Copyright by Benjamin Samuel Krakauer 2014

The Dissertation Committee for Benjamin Samuel Krakauer Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation:

Negotiations of Modernity, Spirituality, and Bengali Identity in

Contemporary Bāul-Fakir Music

Committee:

Stephen Slawek, Supervisor

Charles Capwell

Kaushik Ghosh

Kathryn Hansen

Robin Moore

Sonia Seeman Negotiations of Modernity, Spirituality, and Bengali Identity in

Contemporary Bāul-Fakir Music

by

Benjamin Samuel Krakauer, B.A.Music; M.A.

Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin May 2014

Dedication

This work is dedicated to all of the Bāul-Fakir musicians who were so kind, hospitable, and encouraging to me during my time in West Bengal. Without their friendship and generosity this work would not have been possible. জয় 巁쇁! Acknowledgements

I am grateful to many friends, family members, and colleagues for their support, encouragement, and valuable input. Thanks to my parents, Henry and Sarah Krakauer for proofreading my chapter drafts, and for encouraging me to pursue my academic and artistic interests; to Laura Ogburn for her help and suggestions on innumerable proposals, abstracts, and drafts, and for cheering me up during difficult times; to Mark and Ilana

Krakauer for being such supportive siblings; to Stephen Slawek for his valuable input and advice throughout my time at UT; to Kathryn Hansen for her helpful suggestions during the planning stages of my research; to Charles Capwell for agreeing to serve as a member of my dissertation committee and for laying the groundwork for my scholarship; to Robin

Moore and Sonia Seeman for serving as members of my committee and for their stimulating graduate seminars at UT; to Kaushik Ghosh for agreeing to serve as a member of my committee even before we became properly acquainted; to Sally

Grossman and Baul Archive for bringing me to India to take part in the “Rabindranath

Tagore and the Bauls” conference at Visva-Bharati University in 2012; to Fulbright for awarding me a U.S. Student Fulbright Award in 2012-2013; to Debasish Mandal at

Rabindra Bharati University for generously serving as my academic supervisor in India during the tenure of my Fulbright Fellowship; to the Society for Asian Music for awarding me a Small Grant in 2012; to UT for awarding me a Foreign Language and

Area Studies Summer Fellowship in 2012; to Rukan Uddin for helping me in my initial

v Bengali language studies; to Protima Dutt, Prasenjit Dey, and Subir Sarkar at the

American Institute of Indian Studies in Kolkata for helping me in my continuing Bengali language studies; to Aditi Sirkar and Kārtik Dās Bāul for putting me in touch with so many Bāul-Fakir musicians; to H. L. Seneviratne for introducing me to the films of

Satyajit Ray, and thus sparking my interest in Bengal; to Vishal Nayak and Tajdar Junaid for first introducing me to Bāul-Fakir music; to Parjanya Sen, Arko Mukherjee, Soumik

Datta, Sudipto Chatterjee, Abhishek Banerjee, Santanu Datta and so many others for being such valuable resources in all things Bengali; to Diptanshu Roy and Karishma

Siddique Roy for providing me with a home away from home in Kolkata; to Jeanne

Openshaw for her input and encouragement during the early stages of my field research; to Carola Lorea for being such a generous resource on Bāul-Fakir studies; to all of my lovely friends in Santiniketan and Kolkata (and America); and especially to all of my

Bāul-Fakir friends for their hospitality, humor, and patience with the odd bideśī in their midst: Choṭa Golam and Mallikā Fakir, Rīnā and Dibākar Dās Bāul, Rabi and Minati Dās

Bāul, Lāl Chānd Fakir, Ābdul Hālim, Āl Āmin Fakir, Nūr Mohāmmad, Āmirul Fakir and family, Mansur Fakir and family, Bāsudeb Dās Bāul and family, Debdās Bāul and family,

Lakṣmaṇ Dās Bāul and family, and too many others to mention.

vi Negotiations of Modernity, Spirituality, and Bengali Identity in

Contemporary Bāul-Fakir Music

Benjamin Samuel Krakauer, PhD The University of Texas at Austin, 2014

Supervisor: Stephen Slawek

Bāul-Fakirs are a heterogeneous group of Bengali musicians and spiritual practitioners known for their humanist spirituality and their rejection of caste and religious discrimination. In recent decades, Bāul-Fakir music has undergone dramatic changes as it has gained in popularity among affluent audiences. I explore the ways in which modernity, spirituality, and Bengali identity are negotiated in the performance and reception of Bāul-Fakir music in West Bengal. To many affluent Bengalis, the music is a sonic representation of a homegrown tradition of liberalism, communal tolerance, and social critique that predates the secular reforms of the colonial and post-colonial eras;

Bāul-Fakirs occupy an especially prominent place in the self-imagination of many

Bengali intellectuals and artists who appropriate signifiers of Bāul-Fakir identity in constructing their own countercultural identities. To many working-class Bengalis, Bāul-

Fakir music is but one of many local entertainment forms, and is best received when performed with the instrumentation and electronically mediated timbres of mainstream commercial music. For Bāul-Fakirs themselves, the music fills a variety of roles: it is a

vii professional livelihood, an important aspect of spiritual life, and an enjoyable recreational activity. In addition to addressing the presentational Bāul-Fakir music acknowledged by other scholars, I also shed light on the Bāul-Fakir participatory music, unexplored in previous literature, that thrives in isolated, predominantly Muslim villages of West

Bengal along the India-Bangladesh border. I observe a strong correlation between five socio-cultural factors and the presence of this participatory music, and I suggest that similar factors correlate with participatory music-making elsewhere in South Asia. I also explore the changes that have occurred in one village in this area where a preservationist

NGO has recently been active. The musicians of this area have become embraced as

“authentic” alternatives to professionalized “Hindu” Bāuls, but the community has experienced negative side effects with the influx of urban visitors. Finally, I address some previously unexamined features of Bāul-Fakir music. I discuss the use of polyrhythm, elasticity of phrasing, odd meters, unique melodic modes, and variable intonation. I also provide the first published transcriptions illustrating the range of instrumental configurations found in contemporary Bāul-Fakir music.

viii Table of Contents

List of Figures ...... xiii

Chapter One: An Ethnomusicological Approach to Bāul-Fakir Music in Contemporary West Bengal ...... 1 Thesis ...... 2 Broader Relevance ...... 5 Bāul-Fakir Music and (West-) Bengali National Identity...... 6 Historical Background on Bāul-Fakirs ...... 8 A Brief Overview of Bāul-Fakir Religion ...... 12 On the Disclosure of Esoteric Practices ...... 14 My Usage of the Designation Bāul-Fakir ...... 15 My Usage of the Terms Folk and Tradition ...... 19 A Brief Review of Scholarly Literature on Bāul-Fakirs ...... 20 On a Music-Centered Approach to Bāul-Fakir Studies ...... 21 Tradition of Performance as Alms Gathering ...... 24 Fieldwork Methodology...... 25 Chapter Summary ...... 31

Chapter Two: Bāul-Fakir Music in and around Birbhum District ...... 39 Introduction ...... 39 Original Contributions in this Chapter ...... 39 Chapter Outline ...... 41 Towards a Balance of Authenticity and Entertainment ...... 42 Professional Music-Making in the Santiniketan Area ...... 45 Non-contracted Work...... 46 Contracted Work ...... 52 Performances at Guesthouses and Private Residences ...... 52 Performances at Pūjas ...... 53 Performances at Melās ...... 55 Performances at Arts Centers ...... 55 ix Performances Abroad...... 58 Collaborations with Urban Artists ...... 58 Government-Commissioned Work ...... 59 Professional Bāul-Fakirs as Hosts for Visitors and Potential Patrons .60 Visits with DDB ...... 60 Visits with BDB Bāul ...... 64 Professional Bāul-Fakir Musicians outside of Santiniketan ...... 66 Professional Bāul-Fakir Musicians and the Politics of the Middle-Class Lifestyle ...... 68 Fakirs as Commercial Musicians in the Birbhum Area ...... 72 A Visit With NM ...... 73 Bāul-Fakirs and Lower- and Working-Class Audiences ...... 77 Performances at Ritually Significant Bāul-Fakir Events ...... 80 Participatory Music-Making in Birbhum ...... 83

Chapter Three: Bāul-Fakir Participatory Music-Making near the India-Bangladesh Border ...... 88 Participatory Aspects of Bāul-Fakir Music-Making ...... 90 Social Factors that Correlate with Participatory Music-Making ...... 92 Musical Life in Jhauria, Murshidabad ...... 96 Women at Participatory Music Sessions...... 102 Description of Participatory Gatherings in Jhauria ...... 104 Description of Presentational Music in Jhauria ...... 107 On the Bucolic Appeal of Jhauria ...... 109 Musical Life in Lakshmigaccha, Nadia ...... 110 Musical Life in Gorbhanga, Nadia ...... 112 Banglanatak dot com and Gorbhanga ...... 112 Participatory Music in Gorbhanga ...... 115 Changes in Gorbhanga with the Increase of Outside Visitors ...... 118 Alcohol and Affluent Visitors to Gorbhanga ...... 120 Conclusion ...... 122

x Chapter Four: Celebrations and Appropriations of Bāul-Fakir Identity ...... 125 Celebratory Conceptions of Bāul-Fakirs ...... 126 Bāul-Fakirs as Romanticized Others ...... 126 Bāul-Fakirs as Spiritual Adepts ...... 129 Bāul-Fakirs as Cultural Critics...... 130 Bāul-Fakirs as Homegrown Bengali Rock Stars ...... 132 Bāul-Fakirs as Bearers of Folkloric Tradition ...... 134 Comparing Two Folk Revivals ...... 135 Case Study: Parvathy Bāul...... 140 Parvathy Bāul and “Modernist Reformism” (Turino 2000:16) ...... 142 Two Performances by Parvathy Bāul ...... 144 Bangla Bands ...... 149 Reflections on My Own Attraction to and Appropriation of Bāul-Fakir Music ...... 151

Chapter Five: Musical Analysis of Bāul-Fakir Music ...... 156 A Note on the Transcription of Bāul-Fakir Music ...... 157 Capwell’s General Theory of Bāul Music ...... 158 “Temporal Organization” (Capwell 1986:115-22) ...... 158 “Pitch Use and Tonality” (Capwell 1986:123-45) ...... 159 “The Structure of Baul-gān and its Realization” (Capwell 1986:146-77) ...... 160 Exploring Further Features in Bāul-Fakir Music ...... 161 Transcriptions and Notes ...... 162 Songs with a Sharped Fourth Degree and no Flatted Seventh Degree163 Indriẏa daman āge karo man ...... 164 Other Songs Without a Flatted Seventh ...... 171 Opār deśiā ...... 171 Sonār mānuṣ āche ekjanā ...... 175 Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh, but not the Flatted Third .....179 Prem karbi ke āẏ ...... 180 Nabī mar paraśamaṇi ...... 183 xi Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe ...... 188 Prem rasikā haba kemane ...... 193 Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh and Third ...... 195 Mānuṣer janye mānuṣ ...... 195 Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh, Third, and Sixth ...... 198 Pāre calo ār belā nāi ...... 198 Āmār ei gharkhānāẏ ke birāj kare ...... 206 Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh, Third, Sixth, and Second ....210 Bidhi kār kapāle ...... 210 Nadī bharā ḍheu ...... 214 Songs in Odd Meters ...... 218 Conclusion ...... 223

Chapter Six: Conclusion ...... 227 Summary ...... 227 A Final Reflection ...... 228

Glossary ...... 232

References ...... 237

xii List of Figures

Figure 1: Indriẏa daman āge karo man ...... 165 Figure 2: Opār deśiā ...... 173 Figure 3: Sonār mānuṣ āche ekjanā ...... 176 Figure 4: Prem karbi ke āẏ...... 181 Figure 5: Nabī mar paraśamaṇi ...... 184 Figure 6: Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe...... 189

Figure 7: Prem rasikā haba kemane ...... 195 Figure 8: Mānuṣer janye mānuṣ ...... 196 Figure 9: Pāre calo ār belā nāi ...... 199 Figure 10: Āmār ei gharkhānāẏ ke birāj kare ...... 207 Figure 11: Bidhi kār kapāle ...... 211 Figure 12: Nadī bharā ḍheu ...... 215 Figure 13: Jāt gela jāt gela bale in 7/8 ...... 219

Figure 14: Jāt gela jāt gela bale in 5/4 ...... 221 Figure 15: Jāt gela jāt gela bale in 3/4 ...... 222

xiii Chapter One: An Ethnomusicological Approach to Bāul-Fakir Music in

Contemporary West Bengal

Bāul-Fakirs are a heterogeneous group of Bengali musicians and spiritual practitioners known for their humanist spirituality and their rejection of caste and religious discrimination. Their religion is comprised of elements of Vaishnava Hinduism,

Sufism, and Sahajīẏā Buddhism, although an individual practitioner may adopt an exoteric identity that is more conventionally Hindu or Muslim.1 Bāul-Fakirs may be either renouncers or householders.2 In some areas, Bāul-Fakirs have faced persecution for their espousal of heterodox beliefs and outspoken social critique. However, Bāul-Fakirs have also been celebrated for their music and philosophy by liberal Bengalis since the late nineteenth century, when they were valorized through the works of Nobel Laureate

Rabindranath Tagore and others (Dimock 1959; Capwell 1986:22; Openshaw 2002:27,

32).3

In recent decades, Bāul-Fakir music has undergone dramatic changes as it has gained in popularity among affluent Bengali and international audiences. In many urbanizing regions, Bāul-Fakir musicians have become professional artists who primarily perform their music at commercial functions. In isolated rural regions, however, many

Bāul-Fakirs maintain livelihoods as farmers, laborers, or mendicants whose musical life centers on impromptu nightly gatherings at spiritual sites such as āśrams, ākhṛās, and mājārs.4 In recent years, a sporadic flow of urban artists, intellectuals, and other travelers

1 have sought out these informal rural musical gatherings as an alternative to commercial

Bāul-Fakir musical events.

THESIS

In my dissertation, I explore the ways in which modernity, spirituality, and

Bengali identity are negotiated in the performance and reception of Bāul-Fakir music. I discuss how the recent commercialization and folklorization of Bāul-Fakir music has resulted in marked discrepancies in the ways that Bengalis of various socio-economic classes perceive Bāul-Fakir music culture, as well as in the ways that Bāul-Fakirs present their music to these various audiences. To many affluent Bengalis, Bāul-Fakir music is a sonic representation of pre-modern rural Bengal and of the homegrown tradition of liberalism, communal tolerance, and social critique that predates the secular reforms of the colonial and post-colonial eras. When affluent Bengalis listen to Bāul-Fakir music, they do so to connect with their “roots” in the folk culture of rural Bengal, to escape from the confines of modern urban life, and to experience the spiritual ecstasy associated with

Bāul-Fakirs. To many working-class Bengalis, however, Bāul-Fakir music is but one of many local entertainment forms, and is best received when performed with the instrumentation and electronically mediated timbres of mainstream commercial music.

For Bāul-Fakirs themselves, the music fills a variety of roles: it is a professional livelihood, an important aspect of spiritual life, and an enjoyable recreational activity.

With the recent surge of performance opportunities at upscale events, Bāul-Fakir musicians have begun to gain glimpses of affluent Bengalis’ privileged lifestyles, and to

2 acquire for themselves some of the material trappings of middle-class life. If Bāul-Fakir music provides affluent Bengalis with an experience of being rooted in a spiritualized past, it provides performers with a pathway towards opportunity and prosperity.

The commodification of Bāul-Fakir music has not provided a pathway to prosperity for all performers, however. The central paradox that I explore throughout this dissertation is as follows: the celebration or ennobling of a “folk tradition” among the affluent classes can be ultimately disempowering to the poor and working-class musical practitioners of that tradition. As conceptions of the tradition become increasingly lofty and abstracted, a gulf emerges between this ideal conception and the harsh reality of poverty, need, and mundane circumstance surrounding the lives of its practitioners. As I illustrate throughout this dissertation, it is the worry-free, joyous, ethereal performer who appears “authentic,” while the humble mendicant, whose poverty and ill health is plain to see, is labeled a fake, motivated by material concerns rather than concerns of the spirit.

In addition to addressing the public dynamics of presentational Bāul-Fakir music,

I also document the existence of a Bāul-Fakir participatory musical tradition that has been unexplored in previous literature.5 Whereas previous scholars have characterized

Bāul-Fakir music as a presentational form with a clear “performer/auditor distinction”

(Capwell 1986:36), I shed light on the Bāul-Fakir participatory music culture that thrives in certain isolated villages of eastern Bengal.6 I demonstrate that changes are underway in this area however, as the gradual exposure to cultural tourism has led to the professionalization of musicians in these areas and to the introduction of presentational elements into local participatory music-making. 3 Throughout my dissertation, as I discuss the various forms, social functions, and conceptions of Bāul-Fakir music in contemporary West Bengal, I utilize both socio- cultural and musicological forms of analysis. I demonstrate that musicological analysis is an indispensible, yet underutilized, tool for examining the presentation, reception, and appropriation of Bāul-Fakirs in public life in West Bengal. Indeed, the last major ethnomusicological study of Bāul-Fakir music (Capwell 1986) was based on fieldwork conducted from 1969 to 1971, before the widespread commercialization of the music. I argue that Bāul-Fakir music is a remarkably rich expressive tradition worthy of renewed study. I address a number of underexamined and unremarked upon features including the diversification of Bāul-Fakir musical repertoire, the specialization and multi-instrumental virtuosity of professional artists, the changes in preferred musical instruments, and the incorporation of “modern” instrumentation and electronic effects in both commercial performances and non-commercial performances arranged for an “insider” community of

Bāul-Fakirs. In addition, I shed light on a range of technical musical phenomena that falls outside of Capwell’s general theory of Bāul-Fakir music (1986). Such phenomena include polyrhythm, elasticity of phrasing, odd meters, unique melodic modes, and the ubiquitous use of variable intonation across the full spectrum of Bāul-Fakir melodic modes. I also provide the first published transcriptions illustrating the range of instrumental configurations found in contemporary Bāul-Fakir music. These transcriptions elucidate the roles of the individual instruments, and showcase the nuanced complexity and diversity of the music. By analyzing the diversity of contemporary Bāul-

Fakir music, I not only shed light on recent and undocumented musical developments, 4 but I also illuminate the ways in which discourses of spirituality, modernity, and Bengali identity inform this music’s presentation and reception.

BROADER RELEVANCE

My research contributes to three major areas of ethnomusicological endeavor and inquiry. First, I address the multiple trajectories of a “folk” tradition during a time of rapid cultural change, as it is mobilized to serve the aesthetic and spiritual needs of a socio-economically diverse audience whose conceptions of the tradition vary widely. I demonstrate that the performers of such a tradition are keenly aware of how their art is valued and understood by various audiences, and that the performers are active agents in the development of new expressive forms of the tradition. Moreover, I discuss how the efforts to preserve or protect such a tradition can yield unexpected or contrary results. I provide one vivid example in Chapter Four in which the interventions of aficionados and activists in search of “authentic” pockets of tradition have had harmful effects on the very tradition they seek to document and preserve.

Second, I contribute to the ethnomusicological scholarship on non-liturgical7 spiritual participatory music in South Asia8 by proposing five socio-cultural factors that strongly correlate with participatory Bāul-Fakir music-making in West Bengal. I suggest that these factors correlate with the participatory music-making of other heterodox spiritual groups elsewhere in South Asia. The five factors I highlight are the presence of heterodox spiritual sites like āśrams, mājārs, and ākhṛās; the use of intoxicants; the presence of an agricultural rather than mercantile local economy; the presence of a level

5 of poverty in which few households own televisions; and isolation from perennial markets of cultural tourism. In theorizing the broader context in which participatory music-making occurs, I emphasize that such music-making serves both a spiritual and a recreational function. Too often, a puritanical streak in academic scholarship obscures the intimate connection between religious practice and pleasure-seeking behavior.

Finally, I explore a vibrant musical tradition whose formal study has been eclipsed by scholarly attention to its related song texts, philosophy, and religious practice.

I draw attention to an array of interesting musical features that help to make this music such a durable and potent medium of spiritual and emotional expression. By doing so, I not only contribute to the ethnomusicological literature on “folk” traditions of South

Asia, but I also make a valuable contribution to the interdisciplinary project of scholars— in religious studies, anthropology, literature, and other fields—who write about Bāul-

Fakirs.

BĀUL-FAKIR MUSIC AND (WEST-) BENGALI NATIONAL IDENTITY

Various scholars have written about cases in which low-status social groups are cast as symbols of national identity by cultural elites. Wong, addressing such scholarship by Schwartz-Kates (1997), Moore (1998), and Behague (1979), writes, “the constructed images and stylized music of the gaucho, Afro-Cubans, and indigenous people as national symbols speak to the arbitrary and distinctive ways in which national identities are invented; from outcasts of society they become national models in discursive constructions of nationhood” (2012:5). A similar process is at work in the case of Bāul-

6 Fakirs and the construction of Bengali national identity. Like the groups mentioned above, Bāul-Fakirs are a low-status social group that has captured the imagination of the socially elite classes.9 To many affluent Bengalis, Bāul-Fakirs represent communal tolerance, artistic brilliance, a benignly humanist form of spirituality, and a form of intellectualism rooted in the local culture and lands of Bengal. At the same time, Bāul-

Fakirs are imagined as carefree to the extent of recklessness, and spiritual to the extent of sacrificing worldly stability and responsibility. Accordingly, Bāul-Fakirs represent a romantic, but unpragmatic, ideal that few individuals would want to replicate too closely.

As this imagining of Bāul-Fakirs takes place largely among elite Bengalis, away from actual Bāul-Fakirs, there is a great deal of fluidity in what the romanticized image of the

Bāul-Fakir can accommodate.

Evoking related work by Mallon (1995), Foster (2002), and Appadurai (1996),

Wong continues, “If different social groups can imagine their nation in multiple and different ways, it becomes clear that there is not just one, but several national identities competing for the hegemony of national representation” (2012:4). Although Bāul-Fakirs are pervasive as a national symbol, they are mobilized to represent an array of contrasting ideals by a variety of parties. While liberal thinkers such as Rabindranath Tagore (1905),

Muhāmmad Mansur Uddin (1942), and Kshiti Mohan Sen (1949) celebrated Bāuls as icons of Hindu-Muslim harmony, symbolic of a unified Bengal (Capwell 1988:125), other commentators have sought to align Bāuls with a more specifically Hindu, West

Bengali identity (Openshaw 2002:108). By doing so, this latter group not only effaces the

Sufi elements of “Bāul” spirituality, but they also seek to redefine the social category of 7 “Bāul” to exclude individuals of a Muslim background. Other (mostly Hindu) leftist intellectuals in Kolkata celebrate Fakirs, whose subaltern status as Muslims within

Hindu-dominant West Bengal contributes to their aura of humble “authenticity” at odds with the rampant consumerism and Hindu chauvinism on the rise elsewhere in India.10 A contrasting view of Bāul-Fakirs is advanced by various young male artists and musicians.

They imagine Bāul-Fakirs’ sahaj (direct, simple, or innate)11 path as an easygoing, hedonistic lifestyle that stands in contrast to the high-achieving professional lifestyle prized in mainstream upper middle-class society. Most of these various groups associate

Bāul-Fakirs with the rural Bengali past, and consider them to be bearers of pre-modern cultural and musical traditions. In each of the contrasting conceptions discussed above, images of Bāul-Fakirs symbolize the values of some cross section of affluent Bengali society, but are largely detached from the practical existence of actual Bāul-Fakirs.

