Baul- The Folk Music of Bengal - Page 7

Originally posted by: ad_0112

Thanku Barnalidi..😃... Kintu ebar "lau-chingri" payi kothai ?😉😆

Shetaar jonne to to ebaar tomake aamaar kachhe ashte hobe Adi 😆 ta chhara kono upaye neyi.😆

 

Historically, it is not easy to trace the root of Bengali music back to very old times, but it has experienced a wide variation. Like music from any part of the world, Bengali music can be classified into different categories. Here is an effort :

Folks Songs
Baul - songs sung by a specific group of people known as Bauls.
*Purnadas Baul, Prahlad Brahmachari Bhatiali - mostly the songs of the boatmen. S.D.Burman did lots of experiment with these tunes and applied them in popular modern songs. Kirtan -  religious songs usually sung in chorus. *Chhabi Bandyopadhyay
• Others - there are all different kinds of country songs with different anonymous origins. * Nirmalendu Choudhury, Angsuman Roy, Runa Laila, Abbasuddin, Amar Pal, Swapan Bose
Majlishi Classical Songs - thungri, toppa *Ramkumar Chattopadhyay Classical Music
Vocal - Kheyal, different ragas. *Ajay Chakrabarty, Gnanprakash Ghosh, Chinmay Lahiri, Prasun Banerjee, Girija Devi, Shyamal Lahiri, Rashid Khan, Ahsish Khan
• Instrumental - Sitar, Sarod, Flute, Tabla *Ravi Shankar, Nikhil Banerjee, Budhaditya Mukherjee, Monilal Nag 
Devotional Songs - Ramprasadi, ShyamaSangeet, Bhaktigeeti *Pannalal Bhattacharya Rabindra Sangeet - songs written and tuned by Rabindranath Tagore
* Kanika Banerjee, Suchitra Mitra, Debabrata Biswas, Arghya Sen, Asoktaru Banerjee, Ritu Guha,Chinmoy Chatterjee, Dwijen Mukherjee, Pankaj Kumar Mallick, Purabi Dutta, Sailajananda Majumdar, Rajeswari Dutta, Rezwana Banya Choudhury, Sanjeeda Khatun,  Purba Dam, Bani Thakur, Sumitra Sen, Hemanta Mukherjee, Sagar Sen, Nilima Sen, Subinoy Roy Najrul Geeti - songs written by Kazi Nazrul Islam * Firoza Begum, Krishna Chatterjee, Anjali Mukherjee, Dhiren Bose, Manabendra Mukherjee, Anup Ghosal, Satinath Mukherjee, Tarun Banerjee, Dhananjoy Bhattacharya,  Atulprasadi, Dwijendrageeti, Rajanikanta Sen - patriotic, devotional and modern songs * Krishna Chatterjee, Anjali Mukherjee General Modern Bengali Songs : Film and non-film songs
* Hemanta Mukherjee, Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukherjee, Shyamal Mitra, Arati Mukherjee, Kishore Kumar, Sachin Dev Burman, Asha Bhosle, Lata Mangeshkar, Satinath Mukherjee, Jaganmoy Mitra,  Ganasangeet : generally sung in chorus carrying some social message 
* Ajit Pandey, Ruma Guha Thakurata Jeebanmukhi Gaan : different kind of modern songs * Suman Chatterjee, Anjan Dutta, Nachiketa Chakrabarty, Mousumi Bhowmick, Lopamudra Mitra
• Band : Bengali rock style group. Some of them - Cactus, Paraspathar, Chandrabindoo, Bhumi.

         Please vist the link for Bangala information

• http://www.calcuttaweb.com/gaan/music.htm 

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

Thanx qwest... here's one more.


Jaan Sufi, Jaan Baul


Jaan Baul - the heart of Baul. Bapi Das Baul's pedigree is peerless. In his family history, he represents the eighth generation to follow the Baul path of "unsense", to keep faith with the Baul phisolophy of ulta and to keep it alive in song. Ulta carries the sense of the haywire and topsyturvy, the reverse or the wrong way round. Ulta is a word that perfectly captures the themes of reversal in Baul philosphy. The Bauls are a clan of itinerant or sometimes settled minstrels and mystical storytellers. Both sexes belong to it. Although many Bauls have been settled for generations their stories in song journey on. They are madcaps, in the hallowed sense of touched by the divine. Baul madness communicates a personal spirituality with mystic overtones most sweetly. They do it without the need of priestcraft.

