Described by Wall Street Journal as “among modern music’s most compelling vocalists,” New York-born, Tamil Nadu-raised singer and transdisciplinarian ganavya shares an ambitious new album, ‘Daughter of a Temple’, via LEITER. Released on vinyl and via all digital platforms, it follows her appearance at SAULT’s 2023 live debut in London where, The Guardian wrote, her “voice had a delicate emotive heft that could turn stoics into sobbing wrecks”. Her first single for the label, ‘draw something beautiful’, appeared earlier this year in July.

‘Daughter of a Temple’ was recorded over a week in 2022 at the Moore’s Opera House in Houston, Texas, after ganavya had reached out to friends and associates over the preceding months to join her for “a gathering in and for devotion”. This was to draw on studies of what she terms the musico-philosophies of Alice Coltrane Turiyasangitananda, and she’d even promised herself she’d invite anyone who brought up Turiyasangitananda’s name around her. “You really shouldn’t do that,” she chuckles. “It turns out a lot of people talk about her!”

Consequently, the album – which also brings the Hindu tradition of harikatha into the 21st century – draws upon a vast cast of contributors across multiple disciplines, among them esperanza spalding, Vijay Iyer, Shabaka Hutchings, Immanuel Wilkins, Peter Sellars, Rajna Swaminathan, Charlotte Braithwaite, Chris Sholar, Darian Donovan Thomas, and Bindhumalini Narayanswamy. Her mother even helped cook for participants. The results, an innovative and deeply moving blend of spiritual jazz and South Asian devotional music, were initially recorded and edited by Ryan Renteria, then further edited and mixed by Nils Frahm at LEITER’s Funkhaus studio in 2024.

In the spirit of Elder Wayne Shorter, who once said “There is no such thing as a beginning and no such thing as an end,” the album begins in the middle of it all, with ganavya joined by spalding for ‘A Love Chant,’ taken from an improvised concert performed on the last day of the ensemble’s ritual gathering. Iyer’s piano, quickly accompanied by Wilkins’ saxophone, then guides us through ‘Om Supreme’s uplifting ten minutes, while Elders Wayne and Carolina Shorter’s prayer (recorded at their home) lends ‘Elders Wayne and Carolina’ its name while reminding us they are always with us. ‘Journey In Satchitananda / Ghana Nila’ – edited from a 45-minute rendition performed by over thirty musicians, with dancers audible in the background – expands upon the bass line from one of Turiyasangitananda’s most recognisable prayers, and ‘Om Navah Sivaya’, the first song ganavya ever performed publicly, opens with Charles Overton on harp and features her nephew Krsna on guitar, as well as, arguably most importantly, her father and mother, among others, on guest vocals.

Though it was the first thing recorded, the album concludes with ‘A Love Supreme Parts 1-4’, Daughter of a Temple’s beating heart. “The first part is me playing the kalimba as an ode to Wadada Leo Smith’s 1995 ‘Love Supreme’,” ganavya explains. “The second is an ode to Peter Sellars, who’s reading for us from the seventh chapter of the Vimalakirti Sutra, ‘The Goddess’, on the nature of love. Then the third is open – we dedicate that to Alice – and the fourth is IONE, (American composer) Pauline Oliveros’ wife, reading a poem she had written for us.”

Of course, if you ask ganavya – raised in India’s southernmost state and withdrawn from school at a young age to study music with her family – what first inspired her to make this remarkable record, her answer is typically honest. “Loneliness,” she replies, before gently, thoughtfully elaborating. “You were raised in a village, then one day you wake up and you’re a graduate student at Harvard. The life you live doesn’t make sense to people back home anymore, and what you’re seeking is that sense of village, so you invite as many people as possible.”

That said, building a village, even a temporary shelter, requires cash. “I thought I’d call ten people and maybe five would say yes,” ganavya recalls softly, “but all ten said yes, then another forty said yes, and before we knew it, it was ‘Where is someone like me going to get the money to do something like this?’ And it doesn’t really make sense that a graduate student was able to afford this, but every step of the way there was a grace much larger than me.”

Thus, as is often the way with ganavya, things worked out miraculously. She is, after all, a woman whose path has led from a childhood spent dancing and singing on the pilgrimage trail to earning four degrees – including at Berklee College of Music, UCLA and Harvard, to whom she was recommended by Quincy Jones – and on to 2024’s ‘like the sky I’ve been too quiet’, her most recent album. Featuring contributions from Floating Points, Tom Herbert, Carlos Niño and Leafcutter John, it was recorded with Shabaka Hutchings and released on his Native Rebel label.

So, yes… it may have been chance that won the grant which helped establish ‘Daughter of a Temple’, and perhaps it was luck the opera house was available, and maybe a landlord would have offered six beautiful houses in a single street to anyone who asked, and it could even be that a temple sharing the name of an Alice Coltrane track regularly handed out $10,000 to pay for strangers’ flights. And sure, coincidence might have ensured cousins from India she hadn’t seen in years would be performing at New York’s Metropolitan Museum around the time, and that Vijay Iyer, whose father had visited her in dreams, would be in Houston anyway, and that Berklee’s Ryan Renteria was available to record the proceedings. But, then again… Really?

Keen to emphasise the manner in which rituality resides in spirituality, ganavya began the first day by presenting everyone with customized prayer beads, then washed their feet with honey, turmeric and warm water before they improvised around Coltrane’s ‘A Love Supreme’. “After that,” she recalls, “people started realising that they knew each other.” What followed was an extraordinary experience in pursuit of a common goal, a coming together of people, beliefs and musical styles as much as a mysterious, unfathomable coming home. “We were moving with the contour of a village, deciding in real time to make music which sometimes involved forty people singing, then suddenly the entire group was doing a version of The Rite Of Spring and dancing.”

And this magic isn’t restricted to participants. ‘Daughter of a Temple’’s purpose, ganavya will tell you, is that people “know there’s a village for you, always in the ether. The worlds we dream of are possible when we come at it with the right amount of discipline and devotion. I hope that’s what resonates with them, that it tells the story of this random girl who dreamed of this world and then it manifested itself. I hope it makes them feel less alone, because that’s what it did for me. I think of it as proof that prayer works and love exists…”