Grammy-nominated Sounds of Kumbha: Siddhant Bhatia and Raja Kumari decoding spiritual landscape

Sounds of Kumbha, an ambitious spiritual music album, secures a nomination at the 68th Grammy Awards in the Best Global Music Album category. This recognition marks a significant achievement for the Indian music community and shines a spotlight on a project that fuses heritage, spirituality, and cutting-edge sound design in a way rarely attempted before. In an exclusive conversation with Siddhant Bhatia and Raja Kumari, the duo spoke about the experience of working on the album.

Exclusive conversation with Siddhanth Bhatia and Raja Kumari

Q: What exactly is Sounds of Kumbha, and what inspired the project?

Siddhant: Sounds of Kumbha began with a simple but powerful idea. The Kumbh Mela is one of the largest spiritual congregations in the world, where people from across the globe come together during a rare celestial and planetary alignment. We felt that such a monumental moment deserved to be preserved—not visually, but sonically.

So we went to the Kumbh and recorded the sounds that already existed there: temple bells, chants, river and boat sounds, birds, the ambience — everything. The philosophy behind the album is very simple. Today, we are constantly capturing photos and videos, but we rarely capture sound in high definition. We don’t archive ambience, music, or vibration the way we should. Sounds of Kumbh was an attempt to preserve these sounds eternally.

Q: Raja, what was your personal take on the project and the experience of Kumbh?

Raja Kumari: Music has an innate ability to act like a time machine. You hear a sound or a song, and it takes you back to a specific moment, emotion, or memory. Kumbh Mela is an astrological alignment that happens once every 12 years — and the full cycle every 144 years. Every time it returns, life is completely different.

I remember hearing about Kumbh when I was a teenager. My uncle went and told me there were millions of people there. I never imagined that one day I’d go, let alone contribute creatively to it. Being at Kumbh was incredibly high-energy and transformative.

Q: You’ve both spoken about energy, vibration, and devotion. How did that translate into the album creatively?

Raja Kumari: If you think about it, thousands of people gathering in one place with a single intention creates an enormous vibration. People often talk about the logistics or the surface-level aspects of Kumbh, but what struck me was the frequency of that space. The album captures those frequencies. It’s not just music—it’s an experience. We wanted to make something that couldn’t be ignored. That’s why there are so many accomplished musicians involved. This wasn’t about making something “niche” or decorative. It was about legitimacy, excellence, and service.

Q: How do you see Sounds of Kumbh influencing the future of culturally inspired contemporary music in India?

Siddhant: Kumbh itself is deeply inclusive and diverse, and that is reflected in the album. People from all over the world come together — from sadhus and folk musicians to IT professionals and international artists. That diversity shaped the sound.

Through this album, we showcased multiple genres—contemporary jazz, trance, percussion-based tracks like “Shiva Shiva”, bhajans like “Ram Ram”, folk elements, and experimental compositions like “Durga Trance”. We can never capture the full diversity of India, but we’ve tried to represent a wide spectrum of it. The most important thing is that we maintained a global standard of quality. This shows that culturally rooted Indian music can exist confidently on a global stage without dilution.