Local Vrindavan vocalist, Southern California music producer and worldwide acclaimed kirtan rock band team up to create a magical Maha Mantra music video montage for World Music Day, June 21, 2018

Sunrise on Kesi Ghats, Yamuna, Vrindavan, India

World Music Day is a celebration of music around the world on June 21st. Launched in 1982 in France as the Fête de la Musique, it is now held on the same day in more than 800 cities in 120 countries.

Completely different from a typical music festival, World Music Day is open to anyone who wants to take part. Every kind of musician — young and old, amateur and professional, of every musical persuasion — pours onto streets, parks, plazas, and porches to share their music with friends, neighbors, and strangers. All of it is free and open to the public.

You can also find musicians participating in online venues, such as YouTube and Facebook, as is the case with our three collaborators, and the “gofer” me!

Nirdosh Sobti, from Mumbai and leader of Madhava’s Rock Band decided to make a music video montage for World Music Day 2018; he contacted his friend, Angela Aery, a vocalist living in Vrindavan.  And together they found Devin Lawrence, (<—my son) a Southern California music producer also living in Vrindavan.  The three collaborated via the internet to lay down music, vocals and a video montage all in the space of five days.  Under the wire, over a period of 24hrs with intermittent bouts of electricity outages, we sent our 7.5 gigabytes of clips to the editor for mashing together the finished video you see below, celebrating World Music Day.

These are some behind the scenes photographs as we move from the MVT garden to sunrise at Kesi Ghats on the Yamuna, to Madan Mahon Temple and ending with the whole village of Kiki Nagla coming out to help us wind up our shooting.  All the while Angela, the beautiful vocalist, is hobbling along with a broken foot in a blue cast, pushing a rolling walker.

My job?  I was the gofer and queue-the-music technician.  Every video take – and there were many – I clicked on the music file and held the UE Boom so Angela Aery could sync sing with the video. 

Keep scrolling down to see the final video released on June 21, 2018, in celebration of World Music Day.

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And here it is!  It is a looooong video with about 70 contributors;  our pieces are at

9:30 – 9:50 minutes

10:03 – 10:20 minutes

16:56 – 17:18 minutes

21:47 – 22:11 minutes

And check out my cameo appearance at 22:56 minutes!  Lol! (My son caught that one!)

And many short cameos throughout!

Let me know what you think of this beautiful tribute to God and World Music Day!

PS – The dogs on the boat and in the water?  While we were filming, we watched as one dog patiently waited on the banks of the river along with people, for the taxi boat to ferry them across the river.  When the boat came, the dog walked on the boat like any other paying passenger.  The boat left for the other side, but then, along came the dog’s buddy who had missed the boat.  Not missing a beat, he jumped right in and swam after his friend meeting up with him on the other side!