Annmarie Solo’s Saturday morning yoga was about to begin, and as I turned first one way, then the other in a warm-up spinal twist, I glanced oh-so-casually around the studio hoping to recognize Donna De Lory, whom I’d previously seen only on stage. At last summer’s Bhakti Fest she’d been a clear standout with a unique sound and presence; there was plenty of great music happening, but it was De Lory who got me dancing in the desert heat. At the time I had no idea—but perhaps could have guessed—she was a veteran of six world tours with Madonna.
De Lory didn’t make it to the class we’d planned to take together, much as she usually loves it. When you have two small children and a music studio in your Topanga Canyon home, and you’re in the middle of a remix and getting ready for yet another tour . . . well, life happens. But I might not have recognized the petite singer even if her mat had been bumped right up to mine. When we met later for lunch she was wearing not a speck of makeup, and at 45, this dynamic performer who lights up a stage could, in everyday life, be mistaken for a local high school girl.
The Tender Years
De Lory’s own high school years were difficult. Her mother died when Donna was 16, and her musician/producer dad moved the family from Calabasas to Nashville. She’d already been singing for many years and loved living on Nashville’s “music row,” where spontaneous jams were as common as broken guitar strings. But although the country music community clearly touched her soul, it was not her music. De Lory missed the city, and it wasn’t long before she headed back west.
Shortly thereafter, she discovered yoga. Initially it was intended to help her with her dancing, but Rod Stryker’s class also gave her another taste of the spiritual. Possibly she tapped into her memories of singing along to her dad’s records—George Harrison chanting “Hare hare, rama rama” on “My Sweet Lord.” Or maybe it reminded her of chants drifting over from the Hare Krishna temple during family vacations in Laguna Beach. In any case, she got what she needed to open her body and protect herself from injury, and then went back to dancing. It would be several years before Madonna’s consistent practice inspired her to get back to yoga.
Meeting Madonna
The two singers met in 1987 when Madonna was holding auditions. De Lory was out of the star’s range of vision, singing her heart out on La Isla Bonita, when, she recalls, Madonna “turned around and practically yelled at me, ‘Why aren’t you singing?’” She was, of course, and when Madonna realized how well their voices blended, she immediately enlisted the younger singer.
“Madonna brought me out into the world, more into world music,” says De Lory, between sporadic bites of goat cheese and field greens. “All that touring with her obviously satisfied my dancing and singing, but also gave me a different picture of the world and my place in it.”
Touring can mean either late nights on the town or quiet ones in a hotel room, which is what De Lory chose. “I was reading a lot of mythology at that time. Joseph Campbell. I’d always sung other people’s songs, but now I started to write lyrics off these things I was reading.”
Flash forward to “a huge record deal” with MCA Universal, which hoped to position De Lory as the next Madonna. She had some successes but by her second record, “I was completely into world music. I wanted to do pop songs with world sounds, percussion . . . They wanted me to just be pop, dancey.” Ultimately De Lory left to form her own label and recreate her music career.
She discovered mantras and began incorporating chants into her pop songs (here she unselfconsciously demonstrates), which gradually evolved into devotional songs. “It just naturally flowed,” she says, almost as if they were coming through her. And when listeners told her that her music had helped them through emotional and spiritual pain, that was “the ultimate,” she had found her true musical path.
“The lyrics I wanted to write were about healing,” she realized. “Evolving myself to experience unconditional love. I wanted to stop writing songs about being hurt, being a victim, because I just didn’t relate to that stuff any more.”
Her songs are her mantras. “I have to sing them every night and I want them to be positive,” she affirms. “I don’t want to be saying over and over, ‘You dumped me, you’re gonna pay!’ I’ve gone through a lot in my life but I want to come from an empowered place.”
Finding Her Groove
So then, she’s a devotional singer? Well, yes. And no. With chanters like Deva Premal or Krishna Das, there is no question. You know what you’re getting when you go to one of their concerts, and it’s pretty wonderful,
but De Lory takes a different approach. She’s stopped making set lists and instead tunes into what each particular audience wants to hear, blending world music, Sanskrit chants, Christian hymns and pop into a unique alchemical creation that seems to hit listeners just right. The result? Madonna followers love her almost as much as the yoga community does.
De Lory found her voice with the harmonium in devotional music, and that, she says, is her mellow side. But her roots are in dance, and her current project, a remix, has more of a dance beat.
Asked what she’ll play at Lilith Fair this summer (where she is a bit of an anomaly on the program), De Lory says, “I can so see me doing He Ma Durga. This is a female empowering festival and I would preface it with, ‘This is my connection to being a mother and this is my prayer.’ When I first did this song I had just had my baby, I was a single mom. I found He Ma Durga and it was just my mantra. Then I start singing Ave Maria over it, cause this was a piece that my nana always wanted me to sing. She was like my mother, my nurturer, so I’ve made that my divine mother piece.”
Becoming the Mother
Traditional religions could learn a thing or two from De Lory. For her last album, Sanctuary, she took a Christian hymn, mixed it with a kirtan beat and made it a favorite at yoga studios. She sings me a line or two, nods a few bars and explains, as if it should be perfectly obvious to everyone, “It’s more about the intent, no matter what deity you’re naming. It just gives reference to the idea of embodying more unconditional love and feeling the connection of oneness. I want my music to sum up those simple truths, so when people are singing the songs or chanting along they can just get to that place. It opens your heart to that yummy stuff. Forgiveness. Surrendering.”
Asked if she has a guru, De Lory replies, “Many.” Among them are surely her two adored children, integrative medicine M.D. husband Robert, and perhaps Amma. “Amma has come to me in my dreams and they always say that’s a sign that it’s your guru,” she says, seemingly equivocating. “In my dream I somehow had big wings and she told me I needed to open my wings and inside them was food, and I needed to draw people in and feed them. But it was all a metaphor. It was as if she were saying, ‘You’re the nurturer. The mother.’”
It wasn’t always that way. Perhaps because she stumbled into adulthood without a mother, being a nurturer had never appealed to her. “I grew up wanting to have a big career and be out in the world,” she says. “It was more male energy, conquer the world.” And then . . . “I’m sitting in a Hong Kong club and have to go do my dance thing and I’m not going to run into anyone who loves me or cares about me,” she remembers, sounding suddenly very young. “So much illusion. I had a hit but I was so unhappy. Everything I thought I wanted was really empty.”
Not long after that, she tells me, she was at Madonna’s studio one night with her seven-month-old baby. “Madonna was talking about her career and stuff going on with her family, not sleeping, family life being sacrificed, and I asked her, ‘Is it worth it?’ “And I expected her to tell me her thing.
“And she looked right back at me and said, ‘You need to ask yourself that.’
“She just nailed me. I was always comparing myself to her, thinking that was my road, and it was like, No, Donna, we just have to be on our own path.”
