From Bali to Tuscany: Why the Setting Is Part of the Teaching

Samā School of Music runs its deepest vocal training as immersive, in-person retreats, Voice of the Beloved in Bali and a sister retreat in Tuscany, Italy, because place itself does part of the teaching. Removal from ordinary routine, sustained beauty in the surroundings, and an unbroken block of shared time all change how a voice opens and how a group learns together, in ways a weekly class or a video library cannot fully reproduce.

A question worth asking honestly: does it actually matter where you learn to sing? Couldn't the same lessons happen in a rented studio down the road? The short answer is that content is portable, but transformation is not always. A raag (a melodic framework) can be taught anywhere. What is harder to manufacture in a normal week is the condition under which a voice, and a room full of voices, actually lets go.

Why does the setting matter for vocal training at all?

Singing well, and especially singing freely, is not purely technical. Fear, self-consciousness, and habit live in the body as much as in the vocal folds. A student can know the correct akaar (open-vowel voice training) shape and still not produce it, because the nervous system is holding tension that has nothing to do with technique. Removing someone from their usual environment, their usual chair, their usual week of emails and errands, changes what the body is willing to do. This is not a new idea. Traditional music education across most oral traditions assumed a change of context: students left home to live near a teacher, sometimes for years, precisely because ordinary life kept interrupting the deeper work.

What does a retreat make possible that a weekly class cannot?

Three things, mainly.

Unbroken time. A single two-hour class ends just as a voice starts to open. A retreat runs across four, five, six days or more, which means the group gets to keep going past the point where a normal class would have to stop. Riyaz (daily practice) compounds across consecutive days in a way it does not across a single weekly session with six days of ordinary life in between.

Removal from routine. Nobody is checking email between sessions. Nobody is rushing home to make dinner. The absence of the usual list of obligations is not incidental, it is structural: it is what allows full attention, and full attention is what akaar training, raga (the higher-volume Western search spelling of raag) work, and ensemble singing actually require to land.

A held container. A retreat has a beginning and an end, a group that stays together for its duration, and a teacher who is present throughout rather than for one hour a week. That container, more than any single exercise, is often what lets a guarded singer finally sing out loud in front of others. Community over solo practice is not a slogan here, it is the mechanism: a room of people singing the same phrase together, day after day, builds trust faster than almost anything else.

Why Bali for Voice of the Beloved?

Bali offers a landscape that does not resemble most students' everyday lives, and that contrast is doing real work. Rice terraces, open-air spaces, a slower daily rhythm, and a place with its own long history of devotional and ceremonial music create an atmosphere where singing does not feel like a performance to get through, it feels native to the place. Voice of the Beloved is built around several days of shared akaar practice, raag study, and group chanting, held in that setting on purpose. The goal is not a Bali vacation with singing attached. The goal is a container beautiful and quiet enough that a voice that has spent years protecting itself finally has a reason to stop.

Why add a retreat in Tuscany, Italy?

Tuscany offers a different kind of beauty and a different kind of remove, hill towns, long light, an old-world quiet that many Western students find easier to travel to than Southeast Asia. The Tuscany retreat runs on the same underlying premise as its Bali counterpart: that sustained beauty in the surroundings, paired with unbroken time and a held group, changes what is possible in a voice. Two settings, two continents, one teaching approach. Students choose based on what is reachable for them and what calls to them, not because the training itself is different.

Do you need to already sing well, or come from a South Asian background, to attend?

No, on both counts. These retreats regularly include gospel singers, R&B and pop vocalists, worship leaders, hip-hop artists, kirtan (call-and-response devotional chanting) leaders, and complete beginners who have never sung outside a car before. You do not need to speak Hindi or Urdu, and you do not need South Asian heritage. The training draws on Hindustani vocal technique and Sufi devotional practice, but the aim is to grow any singer's voice and creative range, in whatever genre they already work in. What is required is willingness to be in a room with other people and sing.

Is the retreat about the location, or about something else?

About something else, with the location as the condition that makes it possible. The actual work is lineage-based: guru-shishya parampara (the unbroken master-to-student teaching lineage), the oral transmission of raag, taal (a rhythm cycle), and akaar by ear and by presence, not primarily from a page. Written notation exists in this tradition too, most commonly through the Bhatkande system (swarlipi, the standard written notation for Hindustani music), but the retreat's real engine is direct, in-person teaching across consecutive days. Bali and Tuscany are chosen because they support that engine, not because a retreat needs a scenic backdrop to sell.

What happens after a retreat ends? Does the training continue?

Many students bring retreat practices home into a regular riyaz routine, and some go on to deeper study through courses such as Harmonium Mastery or Creative Musical Mastery, which extend specific technical or creative threads a retreat can only open. Others return to a retreat in a later year to go further with the same group dynamic that helped them the first time. The Vocal Artistry Library also gives retreat alumni and other students a way to keep working with recorded material between in-person sessions, though it is understood as a supplement to community learning, not a replacement for it.

How does someone decide if a retreat is the right entry point?

For most people, it is not the first step. The usual path is to try a free lesson from the Musical Wisdom masterclass series first, get a feel for the teaching approach and the voice, and let curiosity build from there. Some students move fairly quickly from that first lesson toward Voice of the Beloved once they know they want the immersive, in-person version of the training. Others take courses for a while first. There is no required order, only an honest starting point: a free lesson, taken without obligation, before deciding whether the deeper, in-person path is the right next move.

Frequently asked questions

How long does the Voice of the Beloved retreat run? Retreat length varies by season and offering; check the Voice of the Beloved page for current dates. Retreats are structured as multi-day immersions rather than single-day events, which is central to how they work.

Is prior singing experience required for either retreat? No. Both the Bali and Tuscany retreats welcome complete beginners alongside experienced singers across genres, including gospel, R&B, pop, worship, and hip-hop, as well as kirtan leaders.

What is the difference between the Bali retreat and the Tuscany retreat? The teaching approach and lineage are the same; the settings differ. Bali offers a Southeast Asian landscape and atmosphere, Tuscany offers an Italian hill-country setting. Students typically choose based on travel logistics and personal draw to one location.

Do I need to speak Hindi, Urdu, or Sanskrit to attend? No. Traditional terms are taught with plain-English explanation throughout, and no prior language knowledge is assumed or required.

Is this a religious retreat? The tradition draws on Sufi devotional practice and Hindustani classical music, both of which have devotional roots, but participation does not require adopting any particular faith. Many attendees come purely for the vocal and creative training.

Can I do this training only online, without ever attending a retreat? Yes, courses and the Vocal Artistry Library offer ongoing online study, and many students study this way indefinitely. The retreats exist as a deeper, in-community option for those who want the immersive version, not as a mandatory step.

Why does group singing in a retreat setting feel different from a normal class? Consecutive days of shared practice, removal from ordinary routine, and a consistent group build trust and momentum that a single weekly class interrupted by a normal week does not allow time to develop.

What should a first-time retreat attendee expect to happen to their voice? Every voice responds differently, but many students describe a loosening of habitual tension and more freedom in sustained singing by the retreat's later days, consistent with what sustained akaar (open-vowel voice training) practice over consecutive days tends to produce.

Written by the teaching team at Samā School of Music, founded by Tahir Qawwal and Alexandra Amïe Lyons, initiated into the lineage of Ustad Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan through Ustad Dildar Hussain and creators of the award-winning documentary Music of the Mystics.