How Prana Kishore tunes music to heal

(January 1, 2026) Singer, composer, producer, Guinness World Record holder and Grammy voting member, Prana Kishore Bommireddipalli has built a global music career on purpose rather than popularity. Blending Sanskrit mantras, nature sounds, and contemporary symphonies, the Nashville-based Indian-American artist’s 90 albums position music as therapy in a restless world.

The steady fall of rain, a distant temple bell, birds breaking the silence, wind moving gently through space. Slowly, Sanskrit mantras rise and recede, unhurried, deliberate, grounding. This is the soundscape Prana Kishore Bommireddipalli has spent decades creating. “I wanted music to breathe,” he says. “Not to rush people, but to slow them down, to help them reconnect with themselves.” It is this intent that explains why messages of gratitude reach him from across the world.

Prana Kishore in his studio at Nashville,Tennessee

Whether it is from listeners in the USA, India, the UK, or Cyprus, words of appreciation regularly arrive for the Nashville-based Indian-American musician. A cancer patient in California, an autistic child in Chennai, a grieving widow in New Jersey, a chronic pain sufferer in London, a spiritually restless listener in Cyprus, all describe a similar experience of calm, clarity, and healing. “During chemo, I felt overwhelmed, until I started playing Prana Kishore’s music. The Sanskrit chants gave me peace and strength. It became my therapy, my sanctuary,” wrote a listener from California. From Chennai, a parent shared how her nonverbal autistic son “instantly calms down when Prana Music plays,” calling it “a rare and beautiful connection through sound.” Another listener in New Jersey, navigating loss, described how Krishna bhajans by Prana Kishore made her feel “less alone, wrapped in divine love.”

“These stories are why I do what I do,” Prana Kishore says. “This is not entertainment for me. This is service.” For him, music is not performance alone; it is therapy, responsibility, and a deeply personal way of helping others heal.

The man behind the sound

A singer, songwriter, composer, music producer, and multi-instrumentalist with over 40 years in the music industry, Prana Kishore’s scale of work is impressive. In just 12 years, he has released 90 albums across nine languages, performed over 600 shows worldwide, and crossed eight million streams, which is an extraordinary number for an artist working in a niche genre. “I never chased numbers,” he says. “I chased purpose. The reach happened organically.”

Through his independent label, Prana Kishore Records, his music is distributed globally via Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and every major streaming platform. He plays 10 instruments, sings his own chorus in five distinct vocal styles, designs his album artwork as a trained graphic designer, records and mixes using Logic Pro and Pro Tools, and manages his own marketing and press releases, drawing on a master’s degree in engineering and extensive experience in management, marketing, and brand strategy. “I learned everything myself because I didn’t want to depend on labels,” he explains. “I wanted creative and spiritual control.”

Once a corporate executive, he is now a full-time professional artist, a Grammy voting member, and part of the Recording Academy’s music advocacy group focused on protecting musicians’ rights. “Artists need a voice beyond the stage,” he says. “That responsibility matters to me.”

Prana Music

At the core of his work is Prana Music, a genre he conceptualized himself. Rooted in the Sanskrit word Prana, meaning life force, it blends ancient mantras with real sounds of nature—rain, wind, birds, oceans, rivers, and temple bells. Designed to calm the nervous system, the music responds to what Prana Kishore sees as a global mental health crisis driven by stress and noise. “I saw the next generation living in constant pressure,” he says. “Music itself has become noisy. I wanted to create a sound that heals instead of harming.”

His aim was to slow breathing, restore balance, and bring the listener inward. Over time, the music evolved, fusing Indian instruments with Western symphonies and rhythm, making it both meditative and contemporary. “I didn’t want it to feel outdated,” he explains. “I wanted young people to relax, but also to move, to dance, to live.” The result spans World Music, New Age, Pop, and Rock, resonating strongly with global audiences and making him the No. 1 Sanskrit artist on iTunes Brazil. His Prana Nidra meditations—three-minute versions for work and seven-minute versions for home are especially popular among teens and working women.

Guinness World Record and Josie Music Awards

This commitment to depth and scale culminated in a historic milestone. After pursuing it for five years, Prana Kishore achieved the Guinness World Record for the Longest Officially Released Song Worldwide with Secret Sounds of Sacred Sanskrit, running 108 hours, 54 minutes, and 29 seconds. “This was never about breaking a record,” he says. “It was about keeping Sanskrit alive and using sound as a healing force.”