If literature lives by interpretation, the power of an oral tradition thrives in the imagination of its listeners, in its ability to communicate. Baul lyrics can be maddeningly unambiguous or elusive. They can operate on different levels, dishing up riddle and allegory. They can sound nonsensical to anyone not on their wavelenght but can equally communicate to anyone who listens even if they are unaware of its deeper symbolism. Images of a calf suckling its mother or rain falling from earth to sky can sound like unadulerated Dadism or or absurdist profundity. Images of the lotus can conjure Tantric Buddhism. References to Hindu or Muslim scriptures can pull in a crowd like the whip crack of a circus ringmaster. Baul philosophy feeds these storyteller's imaginations as they go about seeking the divine within the human.

For centuries the Bauls have been emblematic in Bengali culture, living on the fringes of society, whether mainstream Hindu or Muslim society. To Bengalis and beyond they represent an alternative or non-conformist way of looking at divinity and life. For many in Bengali society, they are no longer figures of fun or fellows to mock as they once were in cultivated Calcutta circles. The Bauls have become the gatekeepers to Wonderland. Bapi's family has a lot to do with that, for members of their family were the among the first to carry the Baul message abroad, beyond present-day Bengal and Bangladesh.

Bapi's grandfather was Nabani Das. Nabani Das was one of the several Bauls who were associated with Bengal's greatest Man of Letters of the 20th Century, Rabindranath Tagore (1888-1961). Tagore received international recognition in 1913 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. For Bengalis, in a subcontinent saddled with empire, the Bengali Renaissance was a matter of cultural pride. Tagore saw the beauty in Baul song and sensibility. It was an audacious, radical and far-sighted move. After Tagore came out as their champion, poking fun at Baul ways increasingly became seen as the sign of ignorance it was. Later Bengali musicians such as Allauddin Khan and his disciples, his son Ali Akbar khan, his brother-in-law Ravi Shankar and Nikhil Banerjee all reworked Baul melodicism. In a culture riven with caste inequities the Baul way, like the Sikh way, defied Brahmanic absolutism - even if Indians still grade people on caste lines in denial of their faith - and united Hindu and Muslim in societies in which Baul, Hindu or Sufi mysticism is found.

Kshitimohan Sen, who arrived at Shantiniketan - Tagore's 'Haven of Peace' -in 1908, became, as Shashibhusan Das Gupta put it in the 1946, "a pioneer in collecting the Baul songs and in popularising them among the elite of our country." Bapi's grandfather too gravitated to Shantiniketan. Bapi recalls that Tagore earmarked "a big bodhi tree" - banyan tree - there for his grandfather. In its shade Nabani Das could illuminate, entertain and enlighten Tagore. Or, to invoke a later expression, could simply do his thing, the Baul thing.

Tagore, "the Greatest of the Bauls of Bengal", as the American scholar Edward C. Dimock once described him, was fascinated not only by Bengali high culture but also the poetry of everyday people. Baul song and philosophy flavoured Tagore's creative juices. Supposedly Nabani Das inspired several archetypal Baul characters in Tagore's work. "People called him a khepa Baul, Khepa Baul Nabani Das," Bapi laughs. Khepa means madcap." Nabani Das was not the sole Baul influence, of course. The composer Lalon Fakir - also known as Lalon Shah - also played an enormous role, as did Baul lyricism generally. Faqir, as the word is better spelled, means a self-denying, devout man of God. Tagore put khepa Bauls on the international map. Tagore, who influenced generations of Bengalis with his early nationalism and subsequent cosmopolitanism, also instilled a pride and a new-found interest in the Bauls.

The influence proved two-way, for Baul singers absorbed Tagore's songs into their bloodstream besides works attributed to Lalon Shah and Kabir.

Bapi's father Purnachandra Das was no less an influence. He and his brother Luxman would carry the Baul to other shores in person. Allen Ginsberg, told me in September 1996, shortly before his death next year, how he "spent a lot of time with [the Bauls] up in Northern Bengal" while there between March 1962 and May 1963. Ginsy remembered Purna Das and Nabani Das fondly. " took down some of Nabani Das's lyrics - on-spot translations - and they're included in a book called Indian Journals." It didn't end there. In 1967 the President of India, Dr. Rajendra Prasad conferred the title Baul Samrat or Emperor of the Bauls on Purna Das. Purna Das achieved a different sort of paper immortality when Bob Dylan placed him on the cover on his John Wesley Harding in 1968. That is him as Dylan's right-hand man. In an era when Indians were as likely to be red as dressed in saffron, it took a while to restore the mysterious, grainy grey character to colour.

