Devata Active’s mission is to create content to support and empower people to live their truest, most inspired lives no matter where they are located. Devata started this mission by offering online, on-demand yoga and fitness classes featuring passionate teachers with strong followings. Next, they expanded by creating podcasts and interviews with people living inspired lives in business, yoga, art and adventure. Devata’s latest chapter: Devata Sesssions, a series of transformative, livestreamed music performances.
Devata delivered on this chapter by livestreaming a free concert and interview with Huntington Beach-based singer/songwriter Krista Marina. The event was launched on Aug. 26 at their Fountain Valley-based recording studio. They were ecstatic with the results and more events are scheduled. I saw the video performance and can say that Devata accomplished their mission. There was something so poised and magnetic about Krista on my little screen.
You may ask how yoga lead to concerts. Melanie Cherney, founder of Devata Active, has your answer: “Music, art and yoga are natural fits. They all really come from and return us to the same place – that place of heightened inspiration and connection. Before I was a practicing yoga, I was actually an art student. I remember falling into a meditative state while painting similar to what I experience in my yoga practice.”
Melanie added “Music wasn’t part of Devata’s original plan, but it developed as a natural evolution of our larger vision. Music takes us deeper into ourselves. As a teacher, music has been a very helpful tool to move my students deeper into their yoga practice. I used to spend hours working on my class playlist, picking out the right songs and arranging them so that the music would support the experience I was hoping to create in the class. My students would always comment on it and come up after class asking about a particular song that they connected with. I realized that music was one more platform we could offer in our mission to make people feel more alive.”
The first step in offering that platform was to recruit musicians using the same criteria Devata uses for instructors: Target artists who are passionate and really care about connecting with their audiences. It is that urge to connect that restores the human touch in a digital platform.
Alex Barbarian, Devata Active’s Creative Director as well as a musician, producer and DJ, had an additional goal in the project: Create a resource for up-and-coming artists to promote themselves. According to Alex, “New artists are focused on composing and performance. They may not have the headroom or budget for quality video production, livestreaming or self-promotion. But the reality nowadays is musicians are pressured to do it all AND at the same time. Devata has the means and equipment to help them along while allowing us to deliver something special to our audiences.”
Devata Active’s next session is the DJ artist THRD. “THRD knows that a human element is necessary to keep things organic and to connect with an audience over livestream. To that end, he is bringing in singers and musicians to accompany him,” says Alex.
THRD’s performance will be livestreamed on Sept 23 at 6:00 pm PST. More information is available here.
I have firsthand experience at the isolation wrought by technology and telecommuting as well as the need to experience art and beauty with others. Fortunately, we have kindred spirits such as Melanie and Alex who are making the best of the digital world while mitigating its dehumanizing aspects.