward to more such beautiful music in the future. 

The concert helped raise funds for Ekal Vidyalaya, an organization that brings education to over 53000 remote villages in India.