The subtitle of sound healer, songwriter and vocalist Priya Deepika’s richly soulful and spiritually transcendent debut album Hear in My Heart reveals the deeper, soul transforming intention behind her sultry, inviting and exotic fusion of devotional melodies (that incorporate elements of Indian raga tradition) and EDM. The profound five-piece, 35-minute journey is driven by “Uplifting Mantras and Medicine Melodies in 432hz.” That number is a hugely significant foundational element because it is known as the natural frequency of the universe and known to have cosmic healing powers. The natural pitch of the universe, it works at the heart chakra, taps into how we feel and is said to have a strong influence on the spiritual development of the listener.
Hear in My Heart is unlike any new age album you’ve ever experienced. It’s not designed for passive, disposable listening but a complete shift in mind, body and spirit energy for those open and accepting to her invitation. If you or your loved ones need hope and healing, or you just need a way to shift away from the way you normally deal with tension and stress, you’ll want to take the leap of faith. Priya is a true empath, a former immigration attorney whose passion for human rights led her out of the legal grind and towards a career where she could use sound and music as a way to communicate with and amplify the voices of the disempowered and those in need of purposeful paths of higher vibrations.
As you set your limits loose and free your mind from the personal daily chaos and troubles of the world, Priya’s unique, Eastern tinged instrumentation and therapeutic vocal passions (in English and other native languages) open an inner journey into the heart and soul of the Beloved. Her higher purpose, especially encouraged by a declaratory statement like the dreamy, warmly caressing closing track “I Am Divine,” is to bring the listener closer to full immersion in the soul essence of our divine creation and expression. Her simple yet profound lyrics help shape what she calls the “medicine melodies.” As she wrote on the crowdfunding page she created for Hear in My Heart, the album is “enveloped in traditional drones, seed syllables and melodic landscapes of raaga. . .the offering of ancient roots to cosmic inspirations of mood, color and raasa.”
Priya opens the experience with the mystical and ambient “Invocation,” a piece rooted in the ancient traditions of her Indian culture. Flowing out gently through its expansive nine minutes, it’s a musical/vibrational invitation to not just relax and let go but possibly enter a dream state as her pure voice and ancient language envelops you and eases you inward for healing and restoration to take place. For Priya, the song is an unfiltered organic expression of her culture; for us, it can be a pathway to tune into ancient voices from our own heritage that have previously been hidden from us.
With “Shield of Protection,” she declares to the universe that “There is a place deep inside where I have faith – like the rhythm of my heart,” allowing us to develop or deepen our own as we submerge our conscious minds in her gently swaying rhythmic and melodic flow. Helping connect our day to day reality to the need for such a healing solution, Priya informs us (in a video series explaining the inspiration and intention of each song) that she was inspired to write it while stuck on the freeway in L.A. traffic.
The inner reflections alternately weave and pulsate from there, starting with the beautifully human heartbeat rhythms behind the gently percussive, richly textured and liquefied exotica of the title track “Hear in My Heart” and easing us towards the collection’s one true love song, “Lilac.” “Lilac” rolls like a hypnotic trance inducing slow dance, allowing her impassionate lyrics of longing and finally encountering the deeper love within to shine their heavenly light. Her words can be seen as a message to her beloved, but more accurately find her communing with the divine within.
The final track is a gently atmospheric, meditational nine-minute exploration of one’s own divinity, with the expansive energy of our inner universe providing a landscape on which she can declare to the outward universe, “I am love/I am light/I am all that is divine and in this truth I live.” With Priya’s loving assistance as a musical spirit guide, we can live that truth within ourselves as well.