Ananda Xenia Shakti didn’t just make a song. She hijacked a prayer, spiked it with joy, blasted it out of a busted amplifier, and dared you to feel something again. “Hare Hare Dance” isn’t a single, it’s a spiritual jailbreak, a full-frontal cosmic assault on your shriveled, screen-burned soul.
Let’s back up. Once upon a time, Shakti was a punk… a real one… sharing grubby backstage rooms and sweaty microphones with the Clash and Blondie. Now? She’s traded in ripped jeans for flowing fabrics, but don’t think for a second she’s gone soft. No, she’s turned the rebellion inward, flipped the bird to every existential dead-end, and found a new revolution: JOY.
Yeah, you heard me. Joy. As in, the sweaty, unpolished, full-throttle celebration of still being alive, despite everything collapsing around you. “Hare Hare Dance” grabs the Maha Mantra, that sacred, ancient incantation, and hurls it straight into the mosh pit of the universe. Chanting Krishna’s and Radha’s names like a freight train made of light, the song pounds through your chest until your rational mind taps out, panting.
The sound? It’s like Patti Smith fronting a temple choir on a Himalayan acid trip. It’s ecstatic. Relentless. Shakti’s voice doesn’t float prettily over the beat; it rides it like a banshee, half-punk, half-priestess, all heart. There’s no polite, radio-friendly structure here. It’s mantra as machine gun, looping, spinning, crashing through barriers you didn’t even know you built.
And the video? A holy fever dream. Shot in Vrindavan, where the gods themselves were rumored to dance, under sun so hot it probably melted half the camera crew. Then there’s footage of modern-day bliss junkies throwing down at Toronto’s Ecstatic Dance scene, weaving centuries and continents together like a mad cosmic DJ on a mission. Dust, sweat, neon, riverbanks, human bodies moving not for spectacle but because the universe demands it.
This isn’t New Age elevator music. This is a ritual. A call to arms, or better yet, a call to feet. Move your ass, chant till your throat burns, live like life is a miracle because dang it, it is, and Shakti’s not going to sit politely and let you miss it.
There’s a glorious sloppiness to it all that’s downright heroic. No polish. No pretense. Just a woman singing her guts out to the universe, saying “WE ARE LOVE,” and meaning it so hard it cracks you open like a dropped bottle of cheap wine on concrete. And maybe, if you’re lucky, something beautiful spills out.
“Hare Hare Dance” isn’t about belief. It’s about surrender. About ditching the cynical, too-cool armor that’s suffocating you and just being…sweaty, messy, joyful, ALIVE.
You don’t listen to this song.
You give in to it.
You become it.
So crank it loud enough to shake loose your last excuse. Dance your broken heart clean. And when the sun rises over your battered, blissed-out body, whisper a little Radhe Radhe into the morning air and know that for one wild, sacred moment, you belonged.
–Jupiter Williams
