no. 59: not sure zedd looked up what shanti meant

the pop-up of carnatic music and vedic mantras in my spotify recommended last week

I’m going to do something a little different, fun, and creative this week, and do some musical reflection and analysis. This week, I’m writing about Shanti by Zedd, newly off his album Telos which came out a couple of weeks ago. As usual, my interest comes from having spent several years in Carnatic music classes, and a general interest in religious discourse, and also just a love of talking about these cultural frictions to death.

You can listen here on Spotify or YouTube if you haven’t listened to it before. (I refuse to attach an Apple Music link but I’m sure you can listen to it there too). If you have listened to it before, open it again, because I’m going to time-stamp some of these thoughts (I’ll link the Youtube time stamps below too in case you want to go back as you read). 

Here are the South Indian musical (or rather, rhythmic & verbal) elements of the song: 

0:31: slow konnakol with other lyrics

1:17 faster konnakol with drop

2:03 - shanti mantra (repeated twice) 

2:38 - faster konnakol again 

2:55 - shanti mantra again (more faded out) 

It’s konnakol and this shanti mantra that I want to talk about today, add a bit of musical/cultural background to and give a little more context on recent discourse of their use or incorporation in Western music and culture. 

For anyone who has taken Bharatanatyam before (I’m less sure if/which other classical Indian dance forms use the same beat system), this section sounds extremely familiar, maybe brings back a little something in you, or makes you cower as imagine your dance teacher’s reaction to you listening to something like this. 

Konnakol is percussion performed vocally in South Indian Carnatic music, which generally incorporates composition, performance, and communication of rhythms. It is regarded very distinctly as an art form that is employed by several South Indian artists, and frequently used in teaching other percussion forms (as my brother told me earlier today), with a distinct function given how the voice can deliver percussion as distinct from physical percussion instruments. It has a rhythmic solfege that’s often used for different parts of the beat, called solkattu, which if you’re interested in, can read more about here. (I typically would never link something called Ancient Future, but I like the specific overlay to rhythm expressions that people who’ve learned percussion in the west can be comfortable with). If you open this link, you’ll immediately see the overlap between these common expressions of beats and things you’ll hear in Shanti. 

This is generally the part of the track I’m more okay with because I think the adopting of international beats and rhythms is generally okay. Now, if discourse goes in the direction of Zedd having created this rhythm, of it being his original content, without any acknowledgment of its origins, I might change my tune and like it a bit less. And I do worry that general reviews of the track lend in the direction of liking the time stamps of the konnakol a lot, and then crediting Zedd with it, rather than recognizing it as an element he has mixed or incorporated into a track. Either way, Adi tells me that I only like it because I don’t partake in South Indian percussion, which his partaking in makes him like it less. So I guess maybe because it’s something I’ve recently only engaged with lightly, I find it fun to have in a track like this, but my broad takes on appropriation do lend to me being okay with traditional classical Indian techniques being welcome in Western music, with the caveat that if credit isn’t given to that inspiration, and is played off as being original by a western artist, my patience stops there. 

What I will note, though, is surprisingly, this isn’t the first konnakol discourse I’ve engaged with this year. Back in March, following the release of Dune 2, this reel from Vanity Fair went viral in South Asian arts circles. (If you watch it, I can’t guarantee you won’t get upset by it). In it, Loire Cotler, an American musician does konnakol, described by Hans Zimmer as this highly unusual rhythmic practice, with no mention of its origins, nearly entirely attributing it to Cotler’s own creativity. While sources mention Cotler having spent time with gurus like TH Subash Chandran and briefly with Vinod (VR) Venkataram, formally having learned from them is hardly mentioned, and she certainly doesn’t credit them with that element of her education frequently, nor does she attribute the heritage origins of konnakol when she does incorporate it into things like interviews and presentations. Even separate the other Eastern-inspired vocal techniques later on, which Zimmer also calls reckless, musical or rhythmic art forms don’t become unusual (or original to a white woman) just because you’ve never engaged with them before, especially when they’re common in a country in the world with one of the largest populations. 

Nonetheless, this part of the song I’m pretty okay with, and find well done and enjoyable to listen to. It’s neat (to me) to get to hear konnakol and other South Indian rhythms in mainstream music, especially from an artist as good as Zedd, really cohesively integrated into a track like this. 

But all of my approval and enjoyment of that part of the track fade away when it comes to minute two. The middle section, as I like to think about it, actually brings in a Vedic shanti mantra, an explicitly religious (and commonly well-known) Hindu prayer. 

