For our final program, best-selling pioneers of Western mantra singing, Deva Premal and Miten join us from their rural recording studio to preview a live album.
Discover hypnotic rhythms, trance dancing, and Sufi ritual with the Fez Hamadacha, one Morocco's important Sufi Brotherhoods.
Almost 12 months after his death, and on the date of his birthday, we reveal David Bowie’s eclectic spiritual life and its role in his music - from a lifelong interest in Buddhism to his fascination with Magick, Christianity and the Kabbalah.
We head into the heartland of Americana music, the Appalachian mountains in Virginia, where old-time religion, flatfoot dancing, and old-timey mountain music come together in a cool young duo called the Whitetop Mountaineers.
The gamelan, an ensemble of tuned percussion and gongs found in Java and Bali, has enchanted listeners and inspired composers from Debussy and Britten to Steve Reich and Philip Glass. For Balinese Hindus, the music of the gamelan is a gift from the gods and performances are an offering of thanks.
From backing singer for 80s pop bands to touring the world with her own gospel ensemble. Meet Carol Pemberton, founder of one of the UK’s leading female vocal groups, Black Voices.
Singer-songwriter Shameem Taheri-Lee joins us for a live session of soulful grooves and jazz with teachings of the Baha’i faith.
Edo Kahn, from conscious music duo Edo & Jo, reveals how his life was turned upside-down by the death of his wife and musical partner Jo Mall Kahn (VAANI) from cancer in 2015.
The death of Leonard Cohen at the age of 82 has shocked and saddened millions around the world. In 2013, celebrated music journalist Sylvie Simmons, author of I’m Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen, shed some light on the Canadian poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, and rock star mystic.
She’s the artist simply known as Nell, but there’s nothing simple about her fusion of religious iconography with a rock ‘n’ roll aesthetic, where Buddhist ritual meets the music and imagery of rock legends AC/DC.
Called ‘the rock stars of Renaissance vocal music’, The Tallis Scholars are recognised as one of the world's great sacred music ensembles. On the eve of an Australian tour, their director Peter Phillips joins us to talk about the father of Anglican church music Thomas Tallis, singing in China, and about meeting the world’s most performed living composer, Arvo Part.
In 1916 Australia lost a musical treasure it hardly knew, the composer Frederick Septimus Kelly who was killed aged 35 leading the last major battle of the Somme offensive.
As the world digests Dylan’s Nobel prize for Literature, we’ll shine a light on Dylan’s three gospel-inspired albums Slow Train Coming, Saved and Shot of Love with self-confessed Dylan tragic and theologian Ben Myers.
Highlights from a concert of traditional, contemporary and devotional music by the SCM Chinese Music Ensemble, featuring soloists on the pipa (lute), erhu (two-stringed fiddle), dizi (flute), and the zhongruan (round-bodied lute).
We meet Divya Bhatia, Director of the Rajasthan International Folk Festival in Jodhpur set in a 600-year old hill-top fort. The festival's aim is to nourish the heritage of the master musicians of Rajasthan in north-west India.
Delhi-based singer and composer Sonam Kalra has overcome tragedy to bring together Western and Indian traditions in her unique Sufi Gospel Project.
One of India’s finest sitar soloists, Shubhendra Rao was for many years a student of one of India’s most famous musicians Ravi Shankar—the man he called guru.
From Baha’i sacred song to electro tribal, from India to Malta, from Haydn and Shape Note hymns to the ceremonial sounds of indigenous Australia, Bali, China and the Pacific - they all come together at the Sydney Sacred Music Festival.
A musical framework to contain and deal with grief, after almost 1000 years the Requiem is still alive and vital today.
We continue exploring ceremonial and sacred drum rhythms of the world with master Japanese taiko drummer Bashow Kanagawa, and Kenyan singer, dancer and musician Sam Okoth, an official Cultural Ambassador for Kenya who reveals his philosophy of rhythm.