Throughout this dissertation, I discuss how Bāul-Fakirs’ symbolic status informs the presentation and reception of their music in contemporary West Bengal. I demonstrate that Bāul-Fakir musicians are highly aware of the expectations and ideals of their audiences, and are well-versed in delivering the desired performances of “Bāulness” in commercial settings (Openshaw 2002; Knight 2010; M. Ray 1994; Murase 1991).

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND ON BĀUL-FAKIRS

The term fakir, derived from the Arabic faqr (poverty), has appeared widely throughout the Islamic world for centuries, or perhaps millennia, with a variety of referents. Ernst writes that “Persian-writing officials at the time of the Mughal empire in

8 India used the term to describe non-Muslim ascetics, such as yogis, along with Sufi ascetics and wayfarers” (1997:4). In contemporary Bengali usage, the term Fakir is rarely or never used in reference to individuals of a non-Muslim background. The origins of the contemporary term bāul (crazy or mad) are less clear, although it “may be derived from the Sanskrit word vātula (affected by wind-disease, i.e., mad, crazy), or from vyākula

(impatiently eager)” (Dasgupta [1946] 1962). Alternately, it may come from “the Arabic word awliya (plural of wali, a word originally meaning ‘near,’ which is used for ‘friend,’ or ‘devotee’)” (Ibid.). The first written appearance of the term Bāul in reference to a specific religious sect occurs in Akṣay Kumār Datta’s 1870 Bhāratavarṣīẏa Upāsaka

Sampradāẏa.12 Even today, however, the use of Bāul as a proper noun is more commonly used among outsiders, especially non-Bengalis, than among those to whom it refers

(Openshaw 2002:2).13 When the term bāul appears in songs, it is often in adjectival reference to one who is mad with divine love, or mad in the sense of having views and behaviors that differ radically from accepted social norms.

Bāul-Fakir religion is a heterodox and heterogeneous tradition, with no core scripture or centralized religious authority. It is best understood as a spectrum of practices and beliefs which vary according to the teachings and interpretations of various guru lineages and individual practitioners (Capwell 1986:12). Like other heterodox sects of

Bengal,14 it is a tradition with roots in Vaishnava, Sufi, and Sahajīẏā Buddhist traditions.

The Tantric Buddhist songs of the Caryāpadas, some of the earliest Bengali literature, composed between the eighth and twelfth centuries, bear notable similarities to Bāul songs in their veiled, multi-layered espousal of socially radical philosophy and esoteric 9 practice (Openshaw 2002:27-8). On the complex ontology of the term Bāul and its use in reference to a specific religious group, Urban writes:

There have probably been a variety of wandering minstrels, crazy holy men and male yogis traveling throughout the countryside of Bengal, known under a variety of different names—Dervish, Fakir, Bāul, Āul, Sāiṇ, and so on. Yet it was only in the later nineteenth century, as these groups came increasingly under the categorizing, classifying eye of Orientalist scholars-and above all, as they came under increasing persecution by the orthodox Muslim and Hindu communities— that the term “Bāul” began to be applied generally to these otherwise very diverse groups. (2001:36)

Etymology aside, it is clear that core philosophical and practical aspects of Bāul-

Fakir religion emerged from the confluence of Sahajīẏā Buddhist “Tantrism,”15

Vaishnavism, and Sufism, each of which exerted considerable influence in Bengal by the twelve century.16 Bāul-Fakir religion probably began to resemble its contemporary form around the time of the sixteenth-century Vaishnava bhakti revival, during which “the old traditions of esoteric ritual and coded discourse of the Sahajīẏā Buddhists began to merge with the devotional love of the playful, erotic child-God, Krṣṇa, resulting in a new

‘Vaiṣṇava Sahajīẏā synthesis’” (Urban 2001:34; see also Dimock 1966b). From this confluence of Sufi, Vaishnava, and Sahajīẏā traditions one can trace the origins of Bāul-

Fakir religion, which began to emerge more conspicuously during the tumultuous early years of colonial rule in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (Urban

2001:37). During this period, as the British established their dominance in the Calcuttan marketplace and beyond, the social hierarchy of Bengal was radically destabilized. The time was ripe for heterodox groups like Bāul-Fakirs to express their deconstructive views aimed at religion, caste, orthodoxy, and worldly wealth (Ibid.).

10 The most famous Bāul-Fakir is Lālan Sāiṃ, also known as Lālan Fakir,17 whose life story has recently become a popular subject in scholarly literature (Cakrabartī 1992;

Jhā 1995b), fiction (Gaṅgopādhyāẏ 2008), theater (Chatterjee 2013), and popular cinema

(Chatterjee 1987 and Ghose 2010). Lālan’s renown is due in part to his influence on

Rabindranāth Tagore, who would help to elevate the status of Bāul-Fakirs among the

Bengali bhadralok (affluent middle and upper classes) in the late nineteenth century. In addition to his celebrated status among the bhadralok, Lālan is also a revered figure among villagers and Bāul-Fakirs in his native Nadia district,18 and elsewhere where his songs have become a staple of Bāul-Fakir musical repertoire.

Today Bāul-Fakirs are a celebrated folkloric attraction of West Bengal and

Bangladesh, and in 2005 UNESCO designated the Bāul songs of Bangladesh a

“Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.”19 In Santiniketan, the bucolic site of Rabindranath Tagore’s Viswa-Bharati University, Bāul iconography is featured prominently in the signs and decorative art of restaurants, guest houses, and private residences.20 Amidst the handicrafts and textiles for sale at the weekly Saturday market in Santiniketan’s sonājhuri forest, Bāul-Fakir performers are a chief attraction for affluent weekend visitors from Kolkata and other urban areas.

Though they are celebrated in Santiniketan, Kolkata, and elsewhere, Bāul-Fakirs are a stigmatized group in certain areas dominated by orthodox Hindus and Muslims. In parts of Bangladesh and eastern West Bengal, Bāul-Fakirs have been intimidated, beaten, and murdered by orthodox Muslims who do not tolerate the radically anti-structural philosophies espoused in Bāul-Fakir songs, nor what they view as the Hindu-inflected 11 dress and behaviors of Muslim-born Bāul-Fakirs.21 Likewise, Bāul-Fakirs are sometimes persecuted by orthodox Hindus who view them as low-caste practitioners of unclean esoteric practices (Jhā 2002).

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF BĀUL-FAKIR RELIGION

Other scholars have written extensively on the complex philosophy and embodied practices of Bāul-Fakir religion.22 I include here a brief summary of some core features of

Bāul-Fakir religion. First, Bāul-Fakirs “believe that the body is a microcosm of the universe” (Salomon 1991:271). The divine resides within the human body, and individuals can experience the divine directly, without the intervention of priests, rituals, or scriptural recitation.23 Accordingly, they reject religious knowledge derived from scriptures as anumān (hearsay or inference),24 and prefer instead to follow the path of bartamān (the here-and-now, implying an emphasis on one’s sensual experiences)

(Openshaw 2002:191-200). In reference to Sahajīẏā Buddhism, and to the simple (sahaj) immediacy of the path of bartamān, this approach to the divine is referred to as the sahaj path.25

Second, Bāul-Fakirs believe that just as the divine resides within one’s own body, it also resides within the bodies of others. Accordingly, they are to treat all humans with love and respect. They are to reject “artificial” social categories of caste, religion, and social standing according to which individuals are judged and discriminated (Capwell

1986:10-11). The customary greeting used by many Bāul-Fakirs is “jaẏ guru”

(victory/praise to the Guru); in saying this, they are addressing their interlocutor as a

12 loved and respected teacher, and thus taking on for themselves the humility and devoted stance of the śiṣya (student/devotee).

Third, just as the divine resides within human bodies, bodily excretions are seen as possessing divine properties. Particular emphasis is placed on fluids of the reproductive system (Bhaṭṭācārya [1958] 1982; Openshaw 2002:216-224). Whereas in other religious traditions women are considered to be polluted during their menstrual period, Bāul-Fakirs view this as a time when their bodies are literally “overflowing”

(Openshaw 2002:182) with divine substance. Accordingly, the menstrual period is an important time for Bāul-Fakirs’ sexo-yogic practices. This period provides an opportunity for male practitioners to access sexual fluids not produced in their own bodies. Through sexual intercourse during the menstruation period, Bāul-Fakir men seek to draw menstrual fluids into their own bodies, while retaining their own semen. The goal is to channel these two fluids together upward through the body into the highest cakra (energy center) of the human body (Salomon 1991:272-3). Salomon writes: “Baul sādhanā

[spiritual practice; in this particular case, ritual intercourse], like tantric sādhanā in general, is described entirely from the male’s point of view…Although there is no parallel notion that the woman must obtain the Supreme from the man, she too is said to experience the blissful nature of the Supreme. For sādhanā to be successful, both the sādhak [male practitioner] and sādhikā [female practitioner] must ‘die a single death’; together they must become ‘dead while alive’” (Ibid.:273).

Alhough Bāul-Fakir religion is a guarded esoteric tradition, Bāul-Fakirs nevertheless preach their philosophy to lay people through the medium of songs. This 13 canon of songs is the closest thing Bāul-Fakirs have to religious scripture, although the songs are not intended to contain absolute or monolithic truths.26 Rather, the songs convey philosophical ideas, social critiques, and hidden esoteric commentary. The songs are composed in a form of coded speech called sandhā bhāṣā (intentional language),27 in which certain hidden meanings are kept secret from uninitiated listeners. On the surface, some of their songs seem to be of a conventionally religious nature, in keeping with

Hindu or Muslim conventions. References to Bhagabān, Allah, Īśwar, Krṣṇa and other names of the divine are often used in reference to the indwelling divine principle or substances in humans. Other, conventional religious terminology is used in reference to the beliefs and embodied practices mentioned above (Openshaw 2002:66-70).

On the Disclosure of Esoteric Practices

Much scholarship on Bāul-Fakirs reveals details of esoteric practice that are otherwise concealed from the uninitiated. Though the study of ritual is an important aspect of many anthropological works, the public disclosure of esoteric practices can also be harmful to the practitioners. For the purposes of my research, it is unnecessary to delve further into secretive aspects of Bāul-Fakir sādhanā. The benefits of recapitulating previously published research is outweighed by my desire to respect the secrecy of these practices. Furthermore Bāul-Fakir spiritual practices are far from uniform, and it is misleading to indicate that there is a monolithic canon of prescribed esoteric practices and beliefs that governs the lives of all Bāul-Fakirs. In this dissertation, I discuss Bāul-

14 Fakir esoteric practices only to the extent necessary in exploring issues surrounding my thesis.

MY USAGE OF THE DESIGNATION BĀUL-FAKIR

In Kolkata, Birbhum district, and other areas of West Bengal where Bāul-Fakir music is celebrated, people make a distinction between the terms Bāul and Fakir. In these areas, Bāul refers to those from a Hindu background, whereas Fakir refers to those from a Muslim background. In these areas, Bāuls and Fakirs are seen as belonging to different sampradāy (communities), despite conspicuous similarities in lifestyle, philosophy, and esoteric practice. In eastern Bengal, including along the India-Bangladesh border in

Nadia and Murshidabad districts, “mixed Hindu and Muslim lineages are common, and…the term bāul is applied as much to [primarily] Muslim lineages as to [primarily]

Hindu ones” (Openshaw 2002:87).28 Increasingly, the term Bāul has been linked to the marketing of “folk” culture, such as when a performing artist claims to be an ādi

(original/authentic) Bāul, in contrast to a nakal (imitation/artificial) or sājā (costumed) competitor.

Cakrabartī ([2001] 2012) and others have recently used the hyphenated label

Bāul-Fakir because it minimizes the importance assigned to an individual’s familial religious background. The term Bāul-Fakir correctly implies that Bāuls and Fakirs have an overlapping set of beliefs, practices, philosophies, and lifestyles. The perception that

Bāuls and Fakirs are fundamentally different is reinforced by the use of conventional

Hindu or Muslim terminology in Bāul-Fakir songs. Most uninitiated listeners are unaware

15 that such conventional religious terminology is used to convey veiled esoteric messages of significance to both Bāuls and Fakirs. As indicated above, whether a song refers to

Allah or Bhagabān, a Bāul-Fakir sādhu recognizes the term as referring to the indwelling divine principle within humans.29 The term Bāul-Fakir is especially appropriate considering the liberal philosophy advanced in Bāul-Fakir songs, in which religion, caste, and family lineage are critiqued as superficial social constructions. Furthermore, the term

Bāul-Fakir reflects a move in Indian scholarship to embrace subaltern groups that have been previously overlooked in historical and cultural studies. Just as recent scholars

(Bakhle 2005; Qureshi 2007) have highlighted the roles of hereditary Muslim musicians as practitioners of Indian classical music, so have recent Bāul-Fakir scholars (Jhā 2010;

Openshaw 2009; Cakrabartī [2001] 2012) highlighted the contributions of Fakir musicians who do not fit the conventional stereotype of saffron-robed Vaishnava mendicants.

After choosing to use the term Bāul-Fakir, however, the question remains: To whom does this refer? In both popular and scholarly discourse, this question is often addressed by recourse to the sādhak (spiritual practitioner) versus silpī (artist/musician) dichotomy.30 Lorea writes: “The recent emphasis on the esoteric side of Bauls as bastubādī31 (materialists) and bartamānpanthī32 (followers of bartamān as the present facts that can be personally experienced by the senses) is progressively leading to a risky exoticisation that marks only the practitioner Baul as the ‘authentic’ pursuer of the tradition, whereas the gāyak [singer] Baul is considered to be corrupted and contaminated by the laws imposed by global market and gentrification” (2014a:432). As Lorea 16 suggests, the sādhak-silpī dichotomy is problematic for a number of reasons. First, this division implies that musical sādhanā is an inferior form of sādhanā, an implication with which many Bāul-Fakirs would disagree (Rīnā Dās Bāul, pers. comm.; Śib Sundar Dās

Bāul pers. comm.). Indeed, one of the most influential twentieth-century Bāul-Fakir gurus, Bhabā Pāglā, explicitly asserted the special importance of musical sādhanā (Lorea

2014a:431). Second, the sādhak-silpī dichotomy incorrectly implies that professional artists, by virtue of their commercial ambitions, are alienated from Bāul-Fakir spiritual life. On the contrary, professional Bāul-Fakir musicians are similar to other householder

Bāul-Fakirs, who seek to balance domestic and spiritual responsibilities. Some performers confess to lacking time for their spiritual practice, but they speak of it in a way that lapsed Catholics might speak of neglecting their religious responsibilities. In both cases, it is erroneous to dismiss the religious identity or spiritual life of such an individual simply because they fail to meet the highest ideals of observance. It is quite common for Bāul-Fakirs to take śikṣā initiation33 and pursue esoteric practice for many years, only to find such a commitment to be unsustainable in addition to the demands of running a household and supporting a family (Kārtik Dās Bāul, pers. comm.).34 Such individuals may return to a more sustained spiritual practice on entering a later stage of life, when professional and domestic responsibilities demand less of their time and energy.

The sādhak-silpī dichotomy is problematic for another reason related to popular iconography surrounding the idea of sādhaks. Any singer who appears to be too wealthy, well-dressed, or commercially acclaimed fails to meet the image of the “authentic” 17 sādhak.35 This “authentic” sādhak, as popularized by Tagore, is imagined as a solitary male sannyāsī (renouncer), living in poverty, possessing few items, forever wandering

(Openshaw 2002:35). In my research, I resist the reductive and judgment-laden distinctions that accompany the dichotomization of Bāul-Fakirs into sādhak and silpī categories. My research is focused on the musical activities of those people labeled as

Bāul-Fakirs, whether music-making represents the full extent of their sādhanā or whether it represents only one facet of a larger practice. Though I acknowledge that there are some uninitiated musical performers who present themselves as Bāul-Fakirs, I am nevertheless interested in their roles as actors in the performance of Bāul-Fakir music and identity. Whereas other researchers might seek to exclude these individuals from a study of Bāul-Fakir music, I am interested in the whole spectrum of musical performers identified, on some level, as Bāul-Fakirs.

In explicitly focusing on Bāul-Fakir musicians, my work diverges from most previous Bāul-Fakir scholarship. Nevertheless, I am not the only recent scholar to focus on a particular subset of Bāul-Fakirs. Openshaw’s (2002) work on followers of Rāj

Khyāpā, Lorea’s forthcoming work on followers of Bhabā Pāglā , Urban’s (2001) research on Kartābhajās, and Knight’s (2010, 2011) work on women Bāuls all demonstrate the value of focusing on a particular subset of Bāul-Fakirs. Like these scholars, I find that focusing on a subset of Bāul-Fakirs makes it possible to address a discrete set of themes while avoiding some of the over-simplifications that characterize popular discourse surrounding Bāul-Fakirs.

18 MY USAGE OF THE TERMS FOLK AND TRADITION

As indicated by the scare quotes surrounding the term folk throughout much of this dissertation, I am aware of the problematic connotations of that word in connection to its Herderian usage in the politics of European nationalism. Like the term tradition— and Bāul or Fakir, for that matter—I continue to use the term folk in lieu of a more congenial alternative. I use the term folk to imply that Bāul-Fakir music is traditionally performed by poor, low-status musicians who have learned to perform the music through an aural—as well as oral and visual—process of observation and mimesis rather than through following a formal institutional pedagogy. This is not to say that Bāul-Fakir musicians are self-taught, or that there are no fixed guidelines to be followed in the music; on the contrary, most musicians have a music guru, in addition to a spiritual guru.

However, the rules governing the performance of Bāul-Fakir music are not monolithic or rigorously prescribed; the music is a vehicle for spiritual expression and experience, and for communication of the song texts, and musicians are largely free to alter the form, phrasing, timbre, tempo, instrumentation, repetition, intensity, and even meter or melodic mode according to their inclination.

By using the term folk I am not implying that Bāul-Fakir music is traditionally non-commercial; below, I discuss the longstanding role of Bāul-Fakir music in alms- collection. When I discuss the “commercialization” of the Bāul-Fakir “folk tradition,” however, I am referring to the dramatic proliferation of new commercial contexts in which Bāul-Fakir music is incorporated, from staged performances at guesthouses,

19 festivals, and arts centers, to television advertisements, mainstream cinema, and novelty dance music.

Similarly, when I use the term tradition, I am not referring to some imagined essence which has existed for a certain period of time, and which has a “correct” or

“original” form. I am referring instead to the constantly evolving and heterogeneous forms that have been transmitted from one generation of Bāul-Fakirs to the next. If I refer to a particular musical instrument as traditional, I am indicating that previous generations of Bāul-Fakirs used that instrument, but not that the instrument was present in some imagined “beginning” of Bāul-Fakir tradition.

A BRIEF REVIEW OF SCHOLARLY LITERATURE ON BĀUL-FAKIRS

A fair amount of academic scholarship on Bāul-Fakirs has been published in recent decades. Prolific authors include Cakrabartī (1990, 1992, [2001] 2012), who has written several volumes addressing historic and socio-religious aspects of Bāul-Fakir culture; Jhā (1995a, 1995b, 2002, 2009, 2010) who has written about Bāul-Fakirs’ esoteric bodily practices, their persecution by orthodox groups, and various aspects of their esoteric songs; and Openshaw (2002, 2009) who has deconstructed the social category of Bāul more thoroughly than any previous author. Other notable authors include Murase (1991), who discusses the paradoxical role of Bāul-Fakir mendicants in maintaining the structural stability of Bengali society; Hanssen (2001, 2002), who paints a detailed picture of the daily joys, struggles, and ritual practice governing the lives of one Bāul-Fakir family; Knight (2010, 2011), who discusses the precarious social

20 positioning of female Bāul-Fakirs; Urban (2001, 2003), who writes about the florescence of esoteric religious groups like Bāul-Fakirs during the early years of colonial Bengal;

Lorea (2014a, 2014b, 2014c, forthcoming) who addresses a variety of issues related to the Bāul-Fakir esoteric tradition and exoteric facade in the twenty-first century; M. Ray

(1994), who discusses “persistence and change” in Bāul-Fakirs’ lifestyles as religious mendicants in Birbhum district; and Salomon (1979, 1991, 1995), who explores esoteric practices and interpretations of Bāul-Fakir song texts. Surprisingly, there is only one major ethnomusicological work on Bāul-Fakirs.36 Capwell’s Music of the Bāuls of Bengal

(1986) is based on fieldwork conducted between 1969 and 1971, before the widespread commercialization and professionalization of Bāul-Fakir music. In addition to exploring the coded language of Bāul-Fakir song texts and addressing Bāul-Fakirs’ socio-religious position, Capwell provides an extensive musicological analysis of melodic, rhythmic, and formal structures of Bāul-Fakir music. In the course of addressing my primary research questions, I update and expand upon certain aspects of Capwell’s project. I address the profound commercialization and musical changes that have occurred since the time of his fieldwork, and discuss various musical elements that were unexplored in his work. I also describe the previously undocumented participatory Bāul music-making that occurs in isolated villages along the India-Bangladesh border.

ON A MUSIC-CENTERED APPROACH TO BĀUL-FAKIR STUDIES

When I discuss my research with colleagues in West Bengal, I often encounter the assumption that my research must deal explicitly with Bāul-Fakir philosophy, religion, or

21 esoteric practice. Many argue that to focus on Bāul-Fakir music is to overlook something more essential. After all, song texts are the ostensible focus of Bāul-Fakir musical performances, with their powerful metaphorical imagery and esoteric complexity.

Nevertheless, there are four compelling reasons for a music-centered study. First,

Bāul-Fakir music is intrinsically worthy as a focus of academic study. It’s a diverse tradition rich in melodic, rhythmic, timbral, and ensemble nuance and complexity.37

Bāul-Fakir music has attracted diverse Bengali, Indian, and international audiences and has exerted considerable influence upon the works of renowned Bengali composers, intellectuals, and cultural icons such as Rabindranath Tagore, Kāzī Nazrul Islām, and

Satyajit Ray. One wonders what influence Bāul-Fakir music may have exerted on earlier generations of Bengali classical musicians, though I will leave such inquiry to future scholars.38 If only to explore previously unaddressed musical aspects, as well as the changes that have occurred in the music since the last major musicological research on

Bāul-Fakir songs, the current study would be of significant value.

Second, the diversity of contemporary Bāul-Fakir repertoire sheds light on how much the music has changed under the impact of commercialization.39 The selection of repertoire at a particular event says a great deal about performers’ navigations of various audiences’ expectations and aesthetics. As I argue in Chapter Two, professional Bāul-

Fakir performers are keenly aware of what audiences value in their music, and are careful to provide the correct balance of “authenticity” and entertainment in their performances.

Third, musical setting is an integral component of the expression of Bāul-Fakir philosophy through song texts. As Kshiti Mohan Sen writes, “[Bāuls] delight in the ever- 22 changing play of life, which cannot be expressed in mere words but of which something may be captured in song, through the ineffable medium of rhythm and tune” (1931:212).

