Grammy-winning album Triveni proves the rising popularity of Indian devotional music

Hindu devotional singing – the repetition of Vedic mantras – is rising in popularity among young people in the Krishna community and beyond

Reading Time:5 minutes

(From left) Eru Matsumoto, Wouter Kellerman, and Chandrika Tandon accept the award for best new age, ambient, or chant album for “Triveni” during the 67th Grammy Awards. The album is an example of Hindu devotional singing. Photo: AP

Published: 11:15am, 26 Feb 2025Updated: 11:24am, 26 Feb 2025

The winner of the 2025 Grammy Award for best new age, ambient or chant album – a category once dominated by Enya – was an album titled Triveni, meaning “the confluence of three rivers” in Sanskrit, an apt description for its weaving of Vedic chants, melodic flute and cello by India’s Chandrika Tandon, South Africa’s Wouter Kellerman and Japan’s Eru Matsumoto.

The name, which is given to the meeting point of the holy Ganges, Yamuna and Saraswati rivers, said singer Tandon, came to her in one of her daily meditations.

“It was a beautiful coincidence that our album called Triveni won the Grammy on Vasant Panchami when the Maha Prayag was going on,” Tandon says, referring to the Maha Kumbh Mela festival held where the three rivers meet in Prayagraj, India, considered one of the holiest pilgrimage sites in the nation.

The world’s largest gathering of humanity, with 400 million people attending this year, the Kumbh Mela happens every 12 years, with this year’s celebration, the Maha Kumbh Mela, happening only every 144 years, when the sun, the moon and Jupiter align.

Hindu holy men participate in a community feast during the festival in Prayagraj, India. Photo: AP

“Think what you like, say what you like, but one has to just smile at this incredible coincidence,” Tandon says.

Tandon was a prominent business mogul for more than half her life, the namesake of New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering and sister to former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi. Twenty-five years ago, however, Tandon faced what she describes as a “crisis of spirit”.