below you'll find info on our wonderful tribe of kirtan wallas, as well as links to keep in touch with us over the year...

Scott Medina - Summit founder, kirtan leader...

Scott started leading evenings of devotional chanting twelve years ago out of necessity ~ he wanted to chant and yet, at the time, there were few public opportunities to come together in this way. A leader of the Dances of Universal Peace, Scott shared some chants with fellow peace dancers and before long there was enough enthusiasm to begin holding larger gatherings. Since then the kirtan movement has grown exponentially! Scott has since recorded three CDs of original chants, "Bolo" and "Enchanted" and the lastest "StarHouse Kirtan Live!". He leads large kirtans at the StarHouse on a quarterly basis, and smaller kirtans at Nanak's Nook in Boulder; please e-mail Scott for upcoming dates & directions. His kirtans are known for their upbeat energy and ecstatic enthusiasm. Sign up on the e-mail list at ColoradoKirtan@aol.com. Scott dreamed up the Kirtan Summit in 2005 as an offering to the community, and an opportunity to bring all of the wonderful local leaders together. He co-leads Yoga/Kirtan events with his partner Shanti, www.EnergizeShanti.com. He also founded www.SpiritualEventsCalendar.com which is a free listing of local spiritual happenings.

Shanti Medina - Summit co-founder, volunteer coordinator

Shanti's passion lies in building and sharing in community whether she is sharing in music, movement, or mantra! She supports her clients and students to harness their innate intuitive wisdom to live life to their fullest potential. As an inspiring fitness and life coach and intuitive healer, Shanti guides her clients and students to playfully explore and expand their mind/body awareness while learning to live and move from their core in all aspects of their lives. Using her Certifications in Personal Training, Reiki, Yoga, Pilates and Coaching, Shanti combines an eclectic blend of core integration and stabilization along with inner body wisdom and awareness to inspire holistic health, healing and a sustainable increase in fitness for each of her clients. Her unique style attracts a broad spectrum of students ranging from professional athletes to new moms. Shanti has the ability to inspire transformation, union and balance. She playfully guides classes, retreats and workshops in Boulder, CO and across the globe for all levels of practice and experience. To take a peek at what Shanti is up to, check out EnergizeShanti.com.

Steve Bross - tabla maestro, chantleader, funniest man in Boulder ;-)

After riding a unicycle off a diving board in High School at Kinhaven Music School in Vermont, Steve Bross wondered where one could possibly go from there. He decided India was a good choice, where he spent a year in Pune on an exchange program, and discovered the irresistable phatness of the tabla, which he studied for the better part of a year. After returning, and playing rock and reggae through his college education, studying art and architecture at Oberlin College and Columbia University, he took off a year and toured the East Coast with a Reggae band. After earning a Masters Degree in Architecture from Yale, and subsequently designing fire stairs for a couple years, he co-founded a dot-com company in Seattle, Global Sight (which even has a regional office in Gunbarrel!). Then he got deeply into the Bhakti tradition, resurrecting the tabla, and now spends his time split between developing websites, facilitating Nonviolent Communication, and playing tabla with a wide variety of wonderful musicians and fellow Spirit nuts.

Vamadeva

Vamadeva, a well known Kirtan Walla (chant leader), has been chanting and leading Kirtan for 40 years since the age of 16 when he met his Guru Deva Anandamurtiji and travelled to India to sit in his presence at his ashram in Benares, India. On his return he travelled throughout the US during the 70ís leading and teaching meditation, hatha yoga and the Bhakti (devotional) practice of Kirtan Chant.

Vamadeva is an established musician as well, and has led kirtan and recorded with Krishna Das, Bhagavan Das, Dave Stringer, Sat Kartar, Wynne Paris and David Newman. He was the co-founder and chant leader of the weekly Boulder Kirtan for over 8 years, leading every Sunday night and building a Kirtan community of over 200 chanters.