The medium of a message’s delivery matters (Bateson 1972; Bauman and Briggs 1990;

Goffman 1974), and the conveyance of a message within an emotionally compelling musical performance adds considerable value to the verbal text.40 Though some listeners and performers don’t understand the esoteric messages of the songs, they nevertheless find the music to be powerful and evocative; this is especially true for non-Bengali listeners, to whom the song texts may be entirely inaccessible.

Fourth, many contemporary Bāul-Fakir musicians view the performance of songs as a central aspect of their sādhanā. Followers of the renowned twentieth-century guru

Bhabā Pāglā are quick to cite his advocacy of the importance of musical sādhanā (Lorea

2014a:431). Rīnā Dās Bāul points out that Bāul songs have the capacity to help listeners, and that singing these songs enacts a core facet of Bāul philosophy that is to “love and serve other humans” (mānuṣke bhajan karā) (pers. comm.; see also Knight 2011:123).

Additionally, as I discuss in Chapter Three, participatory music-making is an important aspect of Bāul-Fakirs’ spiritual lifestyle in certain regions. Attention to these participatory musical activities reveals close links between spiritual and recreational activity for many Bāul-Fakirs, and could be of special interest to scholars interested in

Bāul-Fakirs from the perspective of religious studies. That pleasure and spirituality should be closely linked in Bāul-Fakir musical practice is consistent with their self- proclaimed identity as rasiks (connoisseurs of feeling, followers of the sensual path through life). 23 TRADITION OF PERFORMANCE AS ALMS GATHERING

It is only in recent decades that Bāul-Fakirs have had the potential to earn a comfortable living through the performance of the music. Nevertheless, Bāul-Fakir music-making has a long history as a means of subsistence. Madhukari (literally “honey- gathering) is the practice of alms collection, often through the performance of songs, and is the traditional means of livelihood for Bāul-Fakir renunciants. Whereas most contracted musicians, like other private contractors, negotiate a high fee and strive to acquire the material trappings of middle-class life, Bāul-Fakirs engaged in madhukari would (theoretically) collect only enough to meet their needs for basic daily sustenance

(Murase 1991; Ray 1994; Hanssen 2001).

The practice of madhukari continues today, though its venues, practitioners, and financial potential have changed. Whereas madhukari used to be conducted door-to-door in residential areas, today it is mostly conducted on trains. With the high concentration and turnover of train passengers and the increased interest in Bāul-Fakir music, madhukari strikes many would-be performers as a lucrative endeavor. Accordingly, many contemporary musicians who conduct madhukari are not renunciants, and in some cases, not even Bāul-Fakirs (Murase 1991; Ray 1994). There are currently a large number of musicians who practice madhukari on trains, despite the considerable health risks of performing music in such noisy and air-polluted environments (Hanssen 2001:146-7,

191).

Madhukari is especially common along certain train routes near popular tourist and pilgrim destinations, particularly the thirty-kilometer stretch between Bardhaman 24 Station and Guskara Station that links Kolkata to Santiniketan and Tarapith. While some of the musicians who perform madhukari on these popular train routes do so as part of their sādhanā, many others do so simply to capitalize on a large and captive audience

(Ray 1994:58).

Musicologically, an important feature of madhukari is that it preserves the solo performance tradition at a time when most stage performances feature larger ensembles.

However, increasingly few solo performers utilize the older instrumental combination of ektārā (one-string drone instrument), ḍugi (small kettle drum), and ghuṅur (ankle bells) when doing madhukari;41 more use dotārā (four-string fretless lute), khamak (plucked chordophone/membranophone),42 and other common ensemble instruments. It is unclear whether this shift reflects contemporary musicians’ lack of training on ektārā and ḍugi,43 or whether it reflects the increased popularity of other instruments.

FIELDWORK METHODOLOGY

I conducted my field research in West Bengal during an eleven-month stay from

June 2012 through May 2013, a preliminary research trip from December 2011 through

January 2012, and a week-long conference at Visva-Bharati University in March 2012.

Because my research was supported by an Indian Fulbright grant, I was unable to conduct research in Bangladesh. Although fieldwork in Bangladesh would have expanded the geographical range of my research, my work in Muslim-majority villages along the India-

Bangladesh border exposed me to a musical and social milieu similar to that of neighboring Bangladesh.

25 I designed my fieldwork with two broad goals in mind. On the one hand, I wanted to gain a nuanced understanding of the social world surrounding Bāul-Fakir music in

West Bengal, including the lifestyles, aesthetics, and values of various musicians, practitioners,44 critics, and audiences. On the other hand, I wanted to absorb as much musical detail as possible, assimilating it within my own musical sensibility.

My basic fieldwork methodology consisted of participating at Bāul-Fakir musical and social events, conducting casual conversations and informal interviews, recording musical performances, writing detailed field notes, and studying the music and texts of

Bāul-Fakir songs. I also conducted formal recorded interviews, though I found that the presence of an audio recorder inhibited the kind of detail and personal opinion that tended to emerge through more casual conversations.45 Towards the end of my research, I began to take music lessons. At these lessons, often embedded within a routine visit to the home or āśram of a Bāul-Fakir friend, I focused on the musical aspects that would be most difficult to learn on my own. Whereas I was able to transfer guitar techniques to playing the dotārā, I required instruction to learn the techniques of other instruments such as khamak, kartāl (hand cymbals),46 and ḍubki (small frame drum).47 Moreover, the lyrics of the songs presented a special difficulty to me, as much of the vocabulary and grammar is different from that used in everyday speech. In my lessons, therefore, I often focused on learning the words to new songs and addressing unfamiliar instrumental techniques. I would also teach myself melodies and instrumental patterns by listening to recordings at home.

26 I began my fieldwork by making frequent visits to the homes of Bāul-Fakirs in the

Santiniketan area. Slowly, I accustomed myself to their regional accent and learned about their lifestyle and views through casual conversation and participant-observation. I would bring my fiddle48 with me in case a musical opportunity should arise. Although I was eager to learn Bāul-Fakir music, I didn’t want to establish any guru-śiṣya (teacher- student) relationships through which I might find myself bound to particular musicians and inhibited from spending time with other “rival” musicians.49 I studied the music by listening closely during performances and casual music sessions, and by playing fiddle accompaniment when encouraged to do so. Fortunately, most of the people I visited were interested in my fiddle and encouraged me to play and sing for and with them. There is a certain prestige that comes to a Bāul-Fakir musician through having a Western bhakta

(devotee), and I suspect that this is why I was invited to play accompaniment at so many performances.

Though I never hid the fact that I was a researcher, I strategically presented myself primarily as a musician. This decision was informed by what I knew of the interpersonal dynamics between Bāul-Fakirs and visiting outsiders. In Santiniketan, where I lived, the local Bāul-Fakirs were accustomed to meeting a variety of outsiders, mostly Kolkatans and scholars at the local university who were interested in Bāul-Fakir music and philosophy for a range of artistic, spiritual, and academic reasons. The nature of Bāul-Fakirs’ relationships with these visitors varied tremendously. Whereas academic visitors tended to maintain more emotional distance, visiting only long enough to collect whatever data was necessary for their research or multimedia projects (Piẏās Fakir, pers. 27 comm.), fellow musicians would visit in search of artistic collaboration and a more intimate personal connection. As an ethnographer, I knew that the quality of my field research depended on forming friendships as opposed to formal acquaintances; as a musician, I knew that the music would be more meaningful and evocative to me if it became embedded in my mind within a network of emotional memories and personal associations.

In the beginning of my research, I was concerned that as a Western visitor I might attract unwanted attention from individuals eager to cultivate my friendship in exchange for future monetary donations. For this reason also, I was eager to establish my identity as a visiting musician, as Bāul-Fakirs were familiar with musicians’ frugality, and wouldn’t expect musicians to make frequent and sizable donations. I didn’t want my encounters to be overshadowed by the expectations of monetary gain, and I hoped that building friendships as a fellow musician would be one way to elude these expectations.50

I made up my mind that I would offer financial support at a later point in my research, after forming friendships on a more neutral ground.

After establishing myself as a frequent visitor to many Bāul-Fakir homes and

āśrams in the Santiniketan area, I began to seek out musicians and events in other parts of

Birbhum and Bardhaman districts. Typically I would telephone a Bāul-Fakir musician,51 introduce myself as a friend of a particular friend,52 and make an appointment to come and visit. These visits would sometimes last for a few hours, and at other times would extend over several days. On these visits, I began to meet musicians whose homes were

28 more isolated from hubs of tourism, and who had less experience interacting with foreigners and affluent outsiders.

Meanwhile I made frequent weekend trips to Kolkata, and explored the ways in which the “Bangla band” scene in Kolkata appropriated Bāul-Fakir music. Similar to folk rock and blues rock music of the United States and England in the nineteen sixties and seventies, these Bangla bands drew from rural “folk” music sources in creating their own contemporary music. I was interested in the ways that they harmonized Bāul-Fakir songs with guitar and bass, and how they interpreted the rhythm of Bāul-Fakir songs with the instrumentation of a rock band. I gathered their diverse opinions surrounding Bāul-Fakir music, and considered what influence these socially elite performers exerted on the professional and artistic lives of Bāul-Fakir musicians. Though I chose not to focus my studies on the musical output of these urban musicians, I learned a great deal about the discourse surrounding Bāul-Fakirs by spending time with these urban musicians. In reading previous academic literature about Bāul-Fakirs’ interactions with elite audiences,

I had encountered a fairly monochromatic representation of the Bengali bhadralok. The bhadralok discussed in such literature (Openshaw 2002; Knight 2011) seemed to be mostly older Bengalis with a special fondness for Tagore. Spending time with younger musicians in Kolkata, I discovered that bhadralok views on Bāul-Fakirs were quite diverse, in some cases informed as much by Bob Marley as by Tagore.

The most exciting period of my research began when I started to make frequent and lengthy visits to Bāul-Fakirs in rural villages close to the India-Bangladesh border.

Most of these villages were in Muslim-majority areas of Murshidabad and Nadia 29 districts, far removed from the steady flow of tourists and affluent visitors. It was there that I witnessed the thriving of participatory Bāul-Fakir music-making and the unique social factors that correlated with its presence. I spent a great deal of time in this area playing music and socializing at the āśrams where Bāul-Fakirs gathered. As it took me over seven hours to reach most of these villages from my home in Santiniketan, I would usually stay for a week before returning home. These visits presented opportunities to experience Bāul-Fakir music as a participatory tradition, and to absorb subtle aspects of the East Bengali musical styles prominent along the India-Bangladesh border.53

Throughout my field research, I attended a variety of musical events, from informal gatherings, to madhukari performances on trains, to village utsavs (festivals or celebrations, often hosted by Bāul-Fakirs), to larger melās (fairs), to nightclub concerts in

Kolkata, and to various private and public concerts in Santiniketan. These assorted performances exposed me to a diverse range of Bāul-Fakir musical styles, and to the reactions and expectations of different types of audiences. At the events where I was a performer, I gained an intimate familiarity with the performance repertoires used at different types of venues. At these events, I also had the opportunity to question the other musicians about a range of social, musical, and professional issues. At events where I was an audience member, I could converse with and observe other audience members, learning about the ways that they related to Bāul-Fakirs and Bāul-Fakir music.

30 CHAPTER SUMMARY

In this introductory chapter, I have presented my thesis that the performance and reception of Bāul-Fakir music in West Bengal is closely entwined with discourses of spirituality, modernity, and Bengali identity, and that it is valued in divergent ways by audiences of different social classes, ages, genders, and personal outlooks. I have advocated for the value of a music-centered study both for exploring these themes and for highlighting undocumented features and recent developments in Bāul-Fakir music. I have also called attention to the existence of a Bāul-Fakir participatory tradition that has been unacknowledged in previous scholarship.

In Chapter Two I provide a detailed description of Bāul-Fakir music in and around Birbhum district, one of the two regions where I focused my fieldwork. This area is the center of Bāul-Fakir commercial music activity, and I describe the multi- instrumental virtuosity of Santiniketan Bāul-Fakir musicians who are experienced in navigating the aesthetic and ideological orientations of their various audiences. I discuss the balance these musicians must strike in order to both entertain and to meet their affluent audiences’ criteria for “authenticity.” I also describe the musical preferences of lower- and working-class audiences in this region, many of whom appreciate “modern” musical settings of Bāul-Fakir music; the music at non-commercial ritually-significant events, where “modern” instrumentation is also embraced; the success of some Bāul-

Fakirs as recording artists of the mainstream Bengali music popular among the lower and working class; and the professional exposure of Fakirs in the Birbhum area, who fall outside of affluent audiences’ Hindu-centric notions of “Bāul” identity. 31 In Chapter Three I write about my other major fieldwork zone, the Muslim- majority villages of Nadia and Murshidabad along the India-Bangladesh border. Many

Bāul-Fakir musicians in this area are farmers and laborers to whom music is an important social and spiritual activity, but not a frequent source of income. The Bāul-Fakir music culture in much of this region centers on participatory musical gatherings held nightly at various ashrams, ākhṛās, and mājārs. I propose a list of five socio-cultural factors that closely correlate with Bāul-Fakir participatory music-making, and suggest that these factors may correlate with the presence of participatory music traditions elsewhere in

South Asia. Despite the general isolation of this region, recent activities of the NGO

Banglanatak dot com [sic] have attracted affluent urban visitors to this area. I discuss some recent musical and social changes occurring in this area with the gradual influx of outside visitors. In particular, I discuss the exacerbation of professional rivalries among local performers, the rise of alcoholism, and the introduction of presentational elements into the participatory music sessions when outsider visitors are present.

In Chapter Four I address affluent Bengalis’ conceptions of Bāuls-Fakirs as romanticized “Others,” spiritual adepts, homegrown Bengali rock stars, outspoken cultural critics, and bearers of traditional folklore. I examine the ways in which Bengali artists and intellectuals appropriate signifiers of Bāul-Fakir identity in constructing their own identities in opposition to the mainstream middle-class culture of urban India. In doing so, I draw from Robert Cantwell’s (1997) scholarship on the North American urban folk revival, in which he describes a parallel example of middle-class countercultural identity construction based on the appropriation of signifiers of the subaltern “folk.” I 32 draw particular attention to the case of Parvathy Bāul, an art school drop-out who is one of the most celebrated of contemporary Bāul-Fakir performers. With reference to

Turino’s (2000) discussion of “modernist reformism,” I attribute Parvathy Bāul’s success to her ability to mediate Bāul-Fakir music for affluent audiences. I discuss similar themes in the context of Kolkatan “Bangla bands” who incorporate Bāul-Fakir music into their performances in urban venues and recording studios. Finally, I reflect on how my own cultural biases and aesthetic inclinations inform my scholarship on Bāul-Fakir music, and how I am implicated in the processes of appropriation described above.

In Chapters Five, I update Capwell’s general theory of Bāul-Fakir music by drawing attention to some unexamined and idiosyncratic musical features. I discuss the use of polyrhythm, elasticity of phrasing, odd meters, unique melodic modes, and variable intonation. I suggest that this last feature is far more widespread that previously indicated, and that it occurs across the full spectrum of Bāul-Fakir melodic modes. I also provide the first published transcriptions illustrating the range of instrumental configurations found in contemporary Bāul-Fakir music. These transcriptions highlight the roles of individual instruments in various configurations, and demonstrate the diversity of contemporary Bāul-Fakir music.

In the concluding Chapter Six, I reflect on scholars’ similarity to Bāul-Fakir musicians as mediators of between Bāul-Fakir tradition and the lay public. At the same time, I highlight the socio-economic disparity between scholars and Bāul-Fakir musicians, and discuss the considerable hardships in these performers’ lives. I suggest that scholars, like other enthusiasts of Bāul-Fakir culture, owe a particular debt to those 33 active in the performance and transmission of Bāul-Fakir musical and philosophical traditions. I argue that scholars, rather than scorning Bāul-Fakirs whom they view to be

“only” musicians, should respect these individuals for inspiring the public with their social critiques and musical message of love.

1 I utilize the hyphenated term Bāul-Fakir to refer both to members of a Hindu background (Bāul) and those of a Muslim background (Fakir). My use of a single hyphenated term emphasizes the musical, social, philosophical, and spiritual continuities between these groups. 2 Openshaw writes that Bāul-Fakir renouncers are more often of a Hindu, rather than a Muslim background. She writes that this “pattern [is] consonant with the absence of an ideal of renunciation in Islam” (2002:98- 9). Many Bāul-Fakirs, both of Hindu and Muslim backgrounds, are householders. 3 Tagore first raised the profile of Bāul-Fakirs with a positive review of Bāul-Fakirs songs in the journal Bhārati (1883). I transcribe the names of Tagore and other Bengalis who are particularly well known in the West without diacritical marks. I write Tagore’s name in Anglicized form used in his English-language publications. 4 An āśram is a place of rest devoted to spiritual activity. Baul-Fakir ashrams are typically small- or medium-sized rooms that can accommodate between ten to twenty people. An ākhṛā can be conceived as a larger āśram, in some cases large enough to accommodate hundreds of people (Bāsudeb Dās Bāul, pers. comm.). Bāul-Fakir ākhṛās are typically temporary structures formed for annual festivals and celebrations. In some cases, Bāul-Fakir ākhṛās serve as permanent residences for large numbers of practitioners. A mājār is a shrine devoted to a Sufi or Fakir saint referred to as a pīr (Ābdul Hālim, pers. comm.). Some mājārs function as āśrams or ākhṛās. 5 By participatory music I am referring to music-making in which all present “actively [contribute] to the sound and motion of a group performance event through dancing and gestures, singing and other types of vocalizing, clapping, or playing an instrument…Participatory music is defined and shaped stylistically by the fundamental goal of inviting the fullest participation possible, and the success of an occasion is judged primarily by the amount of participation realized” (Turino 2000:48). 6 By eastern Bengal, I refer not only to East Bengal (i.e. Bangladesh) but also to parts of Nadia and Murshidabad districts in West Bengal along the India-Bangladesh border. 7Regula Qureshi writes ““Indo-Muslim religious music falls into two broad categories distinctly separate from a musical as well as a religious standpoint. One may be termed liturgical music…the other non- liturgical music….The primary context for all non-liturgical music is the religious assembly of a devotional or commemorative character…At each of these assemblies a variety of hymns and chants is performed, in an order standard to the occasion, by more or less trained performers with limited audience participation” (1972:16-18). My usage of non-liturgical music differs from Qureshi’s, as Bāul-Fakirs are too unorthodox to be categorized within a properly Indo-Muslim context. Accordingly, I use the term non-liturgical in reference to music-making traditions that do not necessarily follow “an order standard to the occasion,” and are by no means performed with “limited audience participation” (Ibid). Like Qureshi, I use the term non- liturgical in reference to spiritual music-making that occurs independently of orthodox religious observance. Whereas other South Asian scholars would label such music as devotional, I avoid that term as it implies a theological dualism rejected by Bāul-Fakirs. 8 Many scholars have written about devotional participatory musics in South Asia that share features with the Bāul-Fakir participatory music that I discuss (Henry 1988, 2002; Manuel 2009; Caitlin-Jairazbhoy 2004; DeNapoli 2013; Singer 1966; Kapadia 1995; Dimock 1966a; S. Ray 1988). Other scholars have written about similar musics that have participatory characteristics, but that are best categorized as presentational forms (Slawek 1986, 1988; Henry 1988, 1991; Shukla-Bhatt 2007; Caitlin-Jairazbhoy 2004; 34

Manuel 2008; Marcus 1989, 1995; Nijhawan 2003; Qureshi 1986, 1987, 1999; Schultz 2013; Marsden 2007; S. Ray 1988; M. Ray 1994; Bhattācārya [1958] 1982; Capwell 1986; Chaudhuri 2009). 9 See related scholarship on the idealization of Romani peoples by Seeman (2014), Malvinni (2004), Silverman (2007), and Zirbel (1999). 10 Here and through this dissertation, I do not include diacritical marks for place names. 11 Sahaj is also a contemporary Bengali word usually translated as “simple” or “easy.” However, the term also evokes the legacy of Sahajiyā Buddism in Bāul-Fakir religion. For the influence of Sahajiyā Buddhism on Bāul-Fakir philosophy and practice, see Dasgupta (1946), Urban (2001), Openshaw (2002), Bhaṭṭācārya ([1958] 1982), and Jhā (2010). 12 Bhaṭṭācaryā ([1958] 1982:58-9) and Openshaw (2002:24-5) point out that Datta badly misrepresented the practices of Bāuls. 13 However, in areas where the music is celebrated, individuals may be more likely to claim the social distinction of being of “a Bāul.” 14 Chakrabarty (1985) writes extensively about a variety of heterodox sects in Bengal that bear certain similarities to Bāul-Fakirs. 15 I put quotation marks around Tantrism because it too is “largely the product of Orientalist scholars and colonial authorities of the nineteenth century” (Urban 2001:4; see also Padoux 1986 and Woodroffe 1978). 16 For a history of Sufism in Bengal, see Haq (1975), A. Roy (1983), Eaton (1993), and Latif (1993). 17 Lalon was born before the turn of the 18th century, and died in 1890 (Salomon 1991:276). According to popular accounts, he was 116 years old at the time of his death (Ibid.:299). 18 Kushtia, the site of Lālan’s shrine in Bangladesh, was part of Nadia district before the partition of Bengal in 1947. 19 http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/en/RL/00107 (accessed 23 March 2014). 20 Knight provides photographs of the various Bāul iconography found in residential areas and businesses in Santiniketan (2011:44-5). 21 Jhā (2002) has written an entire monograph about the persecution of Bāul-Fakirs. See also Cakrabartī (1992); Haq (1975:299-300); Openshaw (2002:96-7, 106-7); Togawa (2013:25); Banerjee (1997); and http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2014/02/25/baul-hacked-to-death-in-jessore (accessed 23 March 2014). 22 See Jhā (1995b, 2010); Openshaw (2002, 2009); Bhaṭṭācārya ([1958] 1982); Salomon (1979, 1991, 1995); Hanssen (2001, 2002); Lorea (2014a, 2014c); and McDaniel (1992) for notable works on Bāul-Fakir religious philosophy and practice. 23 A number of Sant-Sufi poets spread a similar philosophy in fifteenth-century North India. The traditions spread by these mystic poets are often referred to as nirguṇ (formless), as they are distinguished by the belief in a formless divine that permeates the universe and living things. Hess writes, “I would hazard the claim that, if one could examine the widely varying representations of [the fifteenth-century mystic poet] Kabir across history, geography, and social formations, this theme would be central to all…The fundamental reality you are looking for is within you, right in your own body” (Forthcoming:Chapter 1). 24 Sen summed up this view with the following anecdote: “On another Baul being asked why they did not follow the scriptures, ‘Are we dogs,’ he replied, ‘that we should lick up the leavings of others?’” (1931:214). 25 Hess writes that the quality of simplicity “is unambiguously good in North Indian parlance,” (Forthcoming:Chapter 3) and that rural devotees of Kabir are often described as sahaj, simple and sincere. 26 Baul-Fakirs keep collections of song texts in notebooks. According to Openshaw, this may be part of the reason why Baul-Fakirs’ literacy rates are higher than those of the lay people in many villages where they live (2002:95). 27 Sandhā bhāṣā is alternately referred to as sandhyā bhāṣā (twilight language). Sandhā bhāṣā is found in a range of contemporary and ancient forms of South Asian poetry. Hess (1983, forthcoming) discusses the use of sandhā bhāṣā in Kabir songs. 28 There are a variety of other labels used in addition to Bāul and Fakir; according to a practitioner’s guru lineage, initiation history, and spiritual status, he or she may be titled Sāiṃ, Gosāiṃ, Darbeṣ, or a range of other titles (Jhā 2010; Cakrabartī [2001] 2012). 35

