In Conversation with Vidura Barrios: The Return Does the Work on Shiva Shambho Kirtan

Vidura Barrios has spent nearly twenty years in New York building music for meditation and contemplative practice. He founded Inner Splendor Media in 2006, and the label has become a home for mantra, kirtan, and sacred sound drawn from the traditions of India. The catalog runs long. It includes the 2013 album The Supreme Heart of Shiva, a steady line of Om and Shiva recordings, and the 2025 album Chant!. Across the work the focus stays practical. Clear voices. Organic instruments. Forms that leave room for attention to settle.

Shiva Shambho Kirtan arrives as a focused single. Barrios wrote the composition. Kento Tachibana handled production and arrangement. The track keeps a continuous drone, soft traditional percussion, and small metallic cymbals that mark time with quiet precision. Everything stays acoustic. The mix places the voices cleanly at the center. Barrios leads with a warm, settled tone. A chorus answers each phrase at unison. The melody moves in simple intervals. The words stay inside the names until the final passages narrow to the repeated Shiva Shambho.

A potter does not invent a new gesture with every turn of the wheel. The hands return to the same pressure, the same height, the same slow opening of the clay. The form appears only because the circle refuses to change. The single works from that logic. It does not chase variation. It trusts the return. Barrios has spoken about the intention to bring the joy of this ancient chanting tradition to a wider audience, noting that you do not need to be a yogi to connect with rhythm and celebration. The sound holds that idea in the pulse itself.

We spoke with Vidura Barrios about the single, the role of repetition, the organic choices, and what the names carry when they keep circling.

In Conversation with Vidura Barrios

Shiva Shambho Kirtan sits inside a long line of your Shiva work. What made this particular name and this particular circle the right one for a single right now?

“Shiva Shambho Kirtan” is the final single from my upcoming album, Shiva! The album will be similar in spirit to CHANT!, with a mix of more meditative tracks and upbeat kirtan with drums.

I love the chants to Shiva. I have been a student of Siddha Yoga meditation for almost 30 years, and that tradition is rooted in Kashmir Shaivism. It is a beautiful tradition steeped deeply in bhakti—devotion to the Divine—as well as the powerful tradition of mantra. So chanting the names of Shiva has been part of my spiritual and musical life for a very long time.

The track keeps a steady, contained pulse from the first moment. How do you decide when a kirtan should stay inside that even temperature instead of opening into larger peaks?

The steadiness is intentional, but at the same time, if you listen carefully, there is a buildup. The harmonies and layers of voices gradually build throughout the track.

But yes, I wanted the overall pulse to remain steady. It is the kind of track you can easily play on repeat, because you are meant to chant along with this kind of music. I didn’t want the arrangement to distract from that experience.

You have described the intention as bringing the joy of the chanting tradition to people who may not come from a yoga practice. Where does that show up in the writing and the arrangement of this track?

Our sound is a little unique in the sense that I make an effort to preserve the authenticity of the Sanskrit mantras and make sure they are repeated and pronounced correctly, while at the same time bringing some modern elements into the music.

One example is the use of vocal harmonies, which aren’t really a feature of traditional Indian classical music. So there is a balance I am always looking for: respecting the tradition and the mantra itself while creating something that can also speak to a contemporary listener who may have no background in yoga or Indian devotional music.

Kento Tachibana produced and arranged the single. What did the collaboration change in the sound, and what stayed fixed from the first idea?

Kento has a rare combination of being wonderfully creative while also having an incredible eye—and ear—for minute details. I am more of a big-picture person, so I love working with him because he understands the sound I am looking for while noticing all the little things that can take something from nice to excellent.

We have collaborated on many projects over the past three years, so there is a wonderful ease in working together now. We understand each other’s strengths.

I also want to acknowledge Lakshmi Marfil Delgado and Anjali Bhargava. I love the texture of their voices, and both women are yoginis who genuinely love chanting. There is an authenticity in what they bring to the project that you can really feel in the recording.

The instrumentation stays fully organic. Drone, soft percussion, small cymbals. What do those choices protect in the voices and in the space around them?

For me, it is about the voices first. I like to build a track that could stand on its own with just the voices. The instrumentation should support the chanting rather than overwhelm it.

There is also something very beautiful about leaving space in this kind of music. The drone and percussion create a foundation, but the mantra and the human voice remain at the center.

The call and response is very clear. You offer the phrase, the chorus returns it at unison. How do you shape that exchange so it feels like shared breath rather than layered decoration?

In the tradition I come from, kirtan has always been call and response, so using that format feels completely natural to me.

I think of kirtan almost like the sound of ocean waves. There is a natural movement back and forth—the call and the response, one phrase flowing into another. In that sense, it really is like breathing. So I appreciate that you used the phrase “shared breath,” because that is very close to how I experience it.

By the close the text narrows to the repeated Shiva Shambho. What happens for you, as a singer and as a listener, when the circle gets that simple?

In the mantra yoga tradition, repetition is at the heart of the practice. Mantra and chanting can make meditation very simple and accessible. In my own experience, repeating a mantra can somehow be both invigorating and calming at the same time. It has a very centering effect.

Even when I am walking around the city, I often find myself naturally repeating a mantra silently in my mind. That very simple action brings me back to myself and keeps me steady. So when the music becomes that simple—just Shiva Shambho repeated again and again—it allows you to stop thinking so much and simply be in the moment.

Looking at the wider catalog, from The Supreme Heart of Shiva through Chant! and into this single, what has stayed consistent in how you approach the name and the pulse?

The sound has certainly evolved over time, and there has been a continual finessing of the quality of the recordings and arrangements, but the heart of what I am doing has remained very consistent.

Most of our catalog consists of meditation music, so it has been a lot of fun venturing into more rhythmic music and kirtan. I love playing the drums. There is something primal and universal about drumming, just as there is something universal about singing. Human beings have been singing, chanting, and making rhythm together for thousands of years. I love tapping into that while keeping the contemplative quality that has always been at the center of my music.

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Shiva Shambho Kirtan is out now.

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