Upon his very first visit to India in 1977, the young Prem Joshua felt an immediate and profound connection. Deeply inspired by the venerable culture, the young German musician began infusing familiar forms of western music with the exotic flavors of India. Already an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, he mastered the sitar, and the rest is musical history. With KASHI, Prem Joshua and collaborator Chintan Relenberg have crafted a sparkling suite of new songs around beloved, traditional Indian mantras and shlokas (a type of couplet verse, and the basis of such ancient Indian poetry as the Mahabharata and Ramayana epics). Each original song offers a fresh take on devotional music that manages to be transcendent yet utterly, accessibly contemporary and enjoyable as well as enlightening.