29 Whereas in some contexts the term sādhu carries a Hindu connotation, in the Bengali context it often refers to Muslim Fakirs as well. 30 A large number of Bāul-Fakir scholars have hastened to differentiate sādhak Bāuls from silpī Bāuls, deeming only the former to be “real” Bāuls (Murase 1991; Haq 1975; Ray 1994; Cakrabartī [2001] 2012). Such a task is fraught with epistemological obstacles, and is predisposed towards essentialism. 31 Jhā (2010) uses the term Bastubādī Bāul. 32 Openshaw (2002, 2009) uses the term Bartamānpanthī. 33 Śikṣā initiation is the second of three primary initiations taken by Bāul-Fakirs. The initiation marks the beginning of Bāul-Fakirs’ instruction in esoteric practice (Openshaw 2002:142-3). 34 The practice of spiritual life is not an all-or-nothing matter as some Bāul-Fakir scholars imply in their critiques of Bāul-Fakir singers. The balance between spiritual and professional life is a theme in Hess’ scholarship on Kabir. She writes of the professional Kabir singer Prahlad Singh Tipanya, who says that a three-year period of intense spiritual activity continues to inform his spiritual life and outlook today, even as he maintains a grueling touring schedule (Forthcoming:Chapter 1). 35 Lorea comments that a Bāul-Fakir is expected “to be indigent and born from a low-class family to be judged as authentic,” and points out, in reference to Salomon (1979), that Lālan Fakir himself enjoyed “a middle class standard of living” towards the end of his life (2014a:422). 36 By ethnomusicological, I am referring to an approach that incorporates both anthropological and musicological tools. There is some Bengali-language scholarship featuring musical transcriptions of Bāul- Fakir music, but these transcriptions are in sārgām (North Indian solfege), a highly prescriptive notation that provides only a general outline of melodic and rhythmic content. Publications of swarlipi are intended for readers already familiar with the rhythmic nuance, phrasing, and ornamentation of a musical style. See, for example, Cakrabartī ([2001] 2012), Jhā (2009), and B. Ray (2007). 37 Despite the nuanced aspects of Bāul-Fakir music, it is commonly referred to as a “simple” music. The labeling of Bāul-Fakir music as “simple” likely reflects stereotypes of the performers as uneducated rustics, as well as the low social prestige ascribed to folk/popular traditions in India. 38 A Bengali folk influence is clearly perceptible in the music of Ravi Shankar, the foremost international ambassador of Indian classical music. See, for example, his performance of “Bangla Dhun” on The Concert for Bangladesh (1971). See also the performance of “Dhun Baul” on Nikhil Banerjee’s Sitar (1961). The melody of this latter performance resembles that of Jāt gela jāt gela bale transcribed in Chapter Five. 39 Hess writes that the repertoire of Kabir singers has also expanded in recent years. She attributes this to musicians’ exposure to diverse regional styles of Kabir songs through the activities of the Kabir Project (Forthcoming:Chapter 1). One wonders to what extent the diversification of Kabir repertoire is audience- driven and financially motivated. 40 Hess discusses the importance of studying Kabir songs in their musically performed, orally transmitted format. “Kabir’s chhāp [signature line towards the end of a song text] is unique in that it nearly always begins with a version of kahe kabīr suno….: ‘Kabir says, listen!’ It is not as Ashok Vajpeyi quipped at a literary gathering in Delhi, kahe kabīr paḍho… ‘Kabir says, read!’ ‘Listening’ implies live engagement of the body, a wholehearted presence that is contrasted with the insubstantiality of mere words and ideas” (Forthcoming:Preface). 41 These three instruments are played simultaneously by a single singer. The ghuṅur are bells on a rope attached to the singer’s ankle(s) (Capwell 1986:100); the ektārā is a one-string drone instrument held in the singer’s right hand (1986:89-93); and the ḍugi is a small kettle drum similar to the bāṃẏā tabla drum, supported by a strap around the waist, and played by the singer’s left hand (Capwell 1986:100-2). Some performers use the ektārā and ghuṅur combination without ḍugi. For illustration of the ektārā/ḍugi/ghuṅur instrumental configuration, see the transcriptions of Indriẏa daman āge karo man and Bidhi kār kapāle in Chapter Five. Capwell refers to the ektārā by its more formal name gopījantra, a name which also refers to the khamak. An analogue to the ektārā-ḍugi combination is found in the tradition of Kabir songs of the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh, where singers play drone strings on the tambūrā with one hand while playing rhythmic accompaniment with a pair of wooden sticks with attached cymbals (called kartāl, although they’re quite different from Bāul-Fakir kartāl) in the other. The sound of the tambūrā of Kabir 36 music more closely resembles the resonant lower range of a guitar than the buzzing timbre of the classical tanpura. According to Narayan Singh Delmia, the ektār (an instrument similar to the Bāūl-Fakir ektārā) was used instead of the tambūrā in the older style of Kabir music (Hess forthcoming:Chapter 6). For more on the contemporary performance tradition of Kabir songs, see the four outstanding documentary films produced by Shabnam Virmani for her Kabir Project (www.kabirproject.org, accessed 17 April 2014). 42 The khamak is a double-strung neckless chordophone resembling an open-ended barrel drum (Capwell 1986:94-5). Although it is technically a one-string instrument, for all practical purposes it has two strings: The string passes through one hole in the skin head at the bottom of the drum, and comes back out through another hole; the two lengths of string that emerge from the skin head are fastened to a handle that the performer grips with his left hand, as the instrument hangs by a strap from his left shoulder. The performer strikes the two lengths of string simultaneously with a large plastic or horn plectrum. This plectrum is oval- shaped, roughly fifteen times the surface area of a guitar plectrum (roughly ten times as thick), and has a hole in the center through which the player places his right index finger. The plectrum strikes the strings with its side edge rather than front. The strings are always struck together, and are ideally kept in a unison pitch, which is quite difficult to achieve. The performer adjusts the pitch of the strings by pulling on the handle that he holds in his left hand. The performer produces a round, resonant tone by striking the strings closer to the drum, and a more trebly staccato tone by striking closer to the handle. The khamak generally serves a dual role as both a rhythm instrument and a drone instrument. However, some musicians play melodies on the khamak, and its particular rhythmic role varies according to the performer and the instrumental configuration of the ensemble. Other names for the khamak are gābu, ānandalaharī, and gopīyantra (Bāsudeb Dās Bāul, pers. comm.). This last name literally means “cowherder’s instrument,” a title that points to its association with Vaishnavas; gopīyantra is also occasionally used in reference to the ektārā (Capwell 1986). 43 Debdās Bāul attributes the decline of ektārā and ḍugi performances to the difficult technique of those instruments (pers. comm.). I have observed that many musicians prefer to play dotārā or khamak even when they possess the skills to play ektārā and ḍugi. 44 Not all Bāul-Fakir practitioners are also musicians. 45 Cakrabartī ([2001] 2012), Hanssen (2001), and Knight (2010, 2011) include transcriptions of conversations and interviews with Bāul-Fakirs. The Baul Archive website features a number of transcribed interviews with Bāul-Fakirs. 46 Kartāl are two small hand cymbals tied together by a rope or string (Capwell 1986:104-5). In some styles of devotional music, little technique is required to play kartāl; in such styles they are struck primarily on downbeats, and both cymbal are made to ring simultaneously. In Bāul-Fakir music, kartāl are often played in complex and rapid patterns, typically with muting effects applied to one or both cymbals by the fingers. Elsewhere in South Asia, Kartāl are referred to as manjirā, which in Bengal refers to a smaller set of semicircular shaped hand cymbals. Kartāl literally means “do rhythm,” and is used elsewhere in South Asia to refer to wooden clappers and similar time-keeping instruments. 47 The ḍubki is a small frame drum capable of creating a variety of pitches and timbres through the use of two-hand techniques. Some ḍubkis have small metal cymbals attached to the rim, in the manner of a tambourine. Capwell refers to the ḍubki as khañjani (Capwell 1986:110-1). 48 The western violin, when used in certain vernacular music traditions, is called a fiddle. As I learned the instrument by playing Southern Appalachian folk music rather than classical violin music, I refer to the instrument by its vernacular name. 49 Neuman (1980) writes about the sometimes prickly dynamics surrounding the guru-śiṣya relationship in Hindustani music. Similar dynamics apply to guru-śiṣya relationships throughout much of South Asia. 50 This approach backfired in one instance when, after a pleasant visit, I declined to give a small sum of money that two musicians requested. I had not realized that one of them had sacrificed a day’s labor to spend time with me. At the time, I thought that perhaps they were testing my naivety. I gave a portion of the sum, but I suspect that I caused offense by withholding the full amount, as I had difficulty reconnecting with them on future occasions. In hindsight, I regretted my extreme caution on this occasion. The amount

37 requested was quite small, and I must have seemed quite unappreciative to decline giving such a small remuneration. 51 Cell phone use is widespread in India, even among the poor. 52 I am particularly grateful to Aditi Sirkar and Kārtik Dās Bāul for providing me with so many phone numbers and personal connections. 53 AF, with whom I spent a great deal of time in this border region, often emphasized that his music was from opār bāṅlā (the other side of Bengal, i.e. Bangladesh). CGF, another person whom I visited frequently, played and sang music that was clearly different from the music found in other parts of West Bengal; he attributed much of his repertoire to his Bangladeshi guru.

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Chapter Two: Bāul-Fakir Music in and around Birbhum District

INTRODUCTION

Bāul-Fakir music is prominent in public life in and around Birbhum district, an urbanizing area easily accessed from Kolkata by rail.1 Tourists, pilgrims, and workers pass daily between Kolkata and the cities, temples, historical sites, and villages of this area. Below, I discuss the various forms of presentational Bāul-Fakir music-making that occur in and around Birbhum district.2 I highlight the diversity of ways in which the music is performed, presented, and received in a variety of social contexts, according to the orientations of the performers and audiences. I draw particular attention to the ways in which performers cater to affluent audiences in this region, many of whom see Bāul-

Fakir music as emblematic of a spiritualized, pre-modern, and rural Bengal. Performing to such audiences, musicians must meet audiences’ demands both for “authenticity” and for entertainment.

ORIGINAL CONTRIBUTIONS IN THIS CHAPTER

The economies of meaning, value, and commerce surrounding Bāul-Fakir music have changed dramatically since the time of the last major ethnomusicological work

(Capwell 1986) on Bāul-Fakir music.3 There are far more professional opportunities for

Bāul-Fakir musicians today than at the time of Capwell’s research, and the music has taken many new forms in response to the aesthetics and desires of various audiences and performers. Among my unique contributions in this chapter, I describe the multi-

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instrumental virtuosity of professional Bāul-Fakirs musicians who are skilled in a variety of regional Bāul-Fakir and Bengali folk musical styles. I discuss the way these performers assemble dynamic programs for affluent audiences featuring a greater degree of melodic, rhythmic, timbral, and instrumental variety than found in non-commercial performances. I also describe Bāul-Fakir musicians’ incorporation of “modern” instrumentation, including tabla,4 bāṃśi (flute), and electric keyboard, as well as electronic delay effects in creating compelling performances for lower- and working- class audiences. The use of this instrumentation creates a sound similar to mainstream forms of Bengali popular music, and differs markedly from the “traditional” instrumental ensembles preferred by most affluent audiences. In addition to discussing the incorporation of “modern” popular elements into Bāul-Fakir music, I discuss the role of some Bāul-Fakir musicians as singers of the secular music popular among lower- and working-class audiences. The overlap between Bāul-Fakir and secular music highlights the extent to which lower- and working-class audiences value Bāul-Fakirs as entertainers.

However, I emphasize that entertainment value and spiritual value are not mutually exclusive qualities in Indian popular music,5 and I argue that “modernized” Bāul-Fakir music is nevertheless considered by lay audiences to be a spiritually charged form.

Finally, I draw attention to the fact that “modern” instrumentation is commonly used at utsavs geared towards insider Bāul-Fakir audiences. The inclusion of “modern” instrumentation at such events clashes with affluent audiences’ notions of Bāul-Fakir musical “authenticity,” and highlights the extent to which Bāul-Fakir music serves both a spiritual and recreational role for Bāul-Fakirs, most of whom hail from the lower- and

40

working-classes. In addition to these areas, I offer an array of observations, anecdotes, and “thick” descriptions that shed light on various aspects of Bāul-Fakir music culture undocumented in previous scholarship.

CHAPTER OUTLINE

I begin by describing the musical lives of professional Bāul-Fakirs of Hindu ancestry in and around Santiniketan.6 I describe the strategies used by musicians in a variety of contracted and non-contracted performances in catering to their audiences’ desires. I also discuss the relationships that Bāul-Fakir artists maintain with non-Bāul-

Fakir visitors, many of whom are seen as potential patrons. In addition, I address the ways in which Bāul-Fakirs reconcile their Bāul-Fakir spiritual identity with the pursuit of a middle-class quality of life.7

Next, I describe the relationship between Bāul-Fakirs and lower- and working- class audiences. I discuss the aspects of Bāul-Fakir performance that these audiences value, in contrast to the preferences of more elite audiences. I also discuss the phenomenon of Bāul-Fakir vocalists who record mainstream Bengali music popular among the lower and working classes. In doing so, I demonstrate that lower- and working-class audiences are generally appreciative of “modern” musical innovations in

Bāul-Fakir music, whereas affluent audiences are more likely to celebrate Bāul-Fakir music as a “traditional” form.

Third, I contrast commercial performances of Bāul-Fakir music with performances directed at an insider community of Bāul-Fakirs. Whereas commercial performances feature a series of short, diverse musical selections, insider events feature

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longer esoteric songs, with much rhythmic and melodic continuity from one song to the next. However, I also point out that the use of “modern” instrumentation is common at insider events; many Bāul-Fakirs view the incorporation of “modern” instrumentation into spiritual music-making as unproblematic, and they find that it lends excitement to musical performances.

Fourth, I describe the lives of professional Bāul-Fakirs in Birbhum district who are of Muslim, rather than Hindu, ancestry. The limited professional opportunities enjoyed by these performers demonstrate the extent to which the commercial popularity of Bāul-Fakir music is linked to the notion of Bāuls as a “Hindu” sect. I include an anecdotal description of a visit to a professional “Muslim” Bāul-Fakir musician in

Birbhum; this anecdote illustrates the fact that, despite living quite close to the tourist zone surrounding Santiniketan, he and other Muslim Bāul-Fakirs are significantly isolated from affluent patronage.

Finally, I address the presence of participatory music-making in the Birbhum area. I emphasize that in the lives of professional performers in this area, participatory music-making plays a much smaller role than commercial performance. I present this in stark contrast to the prominent role of participatory music-making along the India-

Bangladesh border in Nadia and Murshidabad districts, which I discuss in Chapter Three.

TOWARDS A BALANCE OF AUTHENTICITY AND ENTERTAINMENT

Many affluent Bengalis consider Bāul-Fakirs to be emblematic of the humanist spirituality and social liberalism for which Bengal is renowned. Bāul-Fakirs’ symbolic status is such that individual performers face a great deal of pressure to live up to the high

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ideals projected onto them. They must come across as sufficiently spiritual, rustic, and free-spirited in order to embody affluent audiences’ ideals of “authentic” Bāul-Fakir identity. At the same time, they must provide entertainment for audiences who are unaccustomed to long performances of esoteric songs. There is a danger, for example, of a Bāul-Fakir being too “authentic”: if an untrained singer performs a series of twelve- minute esoteric songs, each in a similar tempo, meter, and melodic type, affluent audience members may become quite bored, though they had wished to hear spiritual songs.8 If the singer appears in a faded or stained robe, and sings in a piercing, nasal voice, the audience may have difficulty enjoying his performance; they may like the idea of a “simple,” rustic Bāul, but they do not want to encounter a starkly impoverished individual. Accordingly, the most commercially successful performers are those who can mediate affluent audiences’ desires for “authenticity” with these audiences’ desires for entertainment. Performers understand that many affluent audiences, particularly those on vacation in a scenic locale like Santiniketan, want to dance and enjoy themselves; they want Bāul-Fakir music to be not only spiritual and “timeless,” but also rustic and merry.9

Of course, not all affluent audiences have the same views regarding Bāul-Fakir

“authenticity.” One divisive issue concerns the role of sexo-yogic practices in Bāul-Fakir religion. Some audiences are quite repelled by these practices, and maintain that the abstractly humanist spirituality espoused by Rabindranath Tagore is the essence of Bāul-

Fakir religion (Openshaw:52). Accordingly, these audiences do not wish to encounter songs that deal too explicitly with the role of sex and the body in esoteric practice. Other affluent audiences, however, are intrigued by the sexo-yogic aspects of Bāul-Fakir

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practice, and judge the “authenticity” of Bāul-Fakirs on the basis of their presumed expertise in this area. Some of these audiences go so far as to equate the term sādhanā with sexo-yogic practice, though they lack a precise understanding of what such practice entails. Rīnā Dās Bāul is outspoken in her criticism of these vague, monolithic notions of sādhanā. She points to the teachings of Bāul guru Bhabā Pāglā, who argued that singing

Bāul-Fakir music is itself an important form of sādhanā (Lorea 2014a:431), and not a practice to be lightly denigrated (Rīnā Dās Bāul, pers. comm.).

Other audiences hold liberal attitudes towards Bāul-Fakir musicians’ identities as

“modern” people with material needs, but argue that they shouldn’t call themselves

“Bāuls”. They feel that contemporary performers should simply identify themselves as

“folk singers,” but should not attempt to claim a “Bāul” identity with its spiritual connotations (Anon., pers. comm.). This critique has two implications. First, it problematically implies that professional musicians are not spiritual practitioners, and that they lack an understanding of the esoteric songs that they sing. Second, it implies that the symbolic ideal of “Bāul” is incompatible with the contemporary identities of professional musicians negotiating a balance between professional and spiritual life.

Though a detailed exploration of the spiritual lives of professional Bāul-Fakir musicians is beyond the purview of my research, my observations have led me to conclude that the practice of Bāul-Fakir spirituality is far from a black-and-white affair.10

In any case, Bāul-Fakirs must take great care in their presentation of self to affluent audiences. A common scenario like negotiating a performance contract can be fraught with complications for Bāul-Fakir musicians. A “real” Bāul-Fakir, it is said,

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would never argue over monetary compensation or insist upon decent accommodations in exchange for a musical performance. If they were given a mat to lie down on and a handful or rice to fill their begging bowl, it is said, they would be satisfied. In contrast, professional Bāul-Fakirs demand fixed rates for their performances, sometimes as much as ten thousand rupees (about two hundred dollars) for a performance. Others argue that

“real” Bāul-Fakirs wouldn’t wear the t-shirts and other “modern” clothes that many younger Bāul-Fakir musicians wear in their free time. The idea of Bāul-Fakirs in Western clothes is disturbing because it implies cultural erosion among the very people most expected to embody the traditions of the past. The sartorial critique of urban visitors towards Bāul-Fakirs in t-shirts calls to mind the disappointment of an orientalist ethnographer on encountering “natives” in Western clothes. Such a discovery bursts the bubble of “authenticity,” and forces the onlooker to either revise their essentialist views or to reject the authenticity of their subject.

PROFESSIONAL MUSIC-MAKING IN THE SANTINIKETAN AREA

Professional Bāul-Fakir musicians in the Santiniketan earn a living through a combination of contracted and non-contracted work. Non-contracted work includes the collection of alms on trains, in neighborhoods, at weekly markets, and in other public spaces. Contracted work includes performances at guesthouses, private residences, cultural arts centers, melās, and a variety of other festive events. In addition, contracted work can include studio recording, private lesson instruction, and government- commissioned composition of songs addressing issues of public welfare. Many renowned

Bāul-Fakir artists also spend time receiving visitors and potential patrons as guests at

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their homes. Below, I first discuss the various types of non-contracted and contracted work, as well as the hosting activities of renowned Bāul-Fakir musicians.

Non-contracted Work11

On trains throughout West Bengal, but particularly on routes between Kolkata and the towns of Birbhum, one encounters a great number of Bāul-Fakirs singing for alms.

Most of these performers follow an established itinerary that other performers respect in establishing their own collections itineraries. The air-conditioned cars are the preferred venue for performers, because their closed windows create a quieter environment than the general-seating cars, and because the passengers in the air-conditioned cars are wealthier and more likely to give sizable donations. In hot weather, air-conditioned cars are favored for obvious reasons. Musicians perform in the general-seating cars as well, especially if the windows are closed and performers can be heard without excessively straining their voices, hands, and arms. One advantage of the general-seating cars is that there are many of them on each train, and each car contains many passengers. By contrast, most Birbhum express trains contain only one or two air-conditioned cars. Performers generally prefer express trains to local trains, in large part because the passengers are wealthier.

Furthermore, local trains can be extremely crowded, and it is difficult for a performer to circulate throughout a car filled with standing passengers and salesmen hawking jhāl muṛi (puffed rice with oil, pulses, and vegetables), coffee and tea, fruits, newspapers, books, toys, towels, and various other items.

In the first-class air-conditioned car of the outbound Santiniketan Express from

Kolkata, one encounters the same three performers daily between Bardhaman and

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Guskara stations. At the Bardhaman station stop, the three men cue up in the corridor connection outside of the air-conditioned car. After the train begins to move, one of the men enters, singing and playing a khamak. After one song, he collects donations, and if the audience seems receptive, he will perform another song. He exits the car, and after several minutes a bāṃśi player enters, plays, collects his donations, and exits. Finally, the third man takes his turn, playing khamak and singing.12

On other train lines, other performers take turns, typically in groups of one or two.

Occasionally, one encounters a performer singing with ektārā, ḍugi, and ghuṅur, the iconic instruments of the solo Bāul-Fakir performer. Nowadays, however, it is more common to encounter performers using the instruments popular in larger Bāul-Fakir ensembles. Especially popular are the dotārā and the khamak, which is valuable for its loud volume and durability as a travel instrument. Other performers use ḍubki, bāṃśi, harmonium, or kartāl.

In addition to performing on trains, many Santiniketan area musicians perform at the weekly Saturday market in the sonājhuri forest just outside of Santiniketan. Visitors from Kolkata and elsewhere come to the market to enjoy the beauty of the forest and to purchase locally made handicrafts and textiles from the village craftspeople who manufacture them. In recent years, Bāul-Fakir music has become a staple of the Saturday market. As the day’s heat begins to subside after 3:30 p.m., as many as ten different Bāul-

Fakir ensembles set up blankets where they sit and perform until dark. These ensembles vary in size from one to eight musicians, though most contain three to four musicians.

The groups play without amplification, though their voices and instruments carry through

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the air into the spaces where other groups are performing. I have heard some musicians complain that it was not always so crowded, and that it is difficult to perform nowadays when one must shout over neighboring ensembles (LDB, pers. comm.; JDB, pers. comm.).

