GOD’S MEN: Daler Mehndi and (right) Shankar Mahadevan

Kunal Ganjawala has been hitting all the right notes. When the popular Hindi singer who made his mark in the film industry with his characteristic voice was asked if he’d like to recite Sanskrit chants set to music for an album, he didn’t give the offer a second thought. “I latched on to it,” says Ganjawala. The result was Shiva Trance, released last month.

It’s not just Ganjawala. Mainstream singers are jumping on to the devotional music bandwagon with alacrity. Punjabi pop star Daler Mehndi, composer-singer Shankar Mahadevan and popular Hindi film vocalist Sonu Nigam are all coming up with spiritual albums. And it’s not surprising, for that’s one category of music with steady sales in the music industry, which has had its share of ups and downs in recent years.

“This is one genre that has held its ground even in difficult times. While other genres such as film and pop music have seen a decline in the past, the sales of spiritual albums either remained steady or grew,” says Adarsh Gupta, chief operating officer, Times Music.

Plunging sales — because of, among other reasons, Internet music downloads and piracy — have badly dented the Rs 700 crore music industry, which is now trying to regain lost ground, growing at a modest rate of 3-4 per cent. The turnover stood at Rs 1,200-1,300 crore before it started to decline, mainly because of piracy, in the late 1990s. “I would say piracy is a Rs 700-1,000 crore market,” stresses Savio D’Souza, secretary general of the Indian Music Industry (IMI).

But thanks to its niche audience, the devotional music section, said to be worth Rs 70-100 crore, is going strong. And the entry of popular singers has only added to the allure of the genre. “When youngsters browse through our shelves and come across popular singers, they don’t mind buying the music,” says Mukul Kumar, manager, Planet M music store at Delhi’s Select City Walk mall.

GOD’S MEN: Daler Mehndi and (below) Shankar Mahadevan

Sweet music New film music 40 per cent market share Old film music 20 per cent market share. Spiritual music 10-12 per cent of all music sales, ahead of Hindi pop, regional film music and international music

Mehndi understands this better than anyone else. When he decided to make a comeback, he did it with a spiritual album called Mere Raam. “People may listen to my bhangra songs a few times and forget them. But that’s not the case with devotional songs. If the tunes catch on, they will be popular forever,” he says.

There was a time when spiritual music was limited to a handful of small labels, and T-Series was the only major player. That changed when the big boys such as Saregama, Music Today and Times Music forayed into the genre at the start of the decade. In fact, looking at the steady revenues spiritual music generated, some companies dumped other genres to concentrate on this.

The Chennai-based Kosmik Global Media (formerly Kosmic) is one such company. “We wanted to have a presence in most genres. However, in time, we decided to focus on our core strengths, namely, classical, devotional and spiritual. Our current focus is on increasing the spread of classical and spiritual Indian music in national and international markets,” says Rahul Guha, business head, Kosmik Global Media. Kosmik has had top singers such as Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhonsle, Hariharan, Nigam and Mahadevan on its charts.

Companies find the spiritual music category attractive also because it doesn’t need to be heavily promoted. According to Mehndi, on an average, a music company spends around Rs 1 crore on promotional activities on albums in other categories. Spiritual music, on the other hand, hardly needs a marketing blitzkrieg. “It’s fairly easy to recover costs on devotional albums. They become famous mostly through word of mouth, and sometimes even through ringtones,” says Mehndi.

That’s no surprise, for spiritual music is the most popular category of music outside Hindi film songs. According to IMI’s D’Souza, it constitutes 10-12 per cent of all music sales. New film music tops the charts with a 40 per cent market share, followed by old film music with a 20 per cent share. Spiritual music is next, ahead of Hindi pop, regional film music and international music.

Apart from the market in India, it’s a big draw abroad. “Spiritual, devotional and classical music are quite popular abroad, even among foreigners,” states Guha. Music that fuses Indian and Western traditions is particularly in demand.

Industry insiders stress that the buyers of this genre are a committed lot, who keep coming back for more. “Unlike Bollywood music, we may not sell in several lakhs, but we have consistent buyers. These are niche audiences who will always be there,” asserts Kanchaman Babbar, chief executive officer, Mystica Music, a Delhi-based music company that produces spiritual music.

One such committed listener, Dheeraj Kumar — a software engineer based in Boston in the US — scans the Internet daily in search of the latest releases. “I have loads of devotional albums by singers such as Anup Jalota, Jagjit Singh, Lata Mangeshkar and many others, but I like the new experiments in this space, including discourses by famous gurus and the chant of mantras,” he says.

Indeed, the genre is no longer confined to devotional songs. Music companies that want to stay one step ahead are coming out with albums with chants and discourses by religious and motivational leaders such as Anandmurti Gurumaa, Balaji Tambe and Deepak Chopra. Other innovations include instructional albums that teach meditation and chants that are supposed to lead to health benefits such as lowering high blood pressure and regulating heart rates.

There is an album for every occasion — pujas for festivals, ways of achieving nirvana, chants for peace and instructional albums that teach yogic exercises. There are devotional songs to be sung at sunrise, Sufi music, Buddhist chants and other content for spiritual uplift.

While film songs can be immensely popular one day and forgotten the next, devotional music aficionados stress that their genre is for ever. “Our people are so religious that they wouldn’t mind listening to devotional music at any point of time in the day and on every occasion,” says Anup Jalota, who has sung around 1,200 bhajans and cut 200 albums in eight languages. The influx of new singers — Ganjawala et al — only underlines the popularity of the genre, says Jalota, who adds that spiritual music also makes commercial sense.

That message seems to have spread across industries. The sale of CDs is not the only source of revenue for music companies that produce devotional albums. One of the biggest revenue earners is the digital downloading of ring tones and caller tunes.

“Spiritual music is one of the more popular categories with our mobile customers and it’s consumed in many languages, including Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi, Telugu, Malayalam and Gujarati,” says Shireesh Joshi, chief marketing officer, mobile services, Bharti Airtel. “Discourses of spiritual leaders are available in a very small quantity, while shlokas and mantras form a large component of spiritual downloads,” Joshi says. According to some estimates, almost 30 per cent of the industry’s revenues are earned through the sales of ringtones and caller tunes.

Clearly, prayer can not only move mountains — it can also move albums. And, in the process, rake in the moolah.