Paradoxes abound on the Baul path. Baul songs are ecstatic communications with the divine within ourselves. The human is the Divine. Listening to Subhendu Das sing Sufi-inspired songs does not contradict the traditional Baul search of the Man of the Heart - Maner Manush, the ideal within us, so close and yet so far that it entails a lifetime's search. "If you know yourself," Subhendu clarifies, "then you understand other people. If you don't know yourself then you can't know other people properly. That is part of our philosophy also. First you learn about yourself, then you find out what makes other people tick and from that develops a love of everybody. When you have a love for yourself then you have a love for everybody. Otherwise you are selfish, you love yourself that little bit more and do not respect your fellow man. We are all equal. If you listen to Baul songs," he offers, "if you learn about Baul philosophy, no religion exists. There is no Hinduism. There is no God. No mosque. There is only one thing: the human. Nothing exists without the human." Jaan Sufi itself means 'The Heart of Sufi'. It has another meaning in Bengali: Understand Sufi.

Sat, 25 Feb 2006 03:39:29 -0800

On 19 th february Mr Subhash Chakrabarti, the sports and transport
minister of West Bengal Govt inaugruated The 104 birth anniversary of
lok kavi Vijoy sarkar who with his melodious folklyrics stregthened
the heritage of Bengali folk culture accross the border. The lata
Mangeshkar of Bangladesh, the daughter of legendary Abbasuddin,Ms
firdausi Rehman was the guest of honour. Both Mr Chakrabarti and Ms
Rehman insisted to maintain the rich folk heritage to face the
dangers of globalisation. They said that only our folk can save our
mother language. They deplored the consumer deculturisation and
refered the Bangla Matribhash Struggle.Bangladesh TV star Nishad
kamal, vetern artists Amar Paul and Sanjeet Mandal and a number of
folk artists sang the songs of Vijay sarkar and Abbasuddin.

Director of Dhaka Bangla Academy Mr Shaqurrehaman informed the
audiance about the research worksof the academy on Vijay Sarkar in
particular and Bangla folk in general. Deputy Registrar of Kolkata Univarsity Dr Nitish Biswas, novelist Mr  Kapil krishna Thakur,Chair person of Pather Panchaly Mrs  RamalaChakrabarti,kvi manoranjan Sarkar wer other dignitariespresent on the dias in Salt Lake Yuva Bharati Stadium.
Main function was celebrated in keutia on Kalyani highway,at the
residence of lokkavi Vijay sarkar on 20th and 21st Feb.All the artists performed there, too. Prticularly, the forgotten Jari Gaan was sung by Mr rousan Ali, the son of thelegendari Jaari singer Moslem, Mr saiful and party.

Palash Biswas

CULTURAL AND FOLKLORE HERITAGE
2002 Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS)
CULTURAL AND FOLKLORE HERITAGE

