Press Reviews:

Yoga Journal:
Rich in polyethnic percussion and complex rhythmic grooves, this global trance music draws listeners into the creation fo new multicultural, mostly dance-based rituals...On 11 tracks, Hamsa Lila draws inspiration from the cosmologies of the Gnawan and Yoruban peoples of Africa, Buddhist mantras, African proverbs, and even T. S. Eliot and Frank Lloyd Wright (whose quote "I believe in God, only I spell it N-a-t-u-r-e" is cited in the liner notes). [Hamsa Lila] weave beguiling multilayered chants through an airy and somtimes bristling acoustic-electric mix than pulsates at the bottom end like a rock band. For a group fashioned at least in part to move and mesmerize audiences at jam band concerts, Hamsa Lila beautifully embodies its African, Indian, and Carribean influences on a recording that pleases the head as much as it moves the body.

All Music Guide:
Ever since George Harrison first picked up the sitar on the Beatles classic "Norwegian Wood," the fusion of Eastern sounds with Western pop music has been an extremely fruitful, if sometimes dicey, proposition. And with the advent of computers and sampling at the cornerstone of music production, contemporary ears have grown accustomed to the synthesized versions of such exotic instrumentation, with the genuine thing sounding quaint or even archaic in comparison. San Francisco's Hamsa Lila succeeds where many have failed, creating music using entirely live Indian, African, Arabic, and Western instrumentation to sound excitingly modern yet wholely legit.Highly inspired by modern house and electronica, "Oshun" and "Salmat Aisha" easily lock into a pro-dancefloor groove that should be eagerly picked up by DJs such as Ron Trent and Marques Wyatt, while "Turka Lila" and "Om Tara" are perfect bricks in the downtempo pyramid. The group even offers its own form of the remix, with duplicate bass line and percussion appearing in the opening chant groove of "Eh Mustpha" and again on the album's only English moment, "Full Moon Flow," which features lead singer Nikila Badua's smooth rap flow. Never falling into unfortunate world music, or worse, colonizing ethno (ethnic-techno), this debut from a fairly young Cali unit deserves the ample praise it has already received.
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The Beat Magazine:
Here's Gathering One, Hamsa Lila's debut collection of trance-rocking grooves, multi-culti world-beat, trans-planet waves and sub-Saharan possibilities. Hamsa Lila begs, borrows, and appropriates styles from Gnaoua music, Yoruba rhythms, Buddhist goddesses, Latino chants and other world staples to concoct an avant-cool, NoCal-meets-African melange of flavors, riddims, and sounds.

Relix Magazine:
Hamsa Lila is a hypnotic and original musical ensemble with a kaleidoscopic world-beat perspective. The band has been creating lots of interest in the Bay Area with what it describes as “world trance grooves.”...While the band uses authentic indigenous instruments they offer a bizarre juxtaposition of the traditional and modern rhythmic elements. There’s a strong dance groove that permeates these lush textures with some neat jazz undertones. Live, they reportedly often begin at midnight and play well into the night. “We want people to dance, sing and freak out with us,” says Greenmountain, adding, “And they do!” Based on the delights of their album Gathering One, you can certainly see why.

San Francisco Chronicle:
This is musical mysticism that invites listeners to dance, clap, twirl, shout praise, sing along -- anything that involves a creative impulse. Hamsa Lila can slow down the pace, too, as on the jazzy song "Sudan," but it's the group's trademark up-tempo numbers that really anchor "Gathering One." The tracks "Eh Mustapha," "Oshun," and "Om Tara" are full of extrasensory sounds, including the North African lute called the sintir, and the heavenly voices of M.J. Greenmountain and Nikila Badua. Hamsa Lila incorporates traditions from Africa and elsewhere to make its own brand of stalwart music. Call it trance. Call it spiritual. Call it otherworldly. The effect is the same: bringing listener and musician to a higher place than before.
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Resonance Magazine:
With no electric bass, the acoustic thump of the sintir and guimbri hold down Hamsa Lila’s rhythms, and the double-team bass attack, augmented by sneaky drumming, bongo breaks, and Roland Kirk-style reeds gives it a groovy sheen that’s as much jazz-soul as world beat. Hamsa Lila want to lift your spirits and make you move. Who can argue with that when they do it so well?