The prayer is as follows: 

ॐ असतो मा सद्गमय ।

तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय ।

मृत्योर्मा अमृतं गमय ।

ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Om Asato Maa Sad-Gamaya |

Tamaso Maa Jyotir-Gamaya |

Mrtyor-Maa Amrtam Gamaya |

Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

1: Om, (O Lord) From (the Phenomenal World of) Unreality, make me go (i.e. Lead me) towards the Reality (of Eternal Self),

2: From the Darkness (of Ignorance), make me go (i.e. Lead me) towards the Light (of Spiritual Knowledge),

3: From (the World of) Mortality (of Material Attachment), make me go (i.e. Lead me) towards the World of Immortality (of Self-Realization),

4: Om, Peace, Peace, Peace.

[Translation from Green Message, Credit to My Mother for Suggesting It]

The one thing I’m particularly surprised by is the lack of discussion or commentary about a Vedic mantra in the middle of this track. This for me is where Shanti might cross the line into becoming not okay, even if I’m okay with inspiration and adaptation of South Indian rhythms and melodies and musical techniques being brought into Western music. I don’t even think appropriation is the right word for this, I just think it’s disrespect. No part of me wants to hear a bunch of white people chanting this mantra at a rave or concert because it was carelessly thrown into a track like this that is, for all intents and purposes, party music, for something a little interesting to give a song some sort of cinematic feel.

On TikTok, the track definitely met some mixed reactions, most of which reflect mine. Most people, brown and not, all think the track is fire, really well made, and extremely hype. Then there’s your typical “this is absolute garbage”, some of which borders on slightly racist. People have said it probably sounds better live and then argued it did after hearing it. But the one thing the very few people who have made TikTok comments seem to agree on (myself included) is that the use of Hindu prayers in the middle of essentially a rave track probably isn’t it – especially the type that people are likely to try and chant when they probably shouldn’t, and don’t have a grasp on the meaning of. There feels like a strong difference between lifting or adapting Indian beats, music, etc (which generally I’m a huge fan of!) and explicitly religious content. I’m not sure what the equivalent for this is in other faiths. Still, I’m pretty sure other prayers or mantra-equivalents from notable texts in other faiths wouldn’t be taken well in the middle of this kind of music (or really, probably any popular music). This is the distinction I want to make – it’s not that I disagree with having Sanskrit in music or having popular Indian phrases or lyrics in it, but these aren’t words or lines devoid of meaning and deep significance, and this I think undercuts and undermines that. Even if I thought Come and Get It by Selena Gomez was a little weird, as one of the first times I heard Indian elements in Western music, I definitely didn’t think it was wrong in the way I hold with Shanti. 

There’s a broader theme here that I find interesting because I had a similar conversation over a year ago when Oppenheimer came out. For any of you who didn’t see it, or for those of you who might have intentionally (or unintentionally) drowned this scene out of your memory, in the earlier half of the movie while the main character is having sex, he is handed a Sanskrit copy of the Bhagavad Gita and told to read it while naked in bed. You see Sanskrit on the page, but he verbally says out the English translation that has become commonly associated with him – I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” To be clear, this isn’t a literal translation of the 32nd verse of the 11th chapter of the Gita, which is where it’s broadly attributed, but the visual imagery of the Gita being brought into bed in the middle of a sex scene certainly sparked outrage. Broadly, the criticism is where we find elements or motifs of Hinduism being brought into pop culture and interacted with, in situations where the most religious of us would consider unholy or sacrilegious places – sex and an affair, or drunk (or otherwise under substances) at a rave or club or other parties. 

Something novel about this past week, though, has been the myriad of different reactions and thoughts when I’ve sent people this song and told them I’m probably going to write about it. Usually, when I send people music, the response is either “I don’t like it” or “I love this, adding to the playlist now”, but this week got a little more interesting. From conversations contemplating whether or not the use of South Indian beats was cringe or too on the nose, or trying to differentiate the approach to Indian elements here from Selena Gomez’s Come and Get It, there was a different type of thought or idea I got to hear from nearly every friend I talked about. 

At the minimum, it’s been a discussion about how often western artistic creators look to India as this source for something “exotic” sounding to add to their music or content, sometimes without quite recognizing that within that “exoticism” is religious meaning that, in the west, would likely never be brought in for appeal like this to these situations and contexts. But it prompts other questions too. Does the quality of the track itself change how we feel about the appropriateness of bringing other elements in? Is there something to be said about how on the nose those elements are? Seeing as the creator of the track certainly makes a difference, as my criticism is largely centered around Zedd as someone who is white and not Hindu (and especially producing music for a lot of people who are white and not Hindu), what else contributes to where those lines of perceived appropriation and disrespect exist? 

Zedd is slated to play at Lollapalooza India next spring, and I’m curious to see what choices around Shanti will be. Is it going to be played? Is the middle section with shanti mantra going to make an appearance? Is he going to get yelled at by the Indian government for “hurting religious sentiment”, or will the Indian youths find it fun and cool? 

At least there will be some discourse, rather than the surprising silence of the past few weeks. After all, that’s what I’m here to enjoy and partake in most.