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

The word Baul comes from the Sanskrit "Batul", which means mad. Yet this not to be understood literally. The Baul is "mad" because of his way of life and phisophy. This "madness" is his aim. He seeks for it and takes it as a guide on the path of life. He must be one with everything he meets on his way: in listening to a song, smelling a perfume, tasting a flavour, looking at a landscape, caressing a fabric; the five senses unite to touch the most intimate depths of the heart and soul to link him deeply with the Universe wich emcompasses him. As sugar mixed with the water dissolves and is no more distinct from the water, so the Baul is enveloped by the whole of Creation. "There are no treasures than those found within oneself."
	The Baul doesn't have a home because he is at home everywhere, every country can be his homeland; he make no differences between castes, people and races. Bauls are originally from low social levels and as minstrels, travelling from village to village, they don't own so much and don't go to school, they are often illiterate. But far from being uneducated they display a tremendous storehous of oral knowledge: sacred scriptures, mythologies, secular literature and folklore. Their songs are also enriching sources for understanding of the human and the world in wich we live.
The richness of their tradition expresses itself on every face, at every moment, in every place. Hardly anything is writen down; it is all passed from guru to disciple, from one generation to the next. Evolving according to the whims of times, situations and people. Where, when and how these gems surface has a little to do with an intellectually logical process and much more to do with emotional inspiration and the feelings of the heart. It is not through a flood of information but with a native intelligence that it seems possible to deal and play with a vast array of emotions. Bauls often say that unless one pokes into a fruit, its juice will never flow out. But the main training of a Baul is Sadhana: meditation, yoga. Bauls practice the Aarope Sadhana: the yoga of breathing. In controlling the air you breath, you understand the working of your body, nerves and five senses. You can attain to knowledge of yourself and others, of the human, of Maner Manush: the soul. Some explain the meaning of the word Baul by the Sanskrit and Bengali word: "Bayou" wich means air. Those who practise this yoga of controlling the air are Baul. This knowledge can't be gained without the help of yourself: the Bindu: the Soul, Being itself. Many poets and philosophers have written texts for the Bauls. The most famous is Rabindranath Tagore who has been very influenced by their music and philosophy and who has composed a lot songs. But the Bauls have no time for intellectualisation, preferring to express fundamental truths directly and poetically. Above all Bauls are "knowers" free from dogma. Thought most Bauls are deeply religious, they rarely follow any fixed doctrine, and the unique example of religious integration in a country where violent hostility often erupts between Muslims and hindus. Thought there are many differences of terminology, religious observance and social milieu between the Hindu and Muslim Bauls, there is a common spirit that unites them. Both respect the essential truths of Islam and Hinduism, and yet discard those aspects wich separate the two religions. "If human beings are the common denominator in every religion, then love humanity ?" There are several movements inside the Hindu Baul community. The Vaishnavas, adepts of the Radha-Krishna cult. The love-dalliance of Radha and Krishna is not just an ancient myth, it is an eternal theme where the feminine principle at its purest (Radha), the insatiable and selfless passion of the devotee for her Beloved answers to the masculine principle (Krishna), of bliss and ecstatic love. The sublime delight of their love-mysticism and the rich symbolism of their poetry wich has inspired the Bauls. For these too, God is hidden within human beings and Spirit within the flesh. The freedom of thinking of Tantrism and its doctrine concerning the role of the Guru in the secrets of yogic practices has also influenced the Bauls. The Tantrism in Bengal, with the worship of Kali and Shiva, is very emotional and has inspired a lot of Bauls songs. It is also important to mention the influence of Buddhism in the baul movement. The Bauls, as minstrels, were carriers of news, information and teaching. When arriving in a village they were given lodging and food during their stay by the population until the attraction of wandering took them somewhere else. Through their music and philosophy they gave joy comfort and advice. Those times are now passed and Bauls are generally musicians like others, giving concerts. Their social status knew a golden time when Rabindranath Tagore became so interested in them. Today, a lot of musicians improvise and present themselves as Bauls but their attachment to this movement is limited to the songs they play. Yet, the tradition does not seem threatened: the best proof is the interest it receives world-wide.

http://baulbishwa.free.fr/baulbis2.htm
Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

The Bauls are mystic minstrels living in rural Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. The Baul movement was at its peak in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and has now become popular again among the rural population of Bangladesh. Their music and way of life have influenced a large swath of Bengali culture, most powerfully the compositions of Rabindranath Tagore. Bauls live either near a village or travel from village to village and earn their living from singing to the accompaniment of the ektara, a simple one-stringed instrument, and a drum called dubki. Bauls belong to an unorthodox devotional tradition, which has been influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, Bengali Vasinavism and Sufi Islam, yet it is distinctly different from these. Bauls do not identify themselves with any organised religion nor with the caste system, special deities, temples or sacred places. Their emphasis lies on the importance of a person's physical body as the place where God resides. Bauls are admired for this freedom from convention as well as their music and poetry. Baul poetry, music, song and dance are devoted to finding man's relationship with God, and to achieving spiritual liberation. Their devotional songs can be dated back to the fifteenth century when they first appeared in Bengali literature.  Baul music represents a particular type of folk song, carrying influences of Hindu bhakti movements as well as the shuphi, a form of Sufi song. It is mainly sung in open air amidst the village audience. Songs are also used for instruction by the guru to teach his disciple in Baul philosophy, being transmitted orally from singer to singer. The language of the songs is continuously modernized thus giving it current relevance and meaning. The maintenance of the Baul songs and the general context in which they are performed depend mainly on the social and economic situation of their practitioners, the Bauls. These have always been a relatively marginalized group, but their situation has worsened in recent decades due to the general impoverishment of rural Bangladesh. Village people as the main audience for Baul poets no longer have the means to support Bauls with part of their earnings.

