Jila Ji arrived on May 20, 2024, a ten-track album from a musician whose work has long been organized around one idea: slowing the world down, even for a moment, and returning to the tempo of nature. This guide is written with the limits of what can be verified in mind. The track titles, personnel and recording details are not listed in the information available here, so what follows describes the album's context and the kind of listening it invites. It does not name individual songs.
John de Kadt is a musician, poet and storyteller, and those three vocations are hard to separate in his work. For more than 25 years he has told ancient myths from indigenous cultures and mystical traditions, treating story as ritual and ceremony, a way of remembrance and a vehicle for seeing ourselves more clearly. He tells them while playing percussive and melodic instruments gathered from across the globe, a practice he calls DrumStory. He is also a founding member of The Rememberers, a trio that weaves myth with original songs, and the creator and producer of BlessFest, a gathering devoted to music, healing and sacred arts.
Against that background, Jila Ji reads as a devotional record from an artist whose public life has been built around ceremony. He is also a kirtan leader, and this album is the place where that role comes forward. Listeners who know him as a storyteller will find the same underlying patience, now carried by song and call rather than narrative.
The most honest way to describe the album is by the commitments that run through de Kadt's work. Expect an emphasis on unhurried pacing, on rhythm that supports rather than drives, and on a voice that functions as an invitation more than a performance. His instrument palette, by his own description, spans percussive and melodic traditions from around the world, so hand drums, resonant tones and acoustic color are the natural vocabulary here. Kirtan is built on call and response, repetition and gradual swell, and the mood is correspondingly warm, communal and grounded.
Ten tracks suggests a full-length arc rather than a collection of singles. Albums of this kind tend to reward being heard in sequence, with early pieces settling the listener and later ones deepening the trance of repetition. Treat that as an expectation, not a map.
I'm not going to name individual tracks, because titles and track-level details aren't in the facts I have, and guessing would mislead you. A better approach is to find them yourself. On a first pass, notice where the pulse settles and your breathing begins to match it. Notice which refrain you find yourself humming afterward. Notice any moment where the voice drops back and the instruments carry the room. Those three moments are usually where a kirtan-rooted album lands, and you will likely find them in different places than another listener does. The Spotify page for the album lists the full sequence for anyone who wants to mark favorites.
The album's title, Jila Ji, and de Kadt's role as a kirtan leader place it in the bhakti current: devotional music in which repetition is the method and the heart is the destination. Kirtan is participatory by design, so even a recorded version carries an invitation to sing along. De Kadt's own lineage is wider than any single tradition. His storytelling draws on indigenous and mystical sources across cultures, and that ecumenical, ceremonial sensibility likely shapes how he holds devotional music: as shared practice rather than doctrine. In that sense the album sits between traditional kirtan and the broader contemporary sacred-music world that festivals like BlessFest cultivate.
This album is best suited to listeners who are tired of speed. If you are in a transition, grieving, recovering from a loud season of work, or simply craving a way back into your body, music built on repetition and presence can do what argument and information cannot. It will also suit practitioners of yoga, meditation and breathwork, and anyone who already loves ritual, story and slow time. Listeners who want hooks, novelty and dense production may find it demanding. The pleasure here comes from staying put.
Choose an evening, after the day's obligations are finished. Dim the lights, put the phone out of reach, and use headphones or a quiet room with decent speakers. Play the album from the start and in order, without skipping. Let the first few minutes feel slow, because that is the point. If you are comfortable, sing quietly on the refrains, or simply hum, since kirtan is meant to be joined. Sit or lie still for the final track and stay a minute after the music ends. If you use it as part of a ritual, such as a candle, a short sit or a walk afterward, the album will serve as the threshold into it.