The variety of approaches to Bāul-Fakir performance at the śanibārer hāṭ

(Saturday market) reflects both the artistic diversity of local artists and the various aesthetic sensibilities of the affluent audiences that attend the hāṭ and make donations to performers. The most notable contrast is between LDB’s ensemble and the TK’s ensemble. TK’s group is typically the most popular musical attraction at the hāṭ. TK, a fiftyish dotārā player with a youthful affect, leads a lively ensemble of dancing and smiling musicians who play upbeat music for the semicircle of listeners that gather around them. During songs, band members interact playfully with audience members and encourage them to dance and clap. Occasionally a young female college student or a gregarious middle-aged Kolkatan man will step forward from the semicircle of listeners and dance demonstratively to the delight of the performers and other listeners. TK’s group frequently repeats the most popular songs at the request of audience members, often performing pieces at unusually fast tempos. In addition to the standing members of the group on dotārā, bāṃśi, and ḍubki, TK’s group typically features a seated rhythm section of precocious adolescent boys on khamak, khol,13 tabla, and kartāl. Many of these boys are the sons of well-known local Bāul-Fakir musicians. While the adult performers wear the orange robes characteristic of Bāuls and Vaishnavs, the boys typically wear

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slacks, jeans, and t-shirts. At contracted performances, however, these same boys wear the traditional Bāul-Fakir dress.

By contrast, the sober demeanor of LDB’s group sometimes resembles that of a

Hindustani classical ensemble. The group typically comprises LDB on khamak, his youngest brother UDB on dotārā, and DB on khol, all roughly between the ages of thirty and forty; and DK, roughly sixty, on kartāl. They perform sitting down, as do most groups at the hāṭ, and are generally surrounded by a small but dedicated group of seated listeners. Though they perform the popular songs, they sometimes decline song requests in a congenial manner. Unlike other groups, they typically perform short sets of three or four songs each. After each set, they rest for ten or fifteen minutes, drinking tea if an audience member volunteers to purchase it from a nearby vendor. Their audiences are smaller than the audiences that gather around TK’s group, but they are loyal audiences who value the performers’ exceptional level of musicianship and genteel stage manner.

TK’s and LDB’s ensembles appeal, respectively, to two different sets of criteria according to which Bāul-Fakirs are valued. As his title khyāpā (mad/crazy) reflects,14 TK presents an ecstatic and playful exterior, which reinforces the notion of Bāul-Fakirs as unfettered free spirits, as lighthearted rustics. When audiences seek out LDB’s ensemble, in contrast, they are seeking a polished musical performance that highlights introspective spiritual themes of the songs. Moreover, many audiences know LDB as the son of DDB, a renowned Bāul-Fakir guru, Brahmin by birth, who is considered to possess a great deal of knowledge about Bāul-Fakir spirituality. Accordingly, audiences listen to LDB expecting to hear a few serious esoteric songs in addition to the popular crowd favorites.

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If audiences listen to TK’s ensemble with a sense of merriment, they listen to LDB’s ensemble with a sense of contemplation and aesthetic connoisseurship.

When TK, LDB, and other Bāul-Fakirs perform in public spaces, they are keenly aware of how their performances and identities are perceived by affluent audiences. They know that despite affluent audiences’ desire for “authentic” performances, these audiences also want to be entertained with light and accessible songs (SSDB, pers. comm.; HF, pers. comm.; LCF, pers. comm.; DDB, pers. comm.). They can generally count on a positive reception if they provide light danceable music with nostalgic and devotional themes. Additionally, the spiritually evocative songs of Lālan Fakir are generally appreciated, although certain lyrics that draw attention to the Sufi and Tantric aspects of Bāul-Fakir culture are best avoided; most affluent audiences in West Bengal prefer to think of Bāul religion as a heterodox form of Vaishnava devotion. As discussed above, they must meet their audiences’ demands both for “authenticity” and for entertainment, and successfully negotiate any tensions that exist between these two demands (Openshaw 2002:81).

Professional Bāul-Fakir singers in Birbhum frequently perform audience favorites such as Hṛd mājhāre rākhibo cheṛe debo nā (I Will Keep You in My Heart; I Will Never

Let You Go), Lāl pāhāṛir deśe yā (Go to the Red Hills), and Khāncār bhitare acin pākhi

(Unknown Bird in a Cage). These songs feature catchy melodies and are accessible to audiences on an exoteric level. Whereas a sādhu might interpret “Hṛd mājhāre rākhibo” in reference to preserving the divine in the human body through seminal retention during sexual intercourse, a lay listener will interpret the lyrics in reference to keeping the divine

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or human beloved in one’s heart. Lāl pāhāṛir deshe yā is a song of recent origin, composed by the poet Arun Cakravarty, with lyrics that convey a nostalgic sense of belonging to rural Birbhum. The song’s lyrics reflect an alienation from a vaguely defined “here,” in opposition to the “colored clay” of the “red hills” to where the listener is told to return; travelers on their way to a rural retreat in Santiniketan might interpret

“here” as referencing the urban modernity found in Kolkata and other urban areas.

Khāncār bhitare acin pākhi is characteristic of many Lālan Fakir compositions in that it requires no special explanation in order to deliver a spiritually meaningful and poetically evocative message to lay audiences. The lyrics to the refrain ponder the comings and goings of an “unknown bird” inside a cage. The basic imagery of this song is clear to any lay Bengali listener: the bird is the divine presence, the elusive maner mānuṣ (person of the heart), fluttering in and out the human body, beyond tangible grasp or control.

Though such songs contain multiple esoteric meanings to Bāul-Fakir sādhus, they are also accessible to uninitiated lay listeners. Such songs strike lay listeners as meaningful, familiar, as well as “authentically” Bāul-Fakir.

In light of audiences’ “authenticity” concerns, it is ironic that audiences often overlook spiritually committed Bāul-Fakirs in favor of more charismatic showmen. Every day from 4:25 p.m. to 7:00 p.m., RDB and MDB conduct madhukari on trains from

Rampurhat station to Bolpur station and back again. Both play and sing nicely, but neither is a flashy performer, and both carry themselves with a cautious air of humility.

They perform as a duo in general-class train cars, taking turns singing and collecting whatever donations the working- and lower middle-class passengers choose to give. RDB

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and MDB are both serious spiritual practitioners who have taken bhek dīkṣā, the third initiation that Bāul-Fakirs undergo in order to become renouncers. In their daily lifestyle, they embody the “authenticity” that so many audiences profess to value: they live according to the teachings of their guru and follow prescriptions regarding dress, diet, bodily practice, and limited economic activity. They refrain from alcohol and even gāṃjā

(marijuana), as their guru prohibits the consumption of intoxicants.15 Nevertheless, their austerity holds no special appeal to potential patrons, and they receive fewer professional opportunities than other more extraverted and demonstrative musicians (RDB and MDB, pers. comm.).

Contracted Work

Throughout Bengal, and sometimes beyond, Bāul-Fakirs find contracted work in a variety of contexts. Such work includes performances at guesthouses and private residences near Santiniketan; performances at pūjas (Hindu religious celebrations), particularly Dūrgā Pūja; performances at melās of various sizes in the villages, towns, and cities throughout West Bengal; performances at elite cultural arts centers; work abroad at world music festivals and other venues; recording projects and collaborations with artists in Kolkata and elsewhere; and government-commissioned work composing songs related to public welfare.

Performances at Guesthouses and Private Residences

Public life in Santiniketan is liveliest during the cooler months of the year, from

October through March. During this time, students, locals, and tourists socialize at tea

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and snack vendors throughout town, before attending various pūja celebrations and arts events in the evenings. Several nights a week after 8:30 p.m., a person walking along the street can hear amplified concerts of Bāul-Fakir music in the near distance. Many of these concerts take place at newly constructed guesthouses.16 After a day spent touring the university and shopping for handicrafts at the nearby fairgrounds, weekend visitors return to their guesthouses for live entertainment and dinner. Performances take place on stages in these guesthouses’ large outdoor courtyards, often as part of a larger pūja celebration.

Each night, the same popular Bāul-Fakir songs reverberate through the night air in the otherwise quiet town, through rice paddies and well-grazed meadows, past mud huts and the vacation homes of the Kolkatan elite. The audiences at the guesthouses are largely the same audiences that frequent the hāṭ; guesthouse performances resemble those described in the section above, with an emphasis on exoteric lyrics, catchy melodies, danceable beats, and rustic merriment. In addition to performances at guesthouses, performances occasionally take place at private vacation homes in Santiniketan.17 Unlike performances at guesthouses, performances at private residences are generally unamplified, and are tailored according to the tastes of the individual hosts. Sometimes these performances are more recreational than professional in nature, as when young artists and musicians invite

Bāul-Fakirs as guests to their homes, where the Bāul-Fakirs mix with other guests in playing music, eating, drinking alcohol, and smoking gāṃjā.

Performances at Pūjas

During Dūrgā Pūja, the most elaborately celebrated holiday in West Bengal, Bāul-

Fakir musicians find lucrative engagements at corporate-sponsored events around

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Kolkata and other cities. Dūrgā Pūja is the six-day celebration of Goddess Dūrgā’s defeat of the buffalo demon Mahiṣāsur with the aid of her divine children Saraswatī, Lakṣmī,

Kārtik, and Ganeś. Though Bāul-Fakir religion is focused on altogether different matters,

Bāul-Fakir music is nevertheless a common feature at Dūrgā Pūja celebrations, as well as at other pūjas dedicated to Saraswatī and Lakṣmī. Upscale Dūrgā Pūja celebrations in and around Kolkata are a major source of income for many Bāul-Fakirs. In the months preceding Dūrgā Pūja, I perceived a certain anxiety among Bāul-Fakirs as they awaited phone calls regarding potential pūja bookings. Performers rely heavily on Dūrgā Pūja gigs for lucrative pay and professional publicity; a lack of Dūrgā Pūja bookings means a significant decrease in annual earnings and a lost opportunity to establish connections with potential employers. In the best case scenario, performers line up several consecutive concerts in urban areas and perform each night throughout the festival season

(UDB, pers. comm.; BDB, pers. comm.; AF, pers. comm.).

I performed at one Dūrgā Pūja concert in a very small village a few miles outside of Santiniketan with BDB’s group. The pūja was sponsored by two wealthy brothers who currently live in Kolkata, but who come from an old zāmindār (hereditary landowner) family whose ancestral home is near Santiniketan. Though they no longer live in their ancestral home, they continue to visit with their families during pūja season, and to sponsor pūjas for the local villagers. Both brothers were enthusiasts of Bāul-Fakir music, and one was an occasional music student of BDB’s. Towards the end of the evening, the musician brother joined the performers on stage to sing and play tambourine, much to the delight and amusement of his family.

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Performances at Melās

Throughout the year, Bāul-Fakirs are featured performers at a variety of melās.

Many of these melās have corporate or government sponsorship. One of the largest melās, which receives thousands of daily visitors, is Pouṣ Melā in Santiniketan, sponsored by Visva-Bharati University and the West Bengal State Government. One odd feature of the festival is the maintenance of separate accommodations, in the form of two very large tents, for “Bāuls” and “Fakirs.” The notion that Bāul-Fakirs must be separated according to their familial religious origins is highly ironic given Bāul-Fakir’s fundamental rejection of communal discrimination. That the festival would support such segregation reflects poorly on their respect for Bāul-Fakirs ideals.18

Bāul-Fakirs also perform at many smaller melās in other villages, towns, and cities throughout the state, even in regions such as Malda district, where there is little local Bāul-Fakir culture. At some of these melās, Bāul-Fakir music is but one of many forms of entertainment. In addition to Bāul-Fakir music, melās may feature dancers19 and bahurupīs (versatile character actors; literally “chameleons”),20 as well as visiting dignitaries including politicians and authors.

Performances at Arts Centers

Some Bāul-Fakir musicians are invited to perform at upscale cultural centers for audiences of musical connoisseurs. One such venue is the Society of Visual Art and

Design, established by the celebrated artist and Visva-Bharati University Professor

Emeritus Jogen Chowdhury. When I went there with BDB’s group, we performed for a

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seated and attentive audience. Unlike the lively and distractible audiences at the guesthouses, Saturday market, and elsewhere, this audience was focused exclusively on the music for the duration of the performance. To maintain the attention of such an audience over the course of an hour-long performance, it is necessary to put on a performance that is stylistically varied, as well as one that is differentiated in some way from the other Bāul-Fakir performances that are ubiquitous throughout Santiniketan.

BDB created a diverse musical set by incorporating various subgenres of Bāul-Fakir songs and other Bengali folk genres. He began with a short instrumental version of a

Rabindranath Tagore melody before beginning the first song of the performance. In doing so, he gave a nod to the “guru” of his assembled audience of Visva-Bharati scholars and

Tagore lovers.21 Additionally, this piece served as an instrumental soundcheck before the singing began. BDB began the performance proper with a traditional invocation of the guru and the divine called bandanā, which establishes a reverential and spiritually charged mood among the performers and audience (BDB, pers. comm.).22 BDB’s ensemble on this evening included three singers, each of whom contributed a different strength. UUDB, from Prantik, was responsible for singing the songs typically associated with Birbhum district; these songs featured high, intense vocal lines, with multiple variations and elaboration of key phrases. Many of these songs were in the Bāul mode resembling bhairabī raga.23 In stark contrast to this, BDB’s daughter ADB sang mellower, more mellifluous songs in the style of East Bengali bhāṭiẏāli and North

Bengali bhāowāiẏā.24 For many of these songs, the tabla player took the khamak from

BDB’s son BBDB, who usually played ḍubki on these songs. By replacing tabla with

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ḍubki on ADB’s songs, they achieved a lighter “folk” sound, and avoided having to retune the tabla to the higher key of ADB’s songs. BDB sang a variety of songs, including one in the Birbhum bhairabī mode, one bhāowāiẏā song,25 and one Fakiri song from Murshidabad. Each song featured unique melodic and rhythmic features, and helped to maintain audience interest throughout the course of the performance. As a finale, BDB and UUDB sang the crowd favorites Hṛd mājhāre rākhibo and Lāl pāhāṛir deshe yā, but with certain distinctive touches. For the refrain of the former song, BDB incorporates the raised fourth degree into ornamental phrases, thus distinguishing his version from the typical versions without the raised fourth encountered elsewhere throughout Santiniketan.

Furthermore, he plays a unique instrumental rendition of the melody during instrumental interludes, featuring the flatted seventh degree in expected places. For Lāl pāhāṛir deshe yā, the other crowd favorite of the finale, the ensemble expertly adapted a jhumur tal, thus differentiating their performance from that of other Santiniketan performers who perform the song in a more conventional manner.26 Overall, BDB’s ensemble created a dynamic performance by featuring songs in a variety of melodic modes and rhythmic textures performed by singers with a range of contrasting vocal qualities. Furthermore,

BDB’s virtuosity as a multi-instrumentalist added excitement to the performance. Though he played dotārā for most of the evening, his occasional turns on khamak were spectacular, and perhaps more impressive for the fact that he only played it on one or two songs.

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Performances Abroad

In addition to domestic performance opportunities, some Bāul-Fakirs perform at international world music festivals and at concerts designed to promote Bengali folk culture abroad. Some artists, (e.g. Pūrṇa Dās Bāul, Paban Dās Bāul, and Parvathy Bāul) have a history as international performers and enjoy name recognition abroad.27 Other artists tour abroad when given the opportunity to join arts diplomacy tours. In recent years, the NGO Banglanatok dot com [sic] has promoted a subset of Bāul-Fakirs from

Gorbhanga, Nadia district on arts diplomacy tours in Europe and East Asia.28 On such tours, Bāul-Fakir artists are seen as representatives of “traditional” Indian culture, despite their sect’s own marginal status amidst the “great traditions” of India. For foreign audiences, however, Bāul-Fakirs’ colorful outfits, exotic mannerisms, and spiritual performances appear essentially “Indian.”

Collaborations with Urban Artists

Another professional opportunity for Bāul-Fakirs is collaboration with urban musicians, artists, and filmmakers connected with affluent segments of Bengali society.

Urban filmmakers use Bāul-Fakir music in a variety of dramatic and documentary features, as well as commercial advertisements, set in the Bengal countryside.29

Occasionally, Bāul-Fakirs achieve international exposure through their collaborations with urban artists and filmmakers. For example, Lakṣmaṇ Dās Bāul and Kārtik Dās Bāul both gained recognition through their performances on the soundtrack to the Mira Nair film The Namesake (2006), based on the novel by Jhumpa Lahiri (2003).

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Bāul-Fakirs sometimes find opportunities to perform at elite urban nightclubs alongside urban musical groups called Bangla bands. These Bangla bands blend aspects of Bengali folk music with rock, blues, reggae, and other internationally popular music forms, and enjoy collaborating with Bāul-Fakir artists.30 Kārtik Dās Bāul and Bāsudeb

Dās Bāul have even appeared on Indian national television through their collaboration with the Bangla band Bolepur Bluez [sic]. Bāul-Fakirs occasionally collaborate with foreign musicians as well. One such high-profile collaboration is the album Real Sugar, featuring Paban Dās Bāul with British guitarist and producer Sam Mills (1997).

Government-Commissioned Work

One unusual example of contracted work is the government-sponsored songwriting and performing of Rīnā Dās Bāul. Rīnā is commissioned by the West Bengal state government to compose songs addressing important issues of public welfare, and to present these songs at government-sponsored melās throughout the state.31 The idea behind this program is that Bāul-Fakir music, along with puppetry, scroll painting, and other forms of folk art, is an excellent way of delivering messages to illiterate and rurally isolated audiences.32 The themes of these songs vary: some encourage audiences to use hospital facilities during times of emergency; others encourage villagers to wash hands with soap and water and to build sanitation facilities; some discuss the practice of child marriage and encourage people to let their daughters pursue an education before marriage; other songs instruct pregnant women and young mothers on health and child care; and other songs discuss contraception and AIDS prevention.33 When government officials and urban health workers come to speak about these issues in villages, villagers

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can be reticent about approaching and asking questions and advice. When Rīnā comes, however, villagers recognize her dress, music, and colloquial language as belonging to the culture of rural Bengal, and they are not intimidated by her presence. After her performances, people often approach and ask her for more information and personal advice (Rīnā Dās Bāul, pers. comm.; see also Knight 2011).

Professional Bāul-Fakirs as Hosts for Visitors and Potential Patrons

Professional Bāul-Fakir musicians in Birbhum have a great deal of free time on days when they are not performing. During this free time, musicians may receive a variety of visitors to their homes. Most visitors come simply to socialize, while others come for lessons, interviews, or to inquire about future performance engagements. When

I first arrived in Santiniketan, many Bāul-Fakirs welcomed me into their homes, encouraging me to come as often as I liked. Below, I describe my experiences as a regular visitor to two Bāul-Fakir homes in the Santiniketan area. These examples convey a sense of the relationships that professional Bāul-Fakirs maintain with visitors who are also potential patrons.

Visits with DDB

I met DDB on a preliminary research trip to West Bengal in January 2012. On the evening before my return to the States, I decided to pay DDB a last-minute visit, without telephoning in advance. As my hired cycle rickshaw exited the Santiniketan main road near Bolpur Station, I took in the dimly lit Sunri Para neighborhood, with its mix of tin- roofed mud and concrete homes. Eventually, the rickshaw stopped in front of a metal

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door embedded in the mud walls outside of the courtyard to a joint family home. When

DDB answered my knock at the gate, I introduced myself as a friend of a friend.

Apparently not bothered by my unannounced arrival, he welcomed me inside to sit and chat. His wife brought some tea and biscuits while I sat and exchanged introductions with

DDB and his son UDB. I explained my interest in Bāul-Fakir music, and DDB told me about his previous acquaintances with foreign visitors. He mentioned the names of a few filmmakers and writers who had produced work about him, and brought out a foreign- produced LP record that he had recorded over thirty years ago.

Like many other Bāul-Fakirs in the Santiniketan area, DDB displayed a casual familiarity in encountering an unfamiliar urban visitor. Though he was surprised by my unannounced arrival, he was familiar with the phenomenon of an unaccompanied scholar or artist in search of friendship and an introduction to Bāul-Fakir culture. As a resident of

Santiniketan, he was accustomed to seeing foreigners and to speaking slowly when speaking to a non-native Bengali speaker. Moreover, DDB’s display of his LP record, and his mention of his connections with other educated scholars and artists, served to reassure me that he understood people like me, and that he didn’t intend to put me under any special scrutiny.

When I returned to Santiniketan later that year, I became a regular visitor at

DDB’s ashram. I would ride my bicycle over at around 9:00 a.m., stay for lunch, and then leave around 4:00 p.m., as the heat of the day began to subside. DDB and I would sit in the thatched ashram across the street from his home and chat. His son UDB would sit with us for a short while, eventually getting up to do some gardening around the ashram,

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or joining his wife and sister in the family courtyard to help make lunch. Sometimes other men would join us, such as DDB’s devoted neighbor R or the occasional visitor from

Kolkata or elsewhere. Throughout the morning, we would sit in the shade of the ashram, having tea and biscuits, burning coconut hair to keep away mosquitoes. With the arrival of the biscuits, one of DDB’s three cats would typically appear. DDB would shoo her away at first, before eventually tossing her a tea-soaked biscuit.34 Though UDB and I didn’t smoke, the others would enjoy biṛis (local cigarettes) and chillums (pipes of gāṃjā). Sometimes UDB and I would play dotārā and fiddle together, or else DDB would ask me to play some songs for him on my fiddle. For most of the time, though, we’d just sit and relax, passing away the heat of the day. I’d look at the pictures on the ashram walls of DDB and his sons on various international trips, posing in Korea, Europe, and various Indian cities with Bengali and international friends. Eventually, we’d move to the family courtyard for lunch; DDB would eat his vegetarian meal while the rest of us would eat fried fish along with the rice, ḍal, and vegetables.35 The men would eat in a row facing the center of the courtyard, while UDB’s sister and young wife sat and ate on the threshold of his bedroom and watched a Bengali soap opera on a small TV. After lunch, DDB would spread straw mats in the ashram, and he and I would nap for a while under the electric fan, the breeze keeping away most of the mosquitoes that congregated in the shady corners of the ashram.

My conversations with DDB would often turn to his fundraising efforts for his

ākhṛā at Jaẏdev Melā,36 where he feeds and provides accommodations for hundreds of people for several days each year. He told me about his trips to Delhi, where wealthy

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friends and devotees would donate large sums of money to help pay for rice, vegetables, cooking oil, gas, and other expenses. He also mentioned several international friends who sent in donations to help pay for the ākhṛā. I recognized that I was one in the series of visitors who enjoyed DDB’s congenial company and hospitality, and that my fundraising contributions would be appreciated. I never felt that I was obligated to give in exchange for hospitality, but I also understood that our friendship had practical advantages for both of us: DDB was helping me to conduct my research, and I would join the ranks of DDB’s

“affluent” connections who would be called upon to fund his annual ākhṛā at Jaẏdev

Melā.

