Once a punk siren sharing stages with Blondie and The Clash, Ananda Xenia Shakti now moves to a very different rhythm. But the fire's still there—it just burns brighter from within. Her project, Love Power the Band, is less a band in the conventional sense and more a movement: a cosmic uprising of joy, mantra, and musical communion. And in the video for their latest single, “Hare Hare Dance,” Shakti delivers a vision of love-fueled liberation that's as bold as anything from her CBGB days—just dressed in saffron and sung to the stars.
“Hare Hare Dance,” drawn from the album Songs from Source, is not your typical pop song. It's a sonic ritual. A rhythmic chant built around the Maha Mantra, a sacred Hindu invocation of the divine couple Radha and Krishna. Sung with a blend of sweetness and resolve, the mantra morphs into a hypnotic groove—a spiritual engine fueled by repetition, rhythm, and radiant sincerity.
The track pulses with a vibrant fusion of ancient Sanskrit chant and modern global dance beats. But Shakti's delivery, grounded in decades of stage presence and raw artistic fearlessness, makes it feel revolutionary. She doesn't just sing the mantra—she inhabits it. Her voice is steady, rich, and filled with the kind of passion that doesn't preach, but pulls you in.
“There's something radical about joy,” Shakti says, speaking from her home in Toronto, where much of her artistic vision takes shape. “Real, embodied joy is dangerous to systems that rely on fear. Bhakti yoga taught me that singing and dancing can be an act of resistance. A way of remembering who you really are.”
The “Hare Hare Dance” video brings this philosophy to life. Filmed in Vrindavan, India, on the banks of the sacred Yamuna River—where legend says Radha and Krishna's divine love story unfolded—it's a swirling, sun-drenched celebration of devotion and dance. Dressed in flowing fabrics, Shakti moves with reverence and freedom, surrounded by locals and pilgrims, each step a prayer.
But this isn't some exoticized Eastern dreamscape. Midway through, the video shifts. The sacred dissolves into the contemporary, as we're transported to Toronto's Ecstatic Dance community—a sea of bodies in motion, stomping out their stress, celebrating life in all its messy, radiant complexity. The juxtaposition of these two spaces—ancient and modern, India and Canada—is the heartbeat of Shakti's message: that the divine lives everywhere, especially in dance, especially in you.
“There's no separation,” she explains. “No East or West, sacred or mundane. When we're dancing, chanting, expressing joy—we're dissolving the illusion of difference. That's what Bhakti taught me. That love is the bridge.”
It's a long way from punk rock, or maybe it's not. Shakti doesn't see a contradiction. In fact, she insists the spirit is the same. “Back then I was screaming at the world. Now I'm singing with it,” she says with a laugh. “But the purpose hasn't changed—it's still about breaking down walls, dissolving separation, waking people up.”
Love Power the Band doesn't operate like a traditional group. The music, Shakti says, is received in a semi-trance state—“downloads from the divine,” she calls them. The songs are offerings, transmissions meant to heal, inspire, and awaken. “I don't write hits,” she says. “I write prayers.”
And yet, the impact is tangible. Live, the performances become interactive rituals—audience members are invited to sing parts, join the movement, become part of the song itself. “We dissolve the line between performer and audience,” she explains. “It's about community, connection. When we sing together, we remember: we are love.”
With “Hare Hare Dance,” Love Power the Band has crafted something rare—a piece of art that's not just meant to be heard, but felt. It's devotional without dogma, ecstatic without ego. And at its core is a simple, radical message: joy is your birthright, and love is your power.
As Shakti puts it: “This isn't about being spiritual. It's about being alive. About dancing yourself free.”
In a time when the world feels fragmented and heavy, “Hare Hare Dance” arrives like a sunbeam through storm clouds—a reminder that music can still be magic, and joy might just be the most revolutionary force of all.
–Yumi Kamoto