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

Jibonto Kingbodonti - Baul Shah Abdul Karim

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

DOTAR     The dotar (literally meaning ''two strings''), is the instrument par excellence of the bakhshi. It comes from a family of long-necked lutes and can be found throughout Central Asia, the Middle East and as far as the North East of China in Xinjiang. Its ancestor is probably the "tanbur of Khorasan" as depicted by Al Farabi (10th century) in his essay Kitab~Al-Musiqi Al-Kabir. Maraqi (15th century) in his Jame~Ol Alhan also describes two types of two-string tanbur: one which he calls the tanbur of Shirvan (a region in the south east of the Caucasus) and another which is the Turkish tanbur.  In Iran, the dotar is played mainly in the north and the east of Khorasan as well as among the Turkmen of Gorgan and Gonabad. The instrument remains the same but its dimensions and the number of its ligatures vary slightly from region to region. Two types of wood are used in the fabrication of the dotar. The pear-shaped body is carved out of a single block of mulberry wood. Its neck is made of either the wood of the apricot or the walnut tree.  It has two steel strings, which in the past were made of silk or animal entrails. Thus, Haj Ghorban Soleimani's dotar used to have silk strings which he replaced in the 60s with strings of steel because they are more resistant.  The dotar is tuned in fourth or fifth intervals. The frets, made in the past from animal guts, have been replaced by nylon or steel which have the advantage of being more resilient and less expensive. They are placed in chromatic progression.  The technique for playing the dotar consists of plucking the strings without a plectrum, following a descending and an ascending movement which involves the index and often several other fingers. The music is ornamented by the rapid repetition of notes (tremolo). Often, in order to fortify the fingers, they are soaked in henna. ''When the harvest season comes'', says Haj Ghorban Soleimani, "we get up at dawn and cut the wheat by hand from morning till night. It hardens the skin on the fingers. That's when you should hear me play."  Ameneh Yousefzadeh, August 1995

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago

 
  TANBUR
 
 
 
  The tanbur is the ancestor to most long-necked, plucked stringed instruments. Its pear shaped belly is normally carved out of one piece of mullberry wood with a long neck and fourteen gut frets. Some modern tanburs are made of bent ribs of mulberry wood. The sound board, 3-4 millimeters thick, is also made of mulberry wood which has numerous small holes for better resonance.  The tanbur has a unique playing technique by which the strings are strummed with the fingers of the right hand to produce a very full and even tremolo called shorr (literally meaning the pouring of water). This technique along with various kinds of plucking, usually with the index and pinky fingers, enables the musicians to produce different effects and various rhythmic accentuations which imitate the natural sounds of their environment such as a running stream, a water fall, a bird chirping or a horses' gallop, all translated into musical rhythms and sounds.  The ancient tanbur used to have two silk or in some instances gut strings tuned in 4th or 5th, similar to the dotar (meaning two stringed), its close relative widely used in Eastern Iran. It has also been regarded as the tanbur of Khorasan in literary texts. Although these two instruments share a similar history and are basically the same, they have developed their own repertoires, playing techniques and functions. According to the master instrument maker Ustad Mehdi Kamalian the name tanbur is taken from the word tandur or tanur, meaning clay oven, as early instrument makers dried tree trunks chosen to carve the belly in tanours for several hours in order to perfect the sound. Gradually the instrument took on the name tanbur.  The present tanbur has three strings and covers the range of one octave and two notes. The lower pair of strings, made of steel, are tuned in unison normally anywhere from a (flat) to b and are fingered together functioning as the melody strings. The top string made of copper or brass, slightly thicker, tuned in lower fourth or fifth, functions as a sympathetic string with occasional fingering by the thumb.  The tanbur has always been considered a sacred instrument associated with the Kurdish Sufi music of Western Iran and it is believed that its repertoire is based on ancient Persian music. Up until the last fifty years this instrument was used only during djamm gatherings (devotional or liturgic ceremonies) of the Ahle-Haqq (the people of truth), followers of a particular Sufi order. 

Text by Kayhan Kalhor, Spring 1997

Edited by Qwest - 17 years ago