In addition to hosting me at his Bolpur home, DDB frequently invited me on trips to visit other Bāul-Fakirs. In the early phase of my research, DDB recognized that I was in need of a travel guide, someone who could introduce me to Bāul-Fakir sādhus whom I might otherwise find unapproachable. On one trip, for instance, he took me to Tarapith to visit his friend KDB, and we spent several hours of the night sitting in the cremation ground next to the Mā Tārā temple.37 Without a guide, I wouldn’t have had the nerve to sit in the cremation ground with the Tantric sādhus and devotees shouting and carrying on nearby. As it was, I sat with the Bāul-Fakirs sādhus, who calmly smoked their chillums and biṛis. I played a few songs with DDB and KDB, ignoring the drunken shouts of “Jaẏ Tārā!” from the groups nearby us. Eventually, I was invited to join the

Tantric sādhus to eat some of the goat that they had sacrificed, and I took a seat in front of a banana leaf plate alongside the Mā Tārā devotees (the vegetarian Bāul-Fakir sādhus declined the invitation). It was exactly the kind of “authentic” experience that students,

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travelers, and researchers might seek out, and I think that DDB was aware of this.38 He knew what sorts of settings a researcher might be interested in, and he helped introduce me into those settings. On other occasions, he invited me to mahotsavs (celebrations or festivals, often hosted by Bāul-Fakirs) where I could socialize and play music with Bāul-

Fakir sādhus who were knowledgeable about philosophy and esoteric practice.

By making himself and his acquaintances so accessible, DDB was a big help to me in conducting my research. Though he rarely played music or sang for me, he helped me in many other ways. After I had spent more time with him and had made donations towards his Jaẏdev ākhṛā and a few other expenses, I eventually asked if I could record him singing some songs. The songs that I recorded are two of my favorite field recordings from my time in India. They are also, regrettably, two of my only field recordings of the old style of Bāul-Fakir performance, where a single performer plays ektārā, ḍugi,39 and ghuṅur while singing. I would have liked to record more of this solo performance style, but most of the musicians I spent time with favored other instruments like dotārā, khamak, and ḍubki.

Visits with BDB Bāul

Whereas the pace of life at DDB’s home was quite slow-paced, I spent time with other musicians who led much busier lives. I was a frequent visitor at BDB’s home in the

Sambati Palli neighborhood of Santiniketan. Whereas DDB’s Sunri Para neighborhood in

Bolpur is close to the train station but removed from Santiniketan, BDB’s home is less than a mile from the university and the homes of students, graduates, and weekend vacationers. Accordingly, BDB receives many visitors who want to talk with him, hear

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him play, and study music with him. BDB is an exceptional instrumentalist, and many come to study dotārā, khamak, and ḍubki with him. He is also a distinctive vocalist with a wide repertoire of Bāul-Fakir and other folk songs from various parts of Bengal. He studied at one point with a music guru from Assam, and his vocal style bears a distinctively North Bengali influence, unusual among Birbhum Bāul-Fakirs. Moreover, his dotārā playing resembles his singing in his preference for rhythmically precise and minimalist phrases. Many other dotārā players, in contrast, use the instrument to provide denser, less precise, and less dynamic textures of accompaniment. Finally, BDB displays a very warm and light-hearted disposition, and he makes visitors feel welcome and comfortable at his home. On certain weekends when multiple visitors expressed interest in his music, he would invite them all to his ashram for an informal evening concert, at which he would perform with his son, daughter, wife, nephew, and a few friends. These were some of the most musically polished sessions I observed in West Bengal, and they presented guests with a more intimate musical experience than those available at the weekly market and other public venues. After an hour or more of music, guests would make donations of a hundred rupees or more, take one of BDB’s business cards, and then return to their homes or guesthouses. Some of these guests would return for musical instruction in the future, while others might book BDB’s ensemble for future events.

Such gatherings gave BDB a chance to earn some money without leaving his home and without singing for hours in a noisy public area where a performer can easily damage his voice.40

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My own visits to BDB were less leisurely than my visits to DDB, and were almost always focused on music-making. On my preliminary trip to West Bengal, I had taken dotārā lessons from him, and though he was disappointed that I didn’t want to continue dotārā lessons, he was pleased that I had brought my fiddle with me. Towards the end of my fieldwork, as the hot weather discouraged me from making long travels outside of

Santiniketan, I began to take ḍubki and khamak lessons with BDB, who lived less than a mile from my house. Unlike my visits to the homes of other Bāul-Fakirs, where I would spend several hours before returning home, my visits to BDB were often quite short.

After a cup of tea and biscuits, we’d sit for thirty minutes to an hour for a musical lesson, and then he’d be off to another engagement, perhaps teaching a lesson at somebody else’s home, or leaving for an out-of-town performance.41 Sometimes there would be another student at the lesson: an undergraduate from the university, a teenage boy from the neighborhood, or a middle-aged clerk visiting from Kolkata.42 There was never a fixed agreement on the price for lessons. It was always at the discretion of the student, and the payment varied according to the means of his individual students.

PROFESSIONAL BĀUL-FAKIR MUSICIANS OUTSIDE OF SANTINIKETAN

While my descriptions above are focused on the lives of professional Bāul-Fakir musicians in the Santiniketan area, there are other performers in and around Birbhum district who are similarly connected to elite networks of patronage despite living in more remote areas. I initially suspected that performers whose homes were inaccessible by rail would also be isolated from lucrative patronage networks. One of my early trips away from the main rail line was to the home of TDB in Kenduli, Birbhum, a ninety-minute

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bus ride from Bolpur. Kenduli is the site of Jaẏdev Melā, one of the largest annual gatherings in Bengal; during the rest of the year, however, it is a sleepy temple town.

Given the remove of Kenduli from Santiniketan and Kolkata, I assumed that TDB would be somewhat sheltered in his exposure to foreign and affluent visitors. I was surprised to learn, therefore, that he, like most of the Bāul-Fakir musicians described above, was an internationally travelled performer with a vast network of professional connections and a versatile musical knowledge. During my afternoon visit with him, I heard him play a variety of Bāul-Fakir songs, rabindrasaṅgīt (songs of Rabindranath Tagore), bhāowāiẏā, and a showy dotārā instrumental he said was in the “classical” style. He told me about his performance tours to Poland, Russia, and South Korea, as we sat with some other men amidst the branches of a banyan tree near the tomb of the fifteenth-century mystical poet

Candidās. As the other men looked on, smoking biṛis, TDB complained of the food in

Poland, where “for every meal, they eat only soup and fish cutlets.” TDB’s teenaged son was also an accomplished and versatile musician. When I arrived for my afternoon visit,

TDB’s son was still sleeping off the effects of an all-night kīrtan performance where he had provided tabla accompaniment.

In the course of my fieldwork, I encountered a number of performers who lived in remote areas, but who were nevertheless connected with lucrative networks of patronage.

In general, however, the towns located in Birbhum and parts of Bardhaman district along the main rail line from Kolkata are the most conveniently located residences for professional Bāul-Fakir performers. Performers in these areas have easy access to busy

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train routes frequented by tourists and pilgrims, and can take advantage of professional opportunities in Kolkata, Santiniketan, and elsewhere.

PROFESSIONAL BĀUL-FAKIR MUSICIANS AND THE POLITICS OF THE MIDDLE-CLASS

LIFESTYLE

Both Bāul-Fakirs and lay Bengalis frequently comment on the lack of “real”

Bāuls today.43 One such critic is LLDB, an octogenarian from Siuri, Birbhum and member of a highly renowned Bāul-Fakir family. LLDB’s critique of contemporary Bāul-

Fakir culture is of particular interest in light of the fact that he was one of the first Bāul-

Fakirs to perform commercially in the West. Today, LLDB lives with his wife in a joint family home in Siuri with the families of their two sons, who are both accomplished musicians. When I asked LLDB to compare the Bāul-Fakirs of today with those of his youth, he told me that Bāul-Fakir culture is śeṣ (finished). He gestured around his home to the television, the material trappings of middle-class life, and said that the bhāb (mood or emotion) is different today.

In LLDB’s house, as in many of the Bāul-Fakir homes I visited, there was a notable divide between the Bāul-Fakir spiritual path of the older generations and the more conventional path of the younger. Unlike in many other spiritual traditions, Bāul-

Fakir identity is not passed down in a hereditary fashion from parents to children.44 Many

Bāul-Fakirs are aware that they have chosen a difficult life for themselves, and they encourage their children to pursue higher education.45 Though LLDB’s sons followed in his path in the adoption of a Bāul-Fakir social identity, their children are pursuing education and more conventional career paths. As in the homes of many other Bāul-

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Fakirs, I found their adolescent children to be serious students who prefer television to music-making as a domestic recreational activity.

In a few homes, though, I encountered Bāul-Fakirs’ children who were both serious students and accomplished Bāul-Fakir musicians. BDB’s daughter, for instance, was not only performing locally as a member of her father’s ensemble, but was also completing a master’s degree in history. BDB’s son, on the other hand, was more clearly focused on a future career in musical performance. It is not a coincidence that the son is more committed to a career in music than the daughter; a career as a female Bāul-Fakir performer can be a fraught with social difficulties (Knight 2011), and many Bāul-Fakir parents discourage their daughters from such a path.

When members of the younger generation do decide to adopt a Bāul-Fakir social identity, their experiences are often quite different from that of previous generations. If their parents have been financially successful performers, the children might enjoy access to instruction in Indian classical music. Classical vocal training, in particular, enables a young musician to develop a smooth, “accurate” vocal tone that will appeal to audiences unfamiliar with the idiosyncrasies and complex vocal timbres of rural Bengali music.

The privilege enjoyed by some younger, more affluent Bāul-Fakir musicians is at odds with common Bāul-Fakir stereotypes. The idea of an affluent or professional Bāul-

Fakir strikes many as an oxymoron. As discussed above, Bāul-Fakirs are commonly imagined as renunciants, representive of the rural Bengali past rather than the cosmopolitan present. Many people believe that “real” Bāul-Fakirs wouldn’t care about money or material luxury. When they hear about Bāul-Fakirs owning motorcycles, living

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in decent houses, and demanding high prices for their performances, they are skeptical of those individuals’ commitment to a Bāul-Fakir spiritual path.

RRDB and her husband DBDB demonstrate several ways in which Bāul-Fakirs might reconcile material comfort with the pursuit of a Bāul-Fakir spiritual path. In response to the critique that a “real” Bāul-Fakir wouldn’t possess material wealth, RRDB references Bhabā Pāglā’s teaching that “whether you live under a tree and eat fruit, or live in a house and eat rice, you eat either way” (RRDB, pers. comm.; see also Knight

2011:179).46 She adds that if your own needs are met, you can help other people also. For example, RRDB helps to oversee the record keeping for a local women’s organization in

Santiniketan, and serves as an advocate for many of the illiterate women involved in that organization. Her generosity takes subtler forms as well, as the following anecdote reflects. On my final day in Santiniketan before returning to the United States, I had hired a cycle rickshaw driver to deliver my wooden desk to RRDB and DBDB’s house as a gift. When this same driver later drove me to the Bolpur train station, he told me that

RRDB and DBDB had invited him to sit down and relax in their home after he had made his delivery, and that they had given him chilled water. As a low-status and impoverished laborer, he appreciated this unanticipated gesture of fellowship. Whereas many people wouldn’t invite a rickshaw puller into their home, RRDB and DBDB’s behavior reflected their Bāul-Fakir philosophy of disregarding social boundaries and treating other humans with love and respect.

RRDB, moreover, is mindful of presenting her music and Bāul-Fakir teachings to audiences in ways that they will find most accessible and helpful. She views her

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performances as encouraging lay people to consider spiritual issues that go otherwise unaddressed in everyday life. During my frequent music-making sessions at RRDB and

DBDB’s house, they would often discuss with me the messages of the songs. Clearly, it was important to them that I understood the lyrical content of the songs, and not only the aesthetic beauty of the music. They would emphasize an interpretation that they thought I would appreciate, even while pointing out that different audiences would derive different levels of meaning from the songs. RRDB emphasized that while sādhus would recognize one set of meanings, musicians would understand the songs on another level, and lay audiences would form their own interpretations.47 Once when I sang for her some Fakiri songs that I had recently learned, she pointed out that Hindu audiences wouldn’t appreciate these songs, because they contain specifically Muslim religious imagery.

Though sādhus would understand the deeper message whether the song spoke of “Kṛṣṇa” or “Allah,” lay audiences wouldn’t appreciate the songs associated with the “other” religious community. She said that when she performs for communally mixed audiences, she will alternate songs that appeal to each, saying “this song talks about Bhagabān

[Hindu name for God], but the next song talks about Nabī [the Prophet].” She also will sometimes substitute certain words to make a song more presentable to a particular audience. For instance, she may substitute “bandhu nām” (friend’s name) for “nabīr nām” (prophet’s name) when presenting a Muslim song to a Hindu audience.48 Though the Bāul-Fakir songs she sings preach communal tolerance, she is aware of the prejudices and insecurities of her audience, and adjusts her performances accordingly.

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Another form of RRDB’s social activism is her relationship with visiting scholars.

I originally got RRDN’s contact information from another Western scholar who had spent time in West Bengal in previous years. For both of us, RRDB was a gracious host and good friend, and unusual among Bāul-Fakirs for her willingness to chat at length about a variety of issues of interest to foreigners and visiting scholars. Furthermore, I was aware that RRDB and DBDB self-consciously promoted a positive public image for

Bāul-Fakirs, in contrast to the alcoholism and reckless behavior exhibited by some other high-profile Bāul-Fakir performers. In reference to this latter group, RRDB and DBDB pointed out that alcohol is prohibited by most Bāul-Fakir gurus, and that biṛi and gāṃjā addictions were vices also. I never had the impression that they were telling me this to make themselves look more virtuous; rather, I had the impression that they were trying to safeguard the reputation of Bāul-Fakirs in the eyes of foreign scholars who were serving as international reporters on Bāul-Fakir culture.49

Like many of the Bāul-Fakirs I met, RRDB and DBDB were very generous hosts, and encouraged me to visit as often as I liked. At the same time, they made it clear that they weren’t cultivating me for financial donations. On one occasion when I gave RRDB money in exchange for songs that she had informally taught me, she laughed and covered her face in embarrassment. She announced that she would spend the money on a special meal that she would prepare for me on the following day.

FAKIRS AS COMMERCIAL MUSICIANS IN THE BIRBHUM AREA

As mentioned previously, Bengalis in tourism zones near Kolkata and

Santiniketan often distinguish between “Bāuls” and “Fakirs” on the basis of individuals’

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religious origin. Whereas “Bāuls” evoke a range of Tagorean ideals to affluent Bengalis,

“Fakirs” occupy a more marginal status and possess a more limited commercial appeal.

Many times during my research, I noticed that when Bengali Hindus discussed religious communities, they used to the term Bāṅāli (Bengali) for Hindus, but Muslim for Muslims.

This reflects the degree to which Muslims in Bengal, as elsewhere in India, are still viewed as marginal to mainstream society.

In the excerpt from my fieldnotes below, I describe my first visit with a “Fakir” musician in a village fifteen miles away from Santiniketan. Despite the proximity of his home to the tourism network surrounding Santiniketan, NM’s social positioning as a professional performer was markedly different from the position of BDB, DDB, and other “Bāul” performers in the Santiniketan area.

A Visit With NM

Today I went to NM’s house for the first time. I bicycled to the Bolpur bus depot from my home in Santiniketan, and boarded a bus at 8:35 A.M. headed in the direction of

Gorisha. After forty-five minutes, having travelled twelve miles, the bus stopped in

Ilambazar, a rural trade center near Gorisha. Large numbers of men and women of all ages filed into the already crowded bus, and thin gray-haired men loaded enormous sacks of rice into the back of the bus. The bus departed Ilambazar, and after a bumpy three miles reached the village of Gorisha, where I was one of the few passengers to disembark. I sat down in a shady spot and telephoned NM to tell him that I had arrived.

The nearby rickshaw drivers, vendors, and assorted locals stared at me as I waited.

Unlike in Santiniketan, the residents here were clearly not used to foreign visitors.

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After several minutes, an unsmiling teenage boy with an intense look approached me and said abruptly, “He’s on his way.” After ascertaining that this was NM’s son RM,

I followed him down the road to a storage shed where he and a vision-impaired man loaded potato sacks onto a flatbed cycle trailer. While I was waiting, RM handed me his phone and headphones so I could listen to a recording of his father’s music. I didn’t hear his father’s violin on the recording, but I did hear a trebly instrument with precise articulation that sounded like a banjo or hammer dulcimer. I asked what it was and RM told me that it was a synthesizer. The drumming on the recording was noisy and energetic, and reminded me of the music used in pūja festivities.

After about thirty minutes, NM arrived, and treated me to tea and sweets at a nearby tea stall. To reach his house from the main road, I had to sit on the back rack of his bicycle, while carrying my fiddle and shoulder bag. Somehow, I held on with a few fingers to the bike rack underneath me. NM told me that his house was close to the bus stop, but it took around ten minutes of riding through rice paddy and village dirt lanes before we got there. I later learned that Gurisha is comprised of twenty different neighborhoods, some Muslim and some Hindu. When I arrived and sat inside NM’s house, neighbors and relatives appeared in the doorway and window to stare at me, and to laugh at my accented Bengali. At times there were as many as thirty people gathered around me. After some of the crowd dispersed, NM explained to me that his neighbors had never seen a foreigner before.

We spent most of the day passing my fiddle back and forth, playing music for each other. NM said that he didn’t like other Western-made fiddles he had played, but that he

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liked mine: he said that Western-made violins are smaller and quieter than his Indian- made violins. I don’t think that Western violins are quieter than his, but they are certainly lacking in the harsh metallic quality that enables his violin to cut through drums, voices, and other noises. I was surprised to see that he plays with the standard GDAE violin tuning, though he rarely uses his low G string. He tunes the E string considerably flat, but frets it high to produce the desired pitches.

Almost all of the songs that he played featured the same violin parts, but were nevertheless unpredictable and exciting as a result of his dynamic singing and nuanced rhythmic approach. It was fascinating to hear him play together with his drummer and neighbor S, who played accompaniment on the nāl, a large barrel-shaped double-headed drum similar to a pākowāj, typically played with one hand and one stick. We played song after song, though at one point NM abruptly quieted down when he saw an orthodox

Muslim man across the neighborhood pond kneeling for his afternoon prayer.

Throughout the day, as NM’s neighbors continued appearing in the windows and doorways, NM requested that I play and sing for them. I found myself playing in a really loud forceful way like him, a bit less sweetly and precisely than I would normally try to play. Singing for the audience at his house, I tried to match the high-pitched, forceful vocal style that NM uses. I decided to sing a few bluegrass songs like that: when I sang the high falsetto part to “In the Pines” everyone started smiling and the little boys dissolved into laughter.

At one point in the day, during a break in the music, I stretched and looked out over the huge neighborhood pond where people bathe and wash clothes and dishes.

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There were several school-aged boys outside who had been staring at me all day, and I fielded their questions for a while. They had all sorts of questions for me: “Is there marriage in America?” “Does everyone wear short pants in your country?” (I was the only adult wearing short pants on this sweltering September day.) “Do you need a visa to go there?” “What language do they speak there?” “Are there lots of Chinese people there?” “Do you speak Chinese?” (They imitated Chinese in much the same way that

American boys might imitate it). NM later asked about my job, and was impressed to hear that I was a teacher with various academic degrees.

In contrast to the Santiniketan Bāuls, who frequently interact with affluent

Kolkatans and international university students, NM was less accustomed to interacting with an outsider visitor. Spending time with him, I gained awareness of the ways in which

Santiniketan Bāuls would slow down and carefully enunciate their speech when communicating with a foreigner. Furthermore, I couldn’t imagine a Santiniketan host allowing so many neighbors to hover around and stare; they would know that that would make a foreign visitor uncomfortable. It’s striking to think that NM’s home in Gorisha is only fifteen miles from BDB’s house in central Santiniketan. Given the inaccessibility of

Gorisha’s roads to auto traffic, however, and its distance from the nearest rail station,

Gorisha is worlds apart from Santiniketan.

At the time that I composed the above fieldnotes, I attributed NM’s inexperience with outside visitors to his geographic isolation from centers of tourism. Subsequently, however, I met many Bāuls whose homes were equally removed from tourism centers,

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but who nevertheless were quite familiar interacting with outside visitors. The difference,

I suspect, is that NM, as a “Fakir” in Birbhum, enjoys less access to the kind of professional opportunities where he would interact with affluent audiences. Whereas the

Fakirs of Nadia and Murshidabad are currently enjoying popularity as an alternative to the Bāuls of Birbhum, the Fakirs of Birbhum are largely overlooked and underappreciated in commercial settings.50 Though NM and other Birbhum Fakirs perform at Pous Melā in Santiniketan and the Bāul-Fakir Utsav in Jadavpur, Kolkata, they are not the performers that most guesthouses or promoters would seek out for their musical events.

BĀUL-FAKIRS AND LOWER- AND WORKING-CLASS AUDIENCES

Affluent Bengalis are not the only lay audiences that appreciate Bāul-Fakir music.

Many lower- and working-class Bengalis enjoy Bāul-Fakir music, and will willingly sacrifice a proper night of sleep to attend a performance at a local Bāul-Fakir melā or utsav. Lower- and working-class audiences often have different criteria than affluent audiences for assessing Bāul-Fakir performances. Many of them are accustomed to hearing their Bāul-Fakir neighbors perform in unamplified settings, and want stage performances to offer something special in comparison (Anon., pers. comm.). They respond to the high volumes and bright lights of staged performances, particularly if they live in small villages where such performances are rare. Whereas many affluent audiences are preoccupied with the notion of “authenticity” in performances, lower- and working-class audiences are not attached to the Tagorean ideals surrounding Bāul-Fakirs.

Certain elements that may repel affluent audiences, such as the inclusion of an electric

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keyboard or the conspicuous use of delay effects on the vocals, serve as novelties that augment the appeal of staged Bāul-Fakir performances to lower- and working-class audiences.

At Jaẏdev Melā in Kenduli, Birbhum, many of the Bāul-Fakir concerts were geared towards the sensibilities of lower- and working-class audiences. The loudest elements of the ensembles were the tabla, keyboards, vocals, and bāṃśi. The khamak and

ḍubki, when present, were nearly inaudible in relation to the rest of the ensemble. The resultant texture more closely resembled popular Bengali dance and film music than acoustic Bāul-Fakir performances. Moreover, vocals, and sometime bāṃśi, were drenched in reverb and delay, which was intended, I suspect, to accentuate the mystical component of the music. Many of the dotārās were plugged into electronic pickups, giving them a strident, trebly tone and uniform volume dynamic. Often, electric keyboards were set to the “banjo” setting to produce a synthetic dotārā sound. By toggling synthetic instrumental settings, a single electric keyboard might substitute for both dotārā and bāṃśi, in addition to providing harmonium and organ sound effects. The overall texture created by such an ensemble with tabla, electric keyboard, and reverb heavy vocals closely resembled the “low fidelity” sound of much popular Bengali and

Hindi dance music, and was a far cry from the dynamically sensitive sound achieved by acoustic Bāul-Fakir ensembles.

In fact, popular Bengali dance music features quite prominently at Jaẏdev Melā, where it blasts from the speakers of VCD stalls set up throughout the fairgrounds. The coyly flirtatious tone of this music is quite a contrast to the spiritually oriented Bāul and

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kirtan music featured at the festival.51 When I watched the videos playing on the small television monitors at one VCD stall, I was surprised to note that the featured singer was

Sandhyārānī Dās, a Bāul-Fakir singer.52 In many of the videos, she wore heavy makeup and conventional Bengali clothing, without any markers that would identify her as a

Bāul-Fakir. In one of the videos, she was pictured only briefly; the rest of the video featured attractive young people dancing in groups and flirting with each other. Watching these videos, I had the realization that Bāul-Fakirs music is just one of a variety of musical styles that comprise popular entertainment for lower- and working-class Bengali audiences. This is in contrast to its significance among affluent audiences, to whom the music’s status as entertainment is not easily separated from its status as “folklore.”