World Music Central.org:
If a good fusion band is one that knows how to combine the best of all their worlds into a sound that's immediately engaging and stays that way, then Hamsa Lila goes beyond good and well into the realm of great. Much of their melodic muscle comes from liberal use of guimbri and sintir, stringed gut-and-skin instruments that in Morocco (where many Gnawa now reside) are the rough equivalent of guitar and bass. A standard drum set sharpens and regulates the rhythmic flow, but don't assume for a minute that this music sounds reined in.
It's as free-spirited as music gets, extending an invitation to dance and trance that's hard to resist.
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College Times:
A fusion of cultures and music, Hamsa Lila springs out of San Francisco with an acoustic techno fusion that conjurs feelings of oneness and spiritual enlightenment. Blending stringed instruments from Morocco and Gnawa with African drums and East-Indian-like chanting, the hypnotic overtones have a distinct, original, and meditative quality that teeters on acid-jazz fusion. Songs like "Om Tara" and bring drifting vocals over drum and bass rhythms that blend into the more modern "Salamat Aisha" with danceable beats and soft blends between choruses. While in a completely different direction, "Full Moon Flow" mixes their usual medium and adds a bit more thump behind vocalist Nikila rapping between sintir and giumbri accents that make this album a must have for would-be gurus and bodhisattvas alike.

An Honest Tune:
Looking for a truly unique musical experience? Then try San Francisco's Hamsa Lila on their latest release entitled Gathering One. A winning combination of world beats and inner soul searching rhythms and instrumentation, the music spreads across the globe to hypnotize the mind and set the spirit alive with dancing vibration.

Altar Native:
Gathering One is a pleasing combination of spiritually alluring traditional chants and authentic instrumentation, blended with mesmerizing rhythms and masterful production. The sound of distant chanting, a bass sintir kept in line with a tight, edgy drum kit, lead into an upbeat crescendo of synchronicity between the old and the new. This music looks to achieve what seems to be so difficult in reality: Unity, where the idiosyncrasies of humanity can, and will, intermingle freely.
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Glide Magazine.com:
From the first glance at Gathering One’s artwork and photography, it’s obvious that Hamsa Lila are more than just a band… All throughout, hand drums and exotic stringed gourds lay down a dense, unchanging foundation…

Kynd Music.com:
They create a wonderfully meditative blend of the ancient and modern, a bridge between cultures, continents and times. Each of the 11 songs alights on a different spiritual tradition, with the accompanying and wonderfully refreshing quotations that highlight the meaning behind the rhythms. To break them down individually, however, would be a grave injustice. This CD is a complete package, a 45-minute long ceremony of life, peace and improvisation...
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San Jose Mercury News:
An International Blend of Musical Styles Refreshes:
The group is known for its marathon concerts. The octet blends music in the Moroccan-Gnawa (North African) tradition with sounds from elsewhere in Africa, as well as Caribbean, American Indian, East Indian and Middle Eastern textures.
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San Francisco Spectrum:
Infectiously hip and world-rich Hamsa Lila will sail you onto the dance floor while spinning a layered treat of vocals around an African trance groove mash-up of aural delights. Your pulse will quicken as the voices, drums, flutes and spirits collide and spiral. Enchanting & inspiring.

Jambase.com:
What Hamsa Lila offers is powerful and compelling music. It is these two things because the band aggressively breaks format and cliché yet remains compelling because they don't choose the easier and more obvious routes that avant-garde music is sometimes victim to. They remain respectful to the traditions of this music while they open you up to a new level of what music can feel, taste and sound like.
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Reflections

"Hamsa Lila creates a complete and undeniable mood to be taken away by - in their space all that was happening before is suspended! What makes Hamsa Lila's tapestry of rhythm so undeniable is that no one person is playing for themselves, they are all completely dedicated to playing for the music, for the one sound."

Michael Travis, The String Cheese Incident

"Certainly a different kind of band, heavy on the world music side like Fela & Femi Kuti, but also jazzy. Sometimes, as upbeat and funky as Galactic and other times as ethereal as Pharaoh Sanders. For anyone looking for beautifully powerful music that takes you on a nomadic journey this is the band!"

Michael Sammet,
DJ KUSP, Santa Cruz, Ca
also published Jambase article

"Hamsa Lila is clearly staying connected to strong ancestral energy, creating from a sacred place, which invokes new creative spaces full of reverence and vitality. It was wonderful to be part of such full involvement between the band and the audience where everyone was so moved they couldn't sit still. They were a great gift to the community."

Liz Faller
Head Professor of Dance Department,
Prescott College, Prescott, AZ