Vineetha Menon grew up between Wales and India, in a home where kirtan wasn’t just music—it was the atmosphere. Her grandfather opened the doors to saints and traveling musicians, and her earliest memories include devotional singing and quiet tears she couldn’t explain. She now lives in Oceanside, California, where she runs a yoga studio and holds sacred music gatherings that feed thousands in India. RASA, her debut album, is a return to the sound of that first home: devotional music passed down through memory, not industry.
The album collects twenty traditional bhajans, most of which haven’t been recorded or widely shared before. Some were given to her by her gurus, others remembered from childhood. The instrumentation is simple: harmonium, tanpura, sparse percussion. It rarely tries to do more than it needs. There’s no production polish, no layered arrangements. But that’s not what the songs are for. They feel more like field recordings of a spiritual life in motion—something closer to an offering than a performance.
Other tracks hover just above silence. The songs don’t rise into big crescendos or chase cinematic catharsis. If they evoke anything visual, it’s not sweeping drama but something quieter—scenes from films where memory and longing are left to speak for themselves: a documentary about grief, a film about spiritual return, or a silent moment by water.
What RASA offers is less a showcase and more a preservation. A personal archive made public—not to impress, but to keep these songs alive.
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