Seeing Sandhyārānī cast as a popular singer, I was reminded of the bluegrass and old-time musical roots of many North American mainstream country stars of the nineteen eighties and early nineties, such as Ricky Skaggs, Travis Tritt, Vince Gill, Marty Stuart, and Dolly Parton. In the United States, working-class audiences could appreciate the rustic qualities of these singers’ voices, but enjoyed their music when it was framed by a

“modern” backing band with electric guitars, electric basses, drum kits, electric keyboards, and other instruments. Likewise, lower- and working-class audiences in

Bengal appreciate the quality of Bāul-Fakir voices, and enjoy their music when it is framed by a “modern”-sounding ensemble. This is exactly the opposite of what is valued by “high-brow” urban audiences who favor “authenticity” in folkloric performances.53

I am not suggesting that lower- and working-class audiences are uninterested in the spiritual content of Bāul-Fakir songs. On the contrary, their engagement with Bāul-

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Fakir music reflects the ways in which Bāul-Fakir music is intended for both spiritual edification and for aesthetic enjoyment. Prominent performers are valued both as entertainers and as accomplished spiritual practitioners with valuable messages to share.

Many lower- and working-class audiences admire and identify with Bāul-Fakirs in a variety of ways, even if they themselves do not self-identity as Bāul-Fakirs. When they listen to Bāul-Fakir performances, they look both for entertainment and for spiritual insight.54

PERFORMANCES AT RITUALLY SIGNIFICANT BĀUL-FAKIR EVENTS

There are two broad categories of staged Bāul-Fakir performances: performances for lay audiences in commercial settings, as discussed above; and ritually significant performances, typically held in honor of a particular guru, murshid (Sufi or Fakir guru), or pīr for an audience comprised of both Bāul-Fakirs and lay people.55 Whereas performances in the former category are tailored to the aesthetic preferences of lay audiences and are generally designed to maximize entertainment value, performances in the latter category are designed to foreground the philosophical and spiritual content of the songs. Not surprisingly, the musical repertoire and style of these two categories of performance differ considerably. Whereas commercial performances typically feature a sampling of various Bengali folk genres, performances at ritually significant Bāul-Fakir events feature only Bāul-Fakir songs that deal with important aspects of Bāul-Fakir philosophy and spiritual practice. Interestingly, Bāul-Fakir performances at ritually significant events often feature the “modern” instrumentation discussed above, including electric keyboard, tabla, bāṃśi, and often utilize heavy delay effects on the vocals.

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Whereas these features clash with affluent audiences’ ideals of folkloric “authenticity,” they are typically embraced by the practitioners, musicians, and lay audiences at ritually significant events.

Songs at ritually significant Bāul-Fakir events tend to be much longer than songs at commercial performances. Whereas lay audiences typically prefer a succession of shorter songs, with each song lasting four to seven minutes, the songs at ritually significant Bāul-Fakir events often last for over ten minutes. Part of the reason for this is that the performers at spiritual gatherings deliver songs in such a way as to draw attention to the esoteric meanings of particular lyrics. They elaborate key phrases with special emphasis, repetition, and musical variation, and often shout impromptu exegeses in the middle of songs, while the accompanying musicians provide subdued accompaniment or temporarily stop playing altogether. Additionally, performers at spiritual gatherings typically begin songs with an extended introductory section in free rhythm. They often sing the first verse and refrain of the song in free rhythm before the full ensemble joins for a repeated refrain section.56

Whereas commercial performances typically feature a variety of Bengali folk musics, the songs performed at ritually significant Bāul-Fakir events usually bear the stamp of the local regional style. For example, at a mahotsav in honor of the recently deceased guru Nityānanda Dās Bāul in Rampurhat, Birbhum, the majority of songs were performed in the Phrygian/Aeolian mode characteristic of Birbhum Bāul songs.

Similarly, a melā in honor of the pīr in Madhuripara, Birbhum featured a majority of songs in the Dorian/Aeolian mode characteristic of local Fakiri songs. Indeed, melodic

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uniformity is particularly conspicuous in performances of Fakiri songs at these gatherings. When I asked HF why so many songs use the same melodic type, he answered that “heavy” songs use a particular kind of “heavy” melody.57

Although performances at ritually significant events can be melodically monotonous, they can also build to peaks of remarkable intensity, enabling ecstatic experiences for both performers and audience members. I witnessed this at one particular melā in Madhuripara, Birbhum, a very poor Muslim-majority village. The performance began at 8:30 p.m. and continued throughout the night, without stop, until 6:30 a.m. Early in the evening, I noticed that successive songs featured similar tempos and melodic types, and that even the synthesizer player reused the same three or four instrumental solos throughout the evening. By dawn, however, as the audience began to wake up and dance, the tempos began to increase. Towards the end of the ten-hour performance, the whole audience was dancing ecstatically, as the tempos continued to gradually increase. The repetitive aspect of the music, the extreme duration of the performance, and the gradual tempo increase contributed to producing a powerful effect on the audience.58 This performance was unlike other melās and mahotsavs that I had attended, where the music typically stopped by 2:00 a.m. This was the only alcohol-free event at which I witnessed such an ecstatic participatory reaction by audience members. I attribute the audience’s energetic reaction not only to musical factors, but also to the influence of the local pīr in spiritual life throughout Madhuripara. Though many would not self-identify as “Fakir,” they clearly shared a devotion to the local pīr and were profoundly moved by the music- making in his honor. Whereas lay attendees at other Bāul-Fakir events may view Bāul-

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Fakir spirituality as marginal to their own religious life, the large audience at

Madhuripara clearly embraced certain spiritual aspects of the Bāul-Fakir performance.

PARTICIPATORY MUSIC-MAKING IN BIRBHUM

Above, I have described a range of presentational music-making activities in and around Birbhum district, many of which have strong participatory elements. Though it is less prominent in public life, fully participatory music-making also occurs in Birbhum.

As I discuss in the following chapter, participatory music-making tends to be linked to five factors: isolation from perennial tourist markets, use of intoxicants, an agricultural rather than mercantile local economy, presence of Bāul-Fakir spiritual sites, and a level of poverty in which few homes possess televisions. In Santiniketan, with its perennial tourism market, the musical lives of Bāul-Fakirs center on commercial activities. As a result, most working musicians are not inclined to meet in the evening to do music for pleasure. In my time in Santiniketan, I only encountered one āśram where there was nightly participatory music-making. Significantly, a Western lady was staying at the house next door to this āśram; one wonders whether the music session was carried out for her benefit. Participatory music-making would occur sporadically at other ashrams, but it was by no means a daily occurrence. Tellingly, when Bāul-Fakir musicians would invite me over to play music, they typically used the English word “rehearse.”

When I visited other places in Birbhum away from Santiniketan, I asked about the frequency of nightly participatory music-making; I was told that it happens from time to time, but not on a daily basis. In the following chapter, I discuss musical life in the rural

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villages of Nadia and Murshidabad along the India-Bangladesh border, where participatory music-making is a fixture of daily life.

1 By “in and around Birbhum district” I am referring also to nearby parts of Bardhaman and Bankura districts. This is region that Jeanne Openshaw calls Rarh, whereas the region discussed in the next chapter is what Openshaw refers to as Bagri (2002:75). 2 I use the term presentational in the sense discussed by Turino (2008a:51-2), in reference to music-making in which there is a clear divide between performer and audience. 3 Other scholars (Murase 1991; M. Ray 1994; Hanssen 2001; Knight 2011; Lorea 2014b) have discussed the increasing commercialization of Bāul-Fakir music, but without attention to musical phenomena other than song texts. 4 I do not use diacritical marks in reference to Indian classical music instruments with which most readers will be familiar. 5 The significant overlap between entertainment value and spiritual value in Indian popular music is illustrated in the discussions of various popular devotional musics in Manuel’s Cassette Culture (1993). 6 I focus here on “Hindu” Bāul-Fakirs because they represent the majority of commercial performers in and around Birbhum. I discuss the reasons for this below. 7 A common critique of contemporary Bāuls is that they enjoy too many modern conveniences to be considered “real” Bāuls (Kārtik Dās Bāul, pers. comm.; Lakṣmaṇ Dās Bāul, pers. comm.). I write Bāuls here rather than Bāul-Fakirs because this critique is rarely addressed at individuals labeled Fakir. 8 Lorea writes that audiences will feel “out of place, embarrassed, if not even terribly bored” (2014a:426) by encountering the wrong forms of Bāul-Fakir “authenticity.” 9 This desire for a “rustic and merry” folk musician is in no way unique to Bengal. See, for instance, Seeman’s discussion of the reception of Çingene musicians in Western Turkey (2014). 10 Lorea writes that Bāul-Fakirs are able to maintain privacy over their identities as esoteric practitioners by presenting publicly as musicians: “The touristic success of Baul songs allows a considerable number of composers, singers and musicians to sustain themselves through the continuation of a centuries old tradition, allowing it to develop and survive. Apart from the touristic support in preserving and promoting endangered heritages, the newly awakened interest in Bauls' performances defended them from marginalization and persecution by the fundamentalist elements of established religions and conservative society: physical violence against Bauls during their gatherings is nowadays more and more rare and being a Baul is no more cause for shame or scandal in the areas where folk tourism awakened and revived a certain pride in being upholders of the Baul tradition” (2014a:424). 11 For more descriptions of Bāul-Fakirs’ collection of alms, see Ray (1994), Murase (1991), and Hanssen (2001, 2002). 12 Performances of Bāul-Fakirs singing in trains, and at many of the other venues described in this chapter, can be found on Youtube. 13 The khol, or mṛdaṅga, is a large double-headed, barrel-shaped drum common in Bengali kīrtan (devotional Vaishnava music). It is played with two hands. 14 Though I maintain certain individuals’ anonymity throughout this paper, their surnames/titles are generally indicated by the final initials I have given them. For example, B is “Bāul,” DB is “Dās Bāul,” K is “Khyepa,” and F is “Fakir.” 15 There is a great deal of variation in the prescribed practices of various Bāul-Fakir guru lineages. While consumption of alcohol is ubiquitously condemned, consumption of gāṃjā is encouraged in some lineages as an aid for “cooling” off the body (Openshaw 2002:208). Such “cooling” is part of the larger project of purifying kām (lust) into prem (love). 16 Knight comments on the commercial transformation of Santiniketan in the early oughts (2011:17). Even in the time I spent in Santiniketan, between 2011 and 2013, I observed the construction of a large number of new guesthouses and stages.

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17 Murase (1991:187) mentions that some Bāul-Fakirs get paid very well to perform at private residences in Santiniketan. 18 The maintenance of two tents likely reflects a fear on the part of officials that should any communal tension arise by having Hindu and Muslim performers sharing the tents, it would be too difficult for authorities to speedily and effectively intervene, given the huge crowds that attend the festival. 19 At one melā that I attended in Malda, the Bāul-Fakir act with which I was performing was preceded by a dance performance of the Dūrgā and Mahiṣāsura story. Actors danced in elaborate costumes representing the various deities, while an electric keyboardist and a khol player provided musical support, repeating one instrumental melody for the duration of the twenty-minute performance. During certain sequences when Mahiṣāsura performed threatening gestures and stances, the musicians would abruptly discontinue the music, and the keyboardist would instead play menacing electronic sounds reminiscent of nineteen- seventies Shaw Brothers kung fu films. When Dūrgā and her children took the foreground, the melody resumed. 20 At a different melā that I attended in Malda, I watched one outstanding bahurupī perform six or seven consecutive musical comedy routines, each featuring a different elaborate costume. Some of his characters included an errant schoolboy, a “Thriller”-era Michael Jackson, and a Charlie Chaplin/Raj Kapoor figure. 21 Rabindranath Tagore is often referred to as kabiguru, which literally means “Poet-guru.” 22 Bandanā is used in a range of other musical traditions, including that of Kabir (Hess forthcoming:Chapter 1). 23 Capwell discusses the limitations of using classical raga references to describe Bāul-Fakir music (1986:33). As a shorthand, however, reference to classical ragas provides a general sense of tonality. In this case, bhairabī implies that the song frequently, but not exclusively, incorporates the flatted versions of the second, third, sixth, and seventh scale degrees (i.e. resembles a Phrygian mode). See transcriptions of Bidhi kār kapāle and Nadī bharā ḍheu in Chapter Five. 24 Bhāṭiẏāli is the genre of songs sung by boatmen in the East Bengali delta. Many of these songs have mixolydian features, and feature distinctive intervallic patterns (S. Ray 1973:111; see transcriptions of Prem karbi ke āẏ, Nabī mar paraśamaṇi, Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe, and Prem rasikā haba kemane in Chapter Five). Many Bāul-Fakir songs from East Bengal feature similar melodies. Bhāowāiẏā is the genre of North Bengali songs traditionally sung by bullock cart drivers. For more on bhāowāiẏā see Barmā 2004. 25 One of BDB’s former music guru’s lived in Assam, and a strong North Bengali influence can be heard throughout BDB’s music (BDB, pers. comm.). 26 Jhumur is a form of music and dance associated with indigenous “tribal” groups of Purulia district, located southwest of Birbhum. The origins of jhumur are contested however, as explored in Chatterjee (2004). 27 Many of the artists mentioned above have performed internationally, as well. 28 I discuss the impact of Banglanatok dot com’s activities in Gorbhanga in Chapter Three. 29 See for instance a recent advertisement for Fevicol Marine adhesives featuring the singing of Kārtik Dās Bāul (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVBW9xJGtz0, accessed 23 March 2014). 30 I discuss the collaborations between Bāul-Fakirs and Bangla bands in Chapter Four. 31 I refer to Rīnā Dās Bāul as Rīnā here because Dās Bāul is a standard title for Bāul-Fakirs, and therefore serves as an ineffective reference for a specific individual. 32 See Korom (2006) and http://www.internationalfolkart.org/eventsedu/education/painterslessonplan.pdf (accessed 23 March 2014). 33 See Lorea (2014a) for more on the role of Bāul-Fakirs as public educators on contraception and other health issues. 34 Once while waiting on a train platform with DDB, I saw him feed the assembled crows in a similar fashion. 35 DDB’s vegetarian meal is more accurately described as nirāmiṣ (vegetarian food without garlic, onions, or eggs, taken by Vaishnavas and other renunciants). 36 As stated in Chapter One, an ākhṛā can be conceived as a larger āshrām, in some cases large enough to accommodate hundreds of people. At melās, ākhṛās are generally large tents with stages. In DDB’s ākhṛā at

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Kenduli, there was a kitchen and eating area set up in a behind the tent. This area was enclosed by a bamboo fence, so that one entered by walking through the tent and past the stage. 37 Tarapith is one of many śaktipīṭhs in Bengal, places where the pieces of Goddess Satī’s corpse fell to the earth. See McDaniel (2004) and McDermott (2001) for details on goddess worship in Bengal. 38 See Dalrymple’s description of Tarapith (2009:199-251). Also see Baker (2011) on Allen Ginsberg’s visit to Tarapath. 39 Ḍugi is not always included in this instrumental configuration. 40 Hanssen (2001:146-7) discusses the physical toll that public singing takes on the bodies on Bāul-Fakirs. 41 I would not be surprised if my short visits with BDB were the result of his perception that I was always in a rush. Indeed, during my time in West Bengal I had to adjust to extended periods of social inactivity at the homes of new acquaintances, and I may have appeared restless when we weren’t engaged in musical activity, eating, or conversation. 42 M. Ray observes that some non-Bāul-Fakirs visit Bāul-Fakirs in Santiniketan to learn songs (1994:67). 43 I write “Bāuls” rather than “Fakirs,” because that is how the discourse is framed, in reference to professional Bāul-Fakir performers of a Hindu background. I have never heard anyone lament the scarcity of “real” Fakirs. 44 In some cases, the sons and daughters inherit the surname Bāul, but do not adopt the social identity of a Bāul-Fakir. 45 Education is highly prized across various social classes in Bengal. It is not uncommon for the sons (and, increasingly, daughters) of low-income families to earn bachelor’s and even master’s degrees. 46 See also Knight (2011:179). 47 It is interesting to note that RRDB distinguished between sādhus, as experienced practitioners with extensive esoteric knowledge, and Bāul-Fakir musicians, who in her account possessed less knowledge than sādhus but more than lay people. Tellingly, she called sādhus sādhus and musicians Bāuls. This usage reflects the particular connotations of the word Bāul in Santiniketan. 48 Hess describes similar substitutions of religious terminology in Kabir songs, although these substitutions occur for different reasons than those discussed above. “Religious traditions and sects have their ideologies and preferences. So do individuals. Some singers have told me they prefer nām to rām and consciously substitute the former for the latter. This indicates a more marked disengagement from Vaishnav and saguṇ associations and may be linked to a caste-related preference for the nirguṇ position” (Forthcoming:Chapter 2). 49 I had a similar impression when similar topics came up in visits with RDB and MDB at their home in Rampurhat. 50 I discuss the Fakirs of Nadia and Murshidabad in Chapter Three. 51 I describe the music as “Bāul” instead of “Bāul-Fakir” because Jaydeb Melā is clearly a Hindu-centered event, and one which few Fakirs attend. A notable exception to this is at the Moner Manus ākhṛā, hosted by Sādhan Bābā. This ākhṛā hosts a large number of foreign, especially Japanese, visitors, and features a diverse array of Bāul-Fakir performers. 52 Her VCD is entitled Kalir kārenṭ. It was released by JMD Telefilms Industries Ltd (n.d.). 53 As discussed above, “authentic” folkloric performances are strategically assembled by savvy artists who are experienced in navigating audiences’ desires and expectations. 54 Popular entertainment in India often has both religious and secular appeal. See, for instance, Manuel’s (1993) discussion of the commercial markets for popular devotional music in North India. 55 M. Ray uses the term macchaba to describe the annual ritually-significant events hosted by individual Bāul-Fakirs. I usually heard these events referred to by the terms mahotsav or utsav. Whereas M. Ray writes that outsiders are not always welcome at these events (1994:91), I encountered no such exclusive events. At the time of his scholarship, macchabas in Birbhum were increasingly becoming open to the public, and were becoming sites where performers could establish contacts with affluent visitors (Ibid.:94). I observed that Bāul-Fakirs would often collect subscriptions from neighbors and benefactors to help support the cost of their events. 56 See Capwell (1986:146-77), and Chapter Five, for a discussion of form in Bāul-Fakir songs.

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57 After asking this innocent question on why so many Fakir songs sound alike, HF went out of his way over the next few days to demonstrate to me the melodic diversity of Fakir songs. On finishing a song, he’d turn to me and ask in a prickly manner, “Does that sound like all the other songs?” 58 Henry writes about phenomenon of the “intensity-building” (2002:38) found in various South Asian music forms including including kīrtan (Slawek 1986, 1988), qawwālī (Qureshi 1986), and birahā (Henry 1988). Most of the features that he mentions are exemplified in Bāul-Fakir ritually-significant performances. Many of the features that Henry discusses are especially associated with Sufi music; it is no surprise that these tend to feature more prominently in the music of Fakirs than in the music of Bāuls.

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Chapter Three: Bāul-Fakir Participatory Music-Making near the India-

Bangladesh Border

Whereas the Birbhum region described in the last chapter is a hub of professional music activity, the area of Nadia and Murshidabad districts along the India-Bangladesh border is the center of a different form of music-making. The core of Bāul-Fakir musical life in this area is the participatory music-making that occurs each night at informal rural gatherings. Whereas previous scholars have characterized Bāul-Fakir music as a presentational form with a clear “performer/auditor distinction” (Capwell 1986:36), I have not encountered any work, in English or Bengali, addressing Bāul-Fakir music as a fully participatory form.1

Below, I identify five socio-cultural factors that closely correlate with Bāul-Fakir participatory music-making in West Bengal. I suggest that these factors are present elsewhere in South Asia where participatory music-making occurs among heterodox spiritual groups. These factors are the presence of heterodox spiritual sites such as mājārs, ākhṛās, and āśrams; the use of intoxicants; the presence of an agricultural rather than mercantile local economy; isolation from perennial markets of cultural tourism; and a level of poverty in which few homes possess televisions. In areas where these factors are missing, music-making is characterized by a clear distinction between participant and spectator, and participatory music sessions are rare.

In this chapter, I discuss Bāul-Fakir participatory music not only in a “traditional” context, but also in light of recent social changes in the areas where it occurs. In recent

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years, the vibrant music culture of Nadia and Murshidabad has attracted the attention of music and folklore aficionados from Kolkata and beyond. Since 2005, the NGO

Banglanatak dot com [sic] has been involved in the promotion and preservation of Bāul-

Fakir music of Nadia district, and in 2010 established a Bāul-Fakir “resource center” in the village of Gorbhanga.2 Banglanatak dot com has also produced recordings of Bāul-

Fakir music, and organizes an annual music festival that enables informal interactions between urban visitors and folk artists in Gorbhanga. Independently of Banglanatak dot com, a small number of urban artists and intellectuals have also begun to seek out the

Bāul-Fakir culture of the India-Bangladeshi border region. To many, the music culture of this region is an attractive alternative to that of the commercialized region centered on

Santiniketan and the greater Birbhum area. Moreover, the subaltern status of the

“Muslim” Fakirs in the border region lends them a patina of “authenticity” in the eyes of urban leftist intellectuals. With the gradual influx of urban visitors, however, the music culture of this border region is beginning to change as presentational elements are introduced into participatory music sessions. I discuss the impact of urban visitors on communities of rural Bāul-Fakir communities below. While these urban visitors have contributed wealth and professional opportunities to local musicians, they have also sparked professional rivalries and have contributed to a growing problem of alcoholism.

Before exploring these issues, however, I consider Thomas Turino’s usage of the term “participatory” music-making and discuss its applicability to the range of Bāul-Fakir music-making in West Bengal. I argue that while various commercial forms of Bāul-

Fakir music feature participatory characteristics, the informal music-making of the

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Nadia/Murshidabad border region provides a textbook example of what Turino calls

“heightened” (2000:48) participatory music.

PARTICIPATORY ASPECTS OF BĀUL-FAKIR MUSIC-MAKING

Thomas Turino writes:

Musical participation may take many forms, for example, sitting in still, silent contemplation of a concert performance. Following Charles Keil (1987), Steven Feld (1988), and others, however, I use the term participation in the specific, more restricted sense of actively contributing to the sound and motion of a group performance event through dancing and gestures, singing and other types of vocalizing, clapping, or playing an instrument…Participatory music is defined and shaped stylistically by the fundamental goal of inviting the fullest participation possible, and the success of an occasion is judged primarily by the amount of participation realized. In heightened participatory contexts, there is little or no distinction between performers and audience—there are only participants and potential participants. Nonetheless, participatory events may, and should, allow for different types of roles (e.g., instrumentalists, dancers) and levels of specialization. Participatory music tends to be process-oriented (Ibid.).

Many of the examples discussed in the previous chapter are what Turino would classify as “presentational” music, but nevertheless feature strong participatory aspects.