He leads Kirtan with a deep devotional heart in a western ecstatic-sweet and meditative style similar in the veins of Jai Uttal and Dave Stringer. He teaches Kirtan workshops for Yoga Teachers and anyone wanting to develop their own practice of Kirtan Chant and lead chanting in their classes. He has a poetic gift of sharing the deeper meanings behind the sankrit chants, and has been praised for his ability to welcome and convey to new inexperienced chanters the devotional essence behind the chants and Hindu Deities that the chants revolve around. Vamadeva is currently a devotee of the Divine Mother Kali-Durga in the lineage of Babaji Neem Karoli and Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati.

He offers free MP3 downloads of his 4 chanting CDs at www.vamadevakirtan.com

Dakini

Dakini comes from a family in which singing and performing were a part of her daily life. She began dancing and singing when she was six which lead her to a professional career in the arts in NYC, LA, and Las Vegas. In 2009 she began her studies with Jai Uttal. The beauty of Bhakti led her to begin her classical training on the Sitar at Ali Akbar College of music. Dakiniís vocals along with her Harmonium playing brings a fusion of sound to the ancient practice of Kirtan. She is honored to play with Kate Drazner and Kendall Perry, both extremely talented musicians. They have been doing Kirtan performances and offerings in the Denver area for a multitude of years now and hope to continue to share the love of music and devotion with all that they meet.

Susan St Clair & the Heart Connection Community Kirtan Band

Susan has been in love with chanting and kirtan since 1980 after being introduced to daily chanting while living in the Ananda Community in Northern California. Yogananda was her first inspiration to learn chanting and harmonium. She owns a metaphysical bookstore in Ft Collins, Northern Lights Wholistic Books & Gifts and leads kirtan in several cities in Northern Colorado Front Range area with several other local musicians as the Heart Connection Community Kirtan Band.

For info and Kirtan Schedule visit www.KirtanCommunity.com for info...

Kali Martin

Kali began playing Kirtan in 2004, when Jai Uttal told her to go and get a harmonium. She was part of Bhakti Shakti for 3 years, singing and playing every Sunday night at Studio Be in Boulder

Kali's journey to Bhakti yoga began with Hatha yoga, which she studied and taught for 10 years, running her own yoga studio in London, England and going twice to India to study with Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, the Astanga Vinyasa Yoga guru. Astanga yoga brought Kali into contact with the spiritual aspects of yoga and her desire to explore this more led her to Kirtan and Bhakti Yoga. Kirtan allows her to go deep into her own heart and to connect with the hearts of others. For her this connection is he essence of spirituality, the knowledge that we are all one, all the same and all filled with divine energy.

Kali leads the Kirtan group Offering, which includes Prem Rani Monica and Gini Fortier. Offering holds monthly Kirtan in Boulder at The Solstice Center.

www.facebook.com/offeringkirtan for info...

Tom Fuhrmann - Host and Facilitator, Littleton Kirtan Gang

Tom has been leading weekly kirtans at his home in Littleton and at other locations around the Denver area since 2005. He also plays and sings with Bhakti Shakti in Boulder on Sunday nights at Studio Be. A relative newcomer to the world of devotional chanting, Tom says he plans to keep his day job as a civil engineer, businessman, and entrepreneur. "Kirtan is for everyone and anyone, even people like me. It requires no particular training or spiritual heritage, because its source is beyond systems, cultures, and religious boundaries. It originates from the source of all that we long for. My heart finally recognized itself and danced with delight. Now I cannot not do it."

tdfuhrmann@hotmail.com for info...

Tom Duffy - AKA Tommy-Ji

Art of Living Teacher Co founder of the Prison SMART Foundation, Tom has sung all around the world at Art of Living Satsangs. A proud student of Gandharva Master Diviya Pabha and a 17 year Devotee of His holiness Shri Shri Ravi Shankar (he even sang back up vocals at the ALF silver Jubilee with 2.5 million attending!)

Tommy-ji merges his own heart with the Melodies of nature and sings the rhythms that have been sung buy sages and Rishi's for thousands of years. Tommy-Ji is nothing extraordinary just extra ordinary. "There are no individual Kirtan singers we all sing one voice one Love in one sweet song."

