The surprising Indian mystic behind singer Rosalía’s new track
Why Rosalía’s ode to Anandamayi Ma transforms the idea of death into something gentle, floral, and celebratory
When Rosalía dropped her fourth studio album, LUX, she unveiled an spiritual opus that celebrated over 13 different languages, orchestral sounds, and even saints. The album debuted with an astounding 42.1 million first-day streams on Spotify, setting a new record for a Spanish-language female artist.
What makes LUX so special is its conceptual backbone: each track is inspired by a female saint or mystic, and the closing number, “Magnolias”, is explicitly dedicated to the Indian Hindu mystic Anandamayi Ma.
Anandamayi Ma was an Indian saint, teacher, and mystic who was revered as an incarnation of the Hindu goddess Durga and described by Sivananda Saraswati as "the most perfect flower the Indian soil has produced."
When she passed away, her devotees placed flowers on her, feeling peace and bliss rather than just mourning, and Rosalía channels that into her last track of the album, Magnolias, as a farewell that channels transcendence instead of just sorrow.
Rosalía explained in a revealing interview with Zane Lowe that the notion of death, and the ritual around it, has always fascinated her. Talking about Anandamayi Ma, she said, "There was an amazing burial… There were so many flowers… like, it’s crazy. And apparently everybody felt so at peace… apparently everybody was outside… everybody felt so much peace and like joy. And so for me, I was like, wait — this is amazing to know that that happened. And I’m like, how would my burial be? Maybe it’s just about: please don’t be sad when I die. Just please have a party"
In that moment, she also mentions a tattoo in Spanish on her back inspired by her favourite Spanish writer, Manuel Molina, that she translated: “He said ‘nobody should cry the day that I die.’ It’s beautiful to cry, even if you cry with sadness, but still like just have fun, just enjoy.”
In Magnolias, Rosalía, ever the visionary, invites us to look at death and burials as a ceremony that gives way to celebration and petals inspired by Anandamayi Ma.
