Miten

Miten spent the 1980s as a professional rock musician before a health scare prompted him to leave that world behind and move to the Osho ashram in Pune, India. It was there, in 1990, that he met German singer Deva Premal, and the two have worked as a musical duo ever since — building one of the more unlikely success stories in contemporary devotional music.

Together, Deva Premal and Miten have released music that has logged over a million monthly listeners on Spotify and sold two million albums worldwide. The Dalai Lama and Cher have both endorsed their work, which is either a testament to their unusual reach or simply proof that Sanskrit mantra chanting now travels in circles its practitioners could not have imagined a generation ago. Their recordings sit at the intersection of ambient music and kirtan, built around Deva Premal's voice carrying mantra melodies while Miten writes lyrics, sings, and shapes the overall sound.

What distinguishes Miten from most kirtan artists is that background in Western rock — his arrangements carry a polish and accessibility that draws in listeners who would never walk into a traditional kirtan setting. The trade-off, for purists, is that the music reads as devotional pop more than lineage practice. That tension is probably what makes it work commercially. The pair have spent three decades touring globally, and kirtan as a concert format — seated audience, world-class sound production, Grammy-nominated recordings — owes something real to what they built.