Linda Hess
Scholar, translator, and writer whose work on Kabir’s poetry, oral traditions, and performative worlds has helped generations encounter the songs with greater depth.
People & relationships
The work is
carried together.
Living Songs grows through artists, teachers, scholars, hosts, participants, families, and friends. The institution is a bridge, not the destination.
Artist and teacher
Prahlad Singh Tipaniya
Prahlad Singh Tipaniya is a Padma Shri–honored folk singer and teacher from Madhya Pradesh, India. For more than four decades, his work has helped sustain and renew the oral singing of Kabir in the Malwa region.
In performance and teaching, he brings song, explanation, and lived philosophical inquiry together. His musical community and his relationship with the founder form part of the artistic ground from which Living Songs developed.
His work is presented in its own context and with full credit. Living Songs does not claim ownership of the tradition he carries.
Founder and coordinatorPriyal
Priyal
Maheshwari
Founder’s role
Priyal Maheshwari is a singer, translator, yoga and meditation teacher, and the founder coordinating Living Songs programs, relationships, and documentation.
His present work brings together performance, direct learning, English translation, university engagement, residential retreats, work with children, and contemplative practice. He has facilitated five Naad Brahma retreats and completed a 14-performance solo tour of the United States in April 2026.
His earlier artist history includes travelling and performing during a 50-plus-performance tour with Prahlad Singh Tipaniya and ensemble in 2024. That experience is included as the relational and musical ground from which Living Songs developed; it is not presented as an organizational production.
The founder’s role is to create and protect space, support relationships, and keep the songs and their carriers at the center.
A life shaped through practice
Music, learning, and relationship
Selected moments from the founder’s earlier musical life and the direct learning that prepared the ground for Living Songs.
A wider circle
Teachers, artists, scholars, hosts
This acknowledgement will grow as names, roles, photographs, and permissions are confirmed. It is not a hierarchy or a claim of institutional affiliation.
Mukhtiyar Ali
Rajasthani folk and Sufi singer whose repertoire carries Kabir, Mirabai, Bulleh Shah, and other poets through a powerful living vocal tradition.
The wider community
Musicians, organizers, translators, institutions, families, participants, and quiet supporters who have created the conditions for the work to happen.
“Humility is allowing something greater to remain at the center.”Founder’s Handbook · Humility