Facilitator of the monthly "Full Moon Full Heart Kirtan" - tomduffy4u@gmail.com

The Pushpams

The Pushpams (sanskrit for flowers) are a fresh Boulder based band bloominí and grooviní with shakti infused yoga and chant music. Formed just over a year ago by Mira Gale, Kalika Fortin, and Kumara Etzel, (all former members of Shivaís Garden), their performances are an innovative fusion of beautifully arranged sanskrit chants and folksy original songs. Their music speaks to and from the heart and draws listeners in. Though the band is new, the members are seasoned yogis and veteran musicians who bring depth both spiritually and musically to their collaboration, which to them is nothing but a flowering of and offering to Spirit. Each of them lived for many years at Shoshoni Yoga Retreat, immersed in the daily practices of seva (service), yoga, meditation, and chanting. Pushpams is a Sanskrit word which refers to a ceremonial offering of flowers. The Pushpams perform regularly in the Boulder Denver area and are currently working on their first CD.

Prem Sangha Band

Founded in April 2011 by band leader Thomas Modern, the Prem Sangha Band strives to bolster the bhakti community in Boulder and the surrounding area. They were inspired to create this dynamic ensemble as a result of their travels to India and connection with spiritual teacher Sri Prem Baba. Guiding people through this spiritual practice and helping others deepen their connection to the heart is such an uplifting joy that they love to share, time and time again. The band has played in several venues in Denver, Boulder, Estes Park, and Colorado Springs, and has been particularly inspired to organize a new kind of kirtan: circle kirtan dance. This format emphasizes interaction and participation, and fuses music, dance, and visual arts. The band is comprised of Thomas Modern (guitar, keyboard, vocals), Kelsey Smith (harmonium, djembe, vocals), Sam Silver (percussion, violin, mandolin), Jeff Orrey (flute, vocals, percussion) and others. They look forward to sharing their music in the space of the 2012 Colorado Kirtan Summit! To learn more go to prembababoulder.org/music/ and friend the Prem Sangha Band on Facebook!

Kate Spear

Kate Spear is a life long spiritual practictioner and creative muse living the path of the heart. She plays harmonium and sings kirtan using her gift of devotional radiance to invite all into their Divine beauty. She embodied the path of chanting in her 10 year journey in an Ashram.

Marilyn Sherbring, J.D.

Marilyn was given marching orders by Neem Karoli Baba to learn the Hanuman Chalisa on her first visit to his Ashram in Taos. "Come back when you've learned it," were Baba's words. Two years later, as ordered, she returned to the Ashram, and two weeks after that she was recruited "out of the blue" to lead kirtans in Colorado Springs. She got a harmonium, learned to play and started in. Now, over two and a half years later, she still makes the regular pilgrimage from Denver to the Springs to lead Shakti Creations Kirtan at the Inner Space above Poor Richards, putting the FUN in, of all places, the fundamentalist capital of Colorado. "I would never have thought of it myself," says Marilyn, "but Baba has a strange way of calling people, and you don't say 'no' to Baba." True story.

www.shakticreations.com

Sadananda

Sadananda was born and raised in a mixed Catholic and Baptist family in the Mexican neighborhood of Denver. A series of mystical experiences during his teens and twenties led him to study with the masters of the East who were arriving in America during the late 60's and early 70's. After studying at Naropa Institute and Insight Meditation Society, Sadananda travelled to India to follow in the footsteps of the Buddha. For seven years he lived the life of a traditional sadhu, meditating in temples, ashrams and cremation grounds and he became the beloved disciple of Sadguru Raghudas Maharaj.

Sadananda has always been a musician. In the 70's as a singer and songwriter he studied and performed at the Denver Folklore Center. In India he imbibed Kirtan at the feet of the true Kirtan Masters of Maharashtra. Today Sadananda is an adept Kirtan leader and inspiring meditation instructor.

www.AlandiAshram.org

Jaya

Jaya is a spiritualist who has studied bhakti yoga for over 20 years, earning a degree in Bhakti Sastri, the teachings of devotion. He is also an initiated Vedic brahmana who has a degree in Psychology (a unique combination which has enabled Jaya to help hundreds of people spiritualize their lives). Jaya organizes regular kirtans and spiritual gatherings in the Boulder area.

www.BoulderKrishnaHouse.com