Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], October 16: National award-winning, 8th-generation Kathak exponent Dr. Vinod Hasal, who took Kathak to South Africa in the Nelson Mandela era, invites Mumbai to leave all its stress behind at a bhakti jam with 500 drums, a djembe for every seat and loved voices from Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Bigg Boss and Bollywood, with proceeds going towards ISKCON Kharghar’s new auditorium.
Imagine an auditorium where nobody is a spectator… five hundred drums, one in every pair of hands, beating in perfect sync as the entire hall chants the holy name alongside some of the most loved voices from Indian Idol, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa, Bigg Boss and Bollywood. That is the promise of Maha Bhakti Rhythm Yatra, billed as India’s first-ever 500-drum bhakti jamming experience, which opens at ISKCON Juhu in Mumbai on 24th October 2026 and runs across four weekends till 22nd November 2026.
Conceptualised and led by Dr. Vinod Hasal, the 8th-generation Jaipur Gharana Kathak exponent, National Hind Ratna Awardee, Zee TV Sa Re Ga Ma Pa jury member and Director of Drum Cafe India, the event brings together the devotion of a traditional kirtan, the energy of today’s bhajan-clubbing wave and the interactive drumming format Dr. Hasal pioneered in India way back in 2007.
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“Young people are being drawn back to the holy name through bhajan jamming, and that itself is beautiful,” says Dr. Vinod Hasal. “We wanted to give them something that makes them stop and say, ‘Wait, I’m not just in the audience, I’m an artist too!’ At Maha Bhakti Rhythm Yatra, everyone gets their own drum and channels their inner bhakti while chanting the Lord’s name. This event isn’t just about singing and dancing; it’s about being one with the divine. One beat, one rhythm, one purpose.”
Every seat comes with a djembe, the West African hand drum, and no prior experience is needed. The Drum Cafe India team teaches the audience on the spot, and within the first five minutes even first-timers are playing in rhythm with the artists on stage. “Everything starts with chaos. There is an artist in everybody, so when you hand 500 people a drum each, they all start banging away,” Dr. Hasal laughs. “But once everyone starts listening, every soul begins to resonate as one, and the stress you walked in with simply falls away. I have seen it happen at every performance, from Fortune 500 boardrooms to temple courtyards.”
Joining him on stage is a star-studded line-up that spans generations and genres, including Vinodini Hasal Oberoi, the Jaipurwale father-son duo Pt. Bhavdeep Jaipurwale and Sudeep Jaipurwale, whose forefathers were gurus to the Mangeshkar family, Sa Re Ga Ma Pa juror Padma Wadkar, Debojit Saha, Arpita Mukherjee, Vaishali Mhade, Hamsika Iyer, Vaishnavi Shriram, Arvinder Singh, Siddharth Dey, Pawni Pandey, Shivani Vaswani, Ghansham Vaswani, Bhavya Pundit, Sumedha Karmahe, Aasa Singh, Nirvaan Birla, DJ Mehul Panwar, Hiten Panwar, Faiz Mustafa, Kunal Pundit, Pradeep Pundit, Hrishikesh J Chury and Girish Vishwa.
The event is helmed by Drum Cafe India, which traces its roots to Drum Cafe, born in early-1990s Johannesburg when Warren Lieberman invited Dr. Hasal to the weekend jam sessions he hosted at home. One day, a group of executives in suits joined in, and three hours later, their ties were off and they were dancing. There was no looking back from there. With Lieberman as founder and Dr. Hasal among its founding members, Drum Cafe grew into what is today regarded as the world’s leading interactive drumming company, present in 28 countries and trusted by Fortune 500 companies for team building. Dr. Hasal brought it to India in 2007 and gave it an Indian soul with kanjiras and Indian percussion, built around a simple motto – unite, uplift and inspire the person sitting next to you.
Dr. Hasal’s own journey reads like a film script. After years of struggling to find stages at home, the state and national gold medallist was invited by ISKCON to perform at its Ratha Yatra festival, a performance that took him abroad and landed him in South Africa just as apartheid was ending and Nelson Mandela walked free. There, he took Kathak into the African townships, teaching over 5,000 Black South African students; his protégé Bryan Sekeko became the world’s first African classical Kathak dancer, and Zindzi Mandela was among his university students. In 1992, he performed the opening act at the First World Hindu Conference in Durban, where, he recalls, Mandela told the gathering, “You Indians gave South Africa Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the advocate. We gave you back the Mahatma.”“I quote that wherever I go,” shares Dr. Hasal. His work earned him the Hind Ratna Award in 2003, presented by then President Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
It is this debt to ISKCON that gives this event its larger purpose. A part of the sale proceeds from the event will go towards a new 1,200-seat auditorium at the ISKCON temple in Kharghar, Navi Mumbai, a space meant to give deserving young artists from Maharashtra and across India the stage Dr. Hasal once struggled to find. In doing so, the event hopes to build a brighter India, where every section of society can connect with its cultural roots, regardless of means.
And Mumbai is only the beginning. Dr. Hasal plans to take the event from 500 to 10,000 drums and beyond. “Life itself is a yatra,” he says. “The idea is to make this as big as possible. Sky is the limit,” concludes Dr. Hasal.
Maha Bhakti Rhythm Yatra will be held at ISKCON Juhu, Mumbai, across four weekends: 24th-25th October, 31st October-1st November, 14th-15th November and 21st-22nd November 2026.
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