For example, the unamplified performance by TK’s group at the Saturday market exhibits strong participatory aspects, most notably when audience members dance and clap with the music. Even at staged amplified performances in the Santiniketan area, some audience members typically clap their hands and dance. In other cases, audience members will even pick up metal idiophone instruments and play along with the performing ensemble. When I asked professional performers what kind of music urban audiences enjoy most, they frequently said that urban audiences want to have fun and dance.3 In multiple ways, then, commercially oriented Bāul-Fakir performances exhibit participatory aspects.

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Ritually significant Bāul-Fakir performances, in contrast, typically feature less participatory behavior on the part of lay audiences. At many of these events, audiences sit passively and listen to the complexly esoteric songs, rarely clapping along or dancing.

One notable exception to this, of course, is the all-night performance at the Madhuripara melā described in the last chapter. At that performance, the audience began dancing and clapping ecstatically as the music continued through the dawn. Indeed, Turino writes,

“Going all night is important to the function of social bonding that often underlies participatory events. Staying up together, especially through the bleak hours from three to five A.M., can involve discomfort and sacrifice. In fact, some people do slip away to bed during these hours only to return around dawn” (Ibid.:50).

Compared to most of the music discussed in the last chapter, however, the informal music-making that occurs at mājārs and āśrams throughout Nadia and

Murshidabad along the India-Bangladesh border is strikingly participatory. All present at the event are either “participants” or “potential participants;” they sing, play instruments, clap their hands, dance, or wait for an opportunity to take up an unclaimed instrument, to sing a song when no one else is singing. Indeed, these events are “defined and shaped stylistically by the fundamental goal of inviting the fullest participation possible, and the success of an occasion is judged primarily by the amount of participation realized”

(Ibid.:48). On one rare occasion at a participatory gathering where a large number of people sat in the āśram passively, one of the singers stopped to complain that there was no bhāb in the room, that it was as if the musicians were “on a stage.” Significantly, the man who made this comment is an accomplished professional performer who enjoys

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performing on stages, but on this occasion he was expressing his dissatisfaction with the event as a participatory event. The presence of conditions characteristic of a presentational event—i.e. a physical divide between performers and audience in the form of a “stage” area—resulted in a participatory event lacking in sufficient bhāb.

SOCIAL FACTORS THAT CORRELATE WITH PARTICIPATORY MUSIC-MAKING

When I first began to visit Nadia and Murshidabad, I was struck by the marked socio-economic differences between this area and the commercial hub of Bāul-Fakir activity surrounding Santiniketan. I observed a strong correlation between these socio- economic differences and the differences in music culture of the two areas. Ultimately, I determined that there are five social factors that correlate closely with the presence of

Bāul-Fakir participatory music-making in West Bengal. These factors, as noted above, are the presence of spiritual sites such as mājārs, āśrams, and ākhṛās; the use of intoxicants; the presence of an agricultural rather than mercantile local economy; isolation from perennial markets of cultural tourism; and a level of poverty in which few homes possess televisions.

Many of the āśrams where participatory musical sessions occur are devoted to the memory of deceased sādhus whose descendents, devotees, and followers continue to live in the surrounding community. Significantly, these sites of music-making are set apart slightly from residential homes. As a result, these spaces are buffered from the mundane bustle of daily life, such as cooking, cleaning, laundering, and related activities. In contrast, the activities that occur in āśrams are generally spiritually oriented. There is

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rarely a fine line, however, dividing spiritual activities from recreational activities, and

āśrams may also be the sites of casual socializing and revelry. In places without mājārs,

āśrams, and ākhṛās, it is difficult to find a venue for music-making that is sufficiently secluded from conventional household activities. In some instances, participatory music- making occurs at the private residence of a non-Bāul-Fakir, but such venues are only sporadically available. At other times, a Bāul-Fakir might host music-making at his home, but this creates a disturbance for other members of their household who are studying or sleeping. Furthermore, participants typically smoke gāṃjā and biṛis at musical gatherings, and the use of these substances is unwelcome in many homes.

Another reason that participatory music-making typically occurs at mājārs, ākhṛās, and

āśrams is that these are all spiritually charged sites that lend themselves to the performance of spiritual songs. The proximity of a beloved sādhu’s tomb or portrait lends gravity to the content of the songs and enhances the emotional experience of the music- making.4 These settings are more conducive to achieving a proper bhāb than are mundane domestic settings filled with the accoutrements of daily life.

In virtually every extended participatory music session I attended, participants consumed some form of intoxicants, most typically gāṃjā.5 When I spent time with Bāul-

Fakirs who abstained from intoxicants, we might play music for thirty or forty minutes, but rarely for several consecutive hours.6 At the participatory sessions I attended, gāṃjā and alcohol were seen to contribute to the overall bhāb of the event. Though most Bāul-

Fakirs consider alcohol to be detrimental to their sādhanā, many nevertheless enjoy alcohol when it is available at participatory music sessions. Some Bāul-Fakirs, however,

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assiduously avoid social settings in which alcohol is present, and criticize those Bāul-

Fakirs who consume alcohol. In addition to gāṃjā and alcohol, participants often smoke biṛis and drink tea for added stimulation. The sober Bāul-Fakirs with whom I spent time were generally less interested in sitting together for hours in the evening playing music.

Although the consumption of intoxicants is likely a staple of participatory music sessions among certain heterodox groups in South Asia, it is generally frowned upon by orthodox religious institutions. A North Indian Kabir singer interviewed by Linda Hess, for example, recalls that his family “would sing bhajans [devotional songs] while drinking country liquor,” (Forthcoming:Chapter 6) but that he had to give up alcohol when he joined the more orthodox Kabir Panth, a “Hinduized” (Ibid.) institution of Kabir followers.

The communities where I found vibrant participatory music-making were located in rural agricultural environments, away from the concentrated activity of markets and towns.7 Whereas many professional musicians around Birbhum district seek their livelihoods amidst the bustle of mercantile life, the musicians in towns like Jhauria and

Gorbhanga live in an agricultural environment where the workday ends at sundown and most people go to sleep shortly thereafter. Unlike the musicians of Birbhum, most Bāul-

Fakir musicians in this region work as farmers, laborers, and tradesmen (Openshaw

2002:98). There is little available social activity in the evenings. Options include traveling a mile or so to the nearest market, gathering around one of the few local televisions, or participating in a musical gathering within a local village āśram or mājār.

In towns and cities, by contrast, it’s possible to pass an evening at any number of local

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tea stalls, or to seek out other happenings along the main road. In any case, Bāul-Fakirs in urban areas spend their days performing or teaching music for income, and don’t typically seek out further music-making at the end of the day for pleasure.

A key difference between the towns of Birbhum and the villages of Nadia and

Murshidabad is their proximity to perennial markets of cultural tourism. The villages where participatory music-making occur are sufficiently isolated from such markets that most musicians’ days are spent pursuing non-musical economic endeavors. After a day of agricultural or related manual work, an evening of music is a pleasant respite from the day’s labors; in contrast, few musicians in Santiniketan wish to spend their evenings playing music after performing music for tourists or conducting madhukari on trains throughout the day.

The villages where participatory music-making occurs are typically quite poor, with few homes possessing televisions. In more affluent areas, television watching can replace music-making as a domestic leisure activity. On one occasion when my host turned off the television so that we could play music, it was clear that the younger members of the household were irritated by this departure from routine. In contrast, televisions are rare in the rural communities where participatory music-making is widespread. In these areas, there may be only one or two televisions in an entire village.

In such an environment, music-making is unrivaled as a recreational group activity in the evenings.

A final factor that correlates with Bāul-Fakir participatory music-making in West

Bengal is a dominant Sufi, rather than Vaishnava, local influence. This is not to say that

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all Bāul-Fakirs who engage in participatory music-making are “Muslim” Bāul-Fakirs.

However, most of the “Hindu” Bāul-Fakirs who engage in participatory music-making live in areas where there is a strong Islamic influence in local culture. Indeed, many scholars have commented on the role of music in enabling spiritual experience in Sufism, from the sama that takes place in presentational settings to participatory practices of halqah and dhikr (Qureshi 1986; Rouget 1985; Haq 1975; Henry 2002; Jankowsky 2010;

Kapchan 2007). However, for one obvious reason, I do not include a dominant Sufi influence in my list of five factors that correlate with participatory music-making: participatory devotional singing is an established practice in many Hindu communities as well (Singer 1966, Henry 1988). Although Haq has attributed Sufi origins to the participatory kīrtan popularized by the sixteenth-century Vaishnava saint Caitanya

(1975:280), others have disagreed, pointing to earlier Hindu precedents mentioned in the

Bhagavata Purana (A. Roy 1983:81).

In the remainder of this chapter, I describe the Bāul-Fakir culture in three different sites along the India-Bangladesh border in Murshidabad and Nadia. Throughout these sections, I highlight the unique socio-economic conditions that correlate with thriving participatory music scenes. Whereas the first two sites that I describe are quite isolated from cultural tourism, the third is gradually becoming a destination for urban visitors seeking out non-commercial Bāul-Fakir music in rural Bengal.

MUSICAL LIFE IN JHAURIA, MURSHIDABAD

After visiting various musical sites in the Birbhum area, I became eager to explore the other major zone of Bāul-Fakir music in West Bengal, the India-Bangladesh border

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region in Nadia and Murshidabad districts. I had heard that the Bāul-Fakir music and culture in this region was markedly different from that of Birbhum. Many urban and affluent Bengalis had told me that I would find lots of “real” Bāuls in Nadia and

Murshidabad, by which they meant individuals with spiritual expertise and limited exposure as commercial musicians. I knew that this area saw few foreign visitors,8 and I worried that travel there would be difficult, with no guest houses or sources of filtered water in the villages where musicians lived.9 Nevertheless, I had the contact information for some musicians in the area, and one day I telephoned CGF, a well-known musician from Jhauria, Murshidabad. I explained that I was an American musician and researcher interested in meeting Bāul-Fakir musicians, and I mentioned the names of a few mutual friends. CGF told me to come over right away, and invited me to stay at his āśram for several days.

From my home in Santiniketan, it was necessary to take two four-hour bus rides to reach a small market a few miles from CGF’s village of Jhauria. Reaching Jhauria from Kolkata would not have been much simpler, as it is inaccessible by direct rail lines.

Whereas the direct rail connections between Kolkata and Santiniketan support a thriving tourism economy in that area, the lack of railroad stations near Jhauria contribute to its isolation from networks of urban patronage. In its inaccessibility, it is similar to other villages with strong participatory music scenes.

When I reached the market area near CGF’s village, I was pleased to find bottled water for sale at the local vendors, apparently kept in stock for affluent travelers and urban Bengalis visiting their ancestral village homes. As I made my purchase and chatted

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with the shopkeeper, others in the quiet marketplace stared at the unfamiliar visitor. After a few minutes, CGF came and picked me up on his motorcycle. Rather than going directly to his āśram however, we stopped briefly at the homes and āśrams of other local

Bāul-Fakirs. Though I would have enjoyed a rest after my long commute, I had the impression that CGF was eager to announce my arrival to his friends. Many of these friends had few opportunities to leave the village and were interested in interacting with an outside visitor. At each stop, we’d sit for fifteen minutes, chat over tea, biscuits, biṛis, and chillums, and I would play a song or two on my fiddle at the request of our hosts. I was pleased that my hosts shared my sense of anthropological curiosity, and that my presence offered them an opportunity to ask questions about me, my music, and my country. Most of these people we visited were senior to CGF; I think that he felt obligated to introduce me to them before taking me directly to his home. Among the people we visited were SF, a man in his late fifties and one of the few local musicians eager to tell me of his travels as a performing musician; and an older sādhikā, a non- musician, who behaved very affectionately towards both CGF and me. Her home was decorated with pictures of animals and birds clipped from calendars and other sources; she said that CGF was her “poṣa pākhi” (pet bird) returning home with me, a “banya pākhi” (wild bird).

When I wasn’t visiting other āśrams in the area, I spent the majority of my time in

Jhauria at CGF’s āśram, a short distance down an unpaved lane from his home. Unlike most of the residences in Jhauria, CGF’s āśram is a brick and concrete building with electricity. Though the āśram is cool and pleasant during the hotter seasons, it can get

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very cold in the winter. The āśram has a small foyer and two rooms, one of which is the

āśram proper, and one of which is a storage room. CGF keeps a large portable propane stove in the entryway for making tea and meals. The main room is used for sitting, socializing, music-making, and sleeping. Blankets and straw mats are rolled up in the corner, and there are two large banners up on the walls. One banner was a poster for

CGF’s annual mahotsav, and featured a picture of CGF’s late guru Rashid Sirkar; the other banner featured a handwritten quotation from the Bangladeshi political poet and songwriter Kāzī Nazrul Islām. Outside the āśram is a small uncultivated grassy area that borders CGF’s rice paddy and mustard fields. During the cool winter days, we spread straw mats in this area and sat in the sunlight, trying to warm up and shed the extra layers of clothing that were necessary to wear in the night. CGF’s father’s burial plot lies at the edge of this grassy area. Outside the āśram’s main entrance is a small garden with a shrine set up in honor of CGF’s guru, surrounded by a bamboo fence. There is also a hand water pump inside the fence that neighbors sometimes use. The neighbors live in humble straw houses and keep goats, cows, and chickens that graze along the lane next to the āśram. One day I watched as two pre-adolescent girls carried a dead baby goat down the lane and pitched it impassively into a ravine away from the other animals. The living goats were dressed in sweaters made of recycled rags and canvas sacks to keep them protected from the cold.

Over the next few days, and on subsequent visits, I would meet a variety of local residents, many of whom were Bāul-Fakir musicians. I was struck by a singular difference between the local musicians I met and many of the musicians I had met

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elsewhere: In the time I spent in Jhauria, I only encountered one musician who was eager to tell me about his accomplishments as a stage performer. The rest of the musicians weren’t exactly self-effacing, but they never engaged in professional self-promotion. This was a marked contrast to many of the Bāul-Fakirs whom I had met around Santiniketan. I began to see why some affluent Bengalis considered Bāul-Fakirs in the border region to be more “real,” as their assessments of authenticity were based in part on indifference to commercial gain and professional prestige.

Most of the Bāul-Fakirs whom I met in this area did not explicitly self-identify as

Bāul or Fakir. They might sing Bāul-Fakir music and observe Bāul-Fakir spiritual practices, but they did not essentialize their own social identity as Bāul-Fakir, or consistently wear clothing that would identify them as Bāul-Fakir. As Jhā (2002) and

Openshaw (2002) have noted, people labeled “Bāul” have often been stigmatized by lay

Bengalis in this region, and therefore the identity label “Bāul” would not be a desirable one. Furthermore, as Openshaw has discussed, the term “Bāul” lacks the social prestige and mystique that it carries near Birbhum where Bāuls have been praised as liberal- minded philosophers and folk singers. Some of Openshaw’s interlocutors in the

Nadia/Murshidabad region state that the term “Bāul” conjures negative connotations of recklessness, irresponsibility, promiscuity, and lack of self-control (Ibid.:96).

Accordingly, there is little incentive for Bāul-Fakirs in Nadia and Murshidabad to mark themselves as essentially different from their lay neighbors.10

Whereas some Bāul-Fakirs in Jhauria wear the beards, robes, and necklaces that readily identify them as sādhus, other men who gathered at CGF’s āśram had a more

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conventional appearance. Many of them were clean-shaven and wore Western-style shirts, similar to lay Bengalis. Despite their outward appearance, however, they were clearly passionate about the philosophy espoused in Bāul-Fakir songs, and led a lifestyle informed by Bāul-Fakir teachings. Two such men caught my particular attention at

CGF’s āśram. Dressed in button-down shirts as worn by white collar workers in the

United States, these men were agricultural laborers who played and sang Bāul-Fakir songs as both a pastime and a spiritual outlet. Both were about forty years old; one played dotārā and the other played percussion instruments. I asked them if they were brothers, and they said yes. I learned later that they were not, in fact, biological siblings, but guru bhāi (students under the same guru). Both played and sang nicely and took care to explain the songs’ meanings to me after each song.

A few younger men who spent time around CGF’s āśram were not yet knowledgeable about Bāul-Fakir songs or philosophy. They were drawn to the āśram for a variety of reasons, whether for the comradery, the music, the spirituality, or the gāṃjā.11 One day, a young local man arrived at the āśram and began enthusiastically asking me questions about myself. At first I thought that he was a visitor from Kolkata.

He was unusually tall, about six feet, with a light complexion, long curly hair, and a warm interpersonal style. He explained to me that he had finished his 12th standard education, but that his parents are poor, so he couldn’t continue his studies. He played a few songs on dotārā, though he was clearly an inexperienced musician. He told me of his plans to move to Kolkata to learn music and English, and to generally make his way in the world. He explained that he had been attracted to the Bāul-Fakir lifestyle since a

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young age, and would perhaps pursue that path. It was unclear to me what exactly he thought the Bāul-Fakir path entailed. I had the impression that he wanted to be like CGF, a successful professional Bāul-Fakir musician, as opposed to becoming like one of the impoverished mendicant Bāul-Fakirs of the area. To hear older Bāul-Fakirs discuss their initial attraction to the Bāul-Fakir path, it seems clear that they recognized it as a path of poverty and material hardship. In recent decades, an appeal of the Bāul-Fakir path is the promise of a relaxed lifestyle with plenty of time for socializing and music-making. One wonders whether that has always been part of the appeal. In any case, it was sobering to meet this young man who was ready to move to the city, empty-handed, in search of opportunity. Over the next several days, he spent a great deal of time socializing and performing chores at the āśram, such as preparing tea and lunch, and cleaning the dishes.

The last I heard from him, he was working as a construction laborer in Kerala, on the southwestern tip of India, fifteen hundred miles from his home in Murshidabad. Like many other men from his village, he was compelled to travel far from home in search of gainful employment.

Women at Participatory Music Sessions

Most of the people who played music and socialized at the āśrams in Jhauria were men. There are a number of factors preventing Bāul-Fakir women from participating regularly at informal musical gatherings at āśrams. First, these women are responsible for domestic work, including cleaning, cooking, tending to animals, and looking after children and elderly family members. Bāul-Fakir men, on the other hand, enjoy a great deal of free time when they are not engaged in economically motivated activities. When

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they are done with their agricultural or manual work, they are free to spend time in the

āśrams, whereas the women continue with their domestic tasks until bedtime.12

Before I met CGF, I had known that his wife MF was a good singer, and I hoped that she would spend time with us. On arriving, I found her busy with household chores and looking after their two-year-old daughter. I learned that MF works two days a week as a school teacher in her childhood village, a three-hour bus ride from Jhauria. When I asked MF about her activities as a musician, she expressed regret that having a small child prevented her from travelling far and accepting more professional opportunities.

She hoped to do more performing once her daughter was older. When I asked her why she didn’t ever join us in playing music at the āśram, she said that her mother-in-law didn’t like her to. Though she didn’t dwell on this point, I gathered that this was the most significant reason for her limited musical activities. In another Bāul-Fakir family, a young mother might continue her musical activities if her female family members agreed to look after her children; but in this case, the childcare responsibilities fell entirely on

MF, and so her musical career was temporarily on hold.

There were, however, a small number of women who attended participatory musical gatherings along with their male partners. One couple was quite young, the husband thirty and the wife twenty-one. They had married seven years ago, on the day before she gave birth to their child. CGF introduced them to me as sādhus, and perhaps it was their independence from any parents-in-law that allowed the woman the freedom to attend late-night predominantly male gatherings. Another middle-aged couple hosted some musical gatherings at their own āśram. They were the senior members of their

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household and lived with their unmarried daughters, who also occasionally attended the musical gatherings. Apparently, the liberal attitudes of households’ senior members were the key determinant in whether or not women could participate in musical gatherings.

Description of Participatory Gatherings in Jhauria

The musical gatherings were no different whether women were present or not. A group would gather and sit in a circle, smoke biṛis and chillums, and eventually begin to play music. When I began attending these participatory music sessions, it was immediately clear to me that the locals were unaccustomed to foreign visitors. One night before a music session in CGF’s āśram, I counted seventeen people gathered into the single room. As we sat for about forty minutes before the music began, I noticed that half of the men in the room were staring at me. At one point, I told someone that it was a strange feeling to be stared at by so many people, but an old man in the group responded that they don’t see foreigners often and they were interested in me. And everyone kept staring. At a gathering of Bāul-Fakirs near Santiniketan, the presence of a foreigner would not have been very unusual; with the nearby university and the steady flow of tourists from Kolkata, Bāul-Fakirs of Santiniketan were accustomed to encountering all types of people. That I was such a novelty in Jhauria reflects its isolation from outside visitors and its removal from networks of cultural tourism.

At most of the participatory sessions I attended, one person would play dotārā or ektārā while others played percussion instruments such as ḍubki, kartāl, jibri,13 tambourine, and handclaps.14 The dotārā players played in a trebly and repetitive manner, with a steady stream of notes similar to a banjo in an American bluegrass setting, and in a

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more staccato manner than the dotārā players of Birbhum. Occasionally, someone would play percussion on a plastic water bottle or other resonant object if a ḍubki or tambourine was unavailable. Whereas the dotārā requires technical expertise, many of the other instruments could be played at a fundamental level without requiring hours previously spent in solitary practice. With so many percussion instruments played by non-specialist musicians, these music sessions were inviting to musicians of different “levels of specialization” (Turino 2000:48) and accessible to musicians who lacked technical musical training. As a result, these informal music sessions allowed all present to contribute as active participants.

In keeping with the participatory aspect of these events, I was occasionally asked to take a turn singing a song. At first I tried to divert this request by playing an instrumental; at the completion of the instrumental, however, people would stare expectantly and wait for me to begin singing. I had just begun learning Bengali songs, and I could only perform one or two of these songs confidently. After I had sung these, I would sing the American bluegrass and old-time songs that I was more comfortable with.

At most of these sessions, the best received American song was “Country Blues” by

Dock Boggs (1927). “Country Blues” shares many elements with Bāul-Fakir songs, such as its wide melodic range and its use of ambiguously intonated third and seventh degrees.15 Moreover, the song is sung at a loud volume in a strained voice, a characteristic generally appreciated by Bāul-Fakirs. When I translated the lyrics of the song at one music session, an older sādhu commented that the song’s message was similar to that of Bāul-Fakir songs. Like many Bāul-Fakir songs, “Country Blues” is a

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meditation on the fleeting nature of material wealth and human relationships, and sounds a cautionary tone regarding the deleterious effects of alcohol on the mind and body. The lyric “it burns your body to drink it, boys; it will send your soul to hell,” resonates with the Bāul-Fakir notion that alcohol generates heat in the body, causing problems in one’s sādhanā (Openshaw 2002:208). Other well-received songs included “Pretty Polly” and

“Little Sadie,” both “high lonesome”16 songs in a minor pentatonic scale; and “Shady

Grove” featuring a “modal”17 pentatonic scale containing the first, second, fourth, fifth, and seventh scales degrees, evocative of certain bhāṭiẏāli- and bhāowāiẏā-influenced songs such as Cal mini asam yāba and Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe.18 They also enjoyed some major-key bluegrass songs—provided the songs had a wide melodic range and were sung in a forceful and strained manner. Like bluegrass traditionalists, they had less appreciation for songs performed softly in the lower part of the male vocal register.

In comparison to the elaborately ornamented Bāul-Fakir songs of