Conceived as a multi-volume sonic experience, the project blends healing Sanskrit sounds with immersive natural environments across all four seasons, recorded in surround sound. Its purpose is to promote mental clarity and happiness, helping visually challenged listeners “see” through sound, teaching control over fear and stress, and preserving Sanskrit—the world’s oldest living language.

The Guinness World Record, previously held for 74 years by an English-language composition, was overtaken by Prana Kishore’s Sanskrit work, making the world’s oldest living language the medium of the longest officially released song. In 2023, his work was further recognized when his Sanskrit album Queen Mandhalsa Upadesam won the World Artist Award at the Josie Music Awards. “Recognition is humbling,” he says, “but impact matters more.”

Prana Kishore's Guinness World Record Certificate

Early notes

Born in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, Prana Kishore spent his early years in Visakhapatnam before moving to Chennai at 14, following his father’s transfer to All India Radio. His first formal training came from a visually challenged tabla teacher. “He taught me discipline, patience, and respect for sound,” Prana Kishore recalls. Decades later, he would honour that influence by teaching singing to visually challenged students in his teacher’s memory. “That is my way of giving back.”

Chennai calling

While pursuing engineering studies, he immersed himself in Chennai’s vibrant band culture. His group, Gopi–Kishore Musiano, nicknamed “Engineers Musiano” rose quickly in a fiercely competitive scene. Their success lay in spectacle as much as sound: fire dancers, psychedelic strobe lights, dramatic visuals, and a signature performance style where Prana Kishore, dressed in white, created visual illusions on darkened stages. “Entertainment mattered,” he says. “Music had to be an experience.” Fans often remarked that his voice resembled the legendary S. P. Balasubrahmanyam.

He also sang for Joseph Krishna, an associate of composer M. S. Viswanathan, learning instant composition in recording studios. HMV, AVM, and INRECO released several of his Tamil albums during this period.

The time when a legend was still just a boy

Only three people in Chennai rented electronic organs at the time. One was Mrs. Sekhar, wife of late music director R. K. Shekar and mother of a calm, smiling boy then known as Dileep Kumar. “He was always quiet, always smiling,” Prana Kishore recalls. “None of us knew he would become A. R. Rahman.” Many years later Prana Kishore realized that the smiling boy had blossomed into a world-famous musician.

Choosing silence

At the height of his band’s success, Prana Kishore chose stability over stardom. Holding a high-paying role as Marketing Manager, he shut down the band to pursue a corporate career. “I had to choose responsibility at that point in my life,” he says. For him, it marked the beginning of a long silence in music.

Across continents

That silence stretched across continents. Rising to General Manager at the TATA Group, Prana Kishore and his wife, Rathi Kishore, a General Manager in telecom and IT relocated to Cyprus, lived in Germany and the UK, and later moved to the United States. He left music entirely, even stopped listening to it. “I was fully immersed in work and family,” he says. In Cyprus, he learned Greek and explored Greek music. “That’s when I truly understood that music is universal.”

Prana Kishore

The return to music

After nearly 20 years, the call returned. Settled in Dallas, Texas, working as a marketing and real estate consultant, Prana Kishore felt it clearly. “It was a calling,” he says. He chose independence over labels, learned modern recording technology, mastered global distribution standards, designed album covers, handled marketing and PR, and founded Prana Kishore Records, now based in Nashville.

Building a legacy

His 2012 comeback release, the 108-minute double CD Om Shri Rama Hanuman Raksha, set the tone for a catalog rooted in devotion and intent. Today, his albums are sold worldwide through Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and every major distributor. Beyond music, he has authored three books. While two are on chess, one is dedicated to the Sri Rama Temple in Ayodhya. He visits India annually, reconnecting with family, food, films, weddings, and a country he believes is often misunderstood. “India is a joy,” he says. “You feel free there.”

What lies ahead

Prana Kishore now plans to explore EDM, Country/Folk, Pop, and Rock, and remains open to collaborations with other Grammy artists. Yet the essence remains unchanged. “Music gave me everything,” he says. “If my work can help even one person breathe easier, then it has done its job.”

From learning tabla under a blind teacher to creating global soundscapes that heal across continents, Prana Kishore’s journey affirms one belief: when music is shaped by purpose, it can restore balance, not just to individuals, but to the world.

Listening Notes: For readers who prefer to sit with the story a little longer, these compositions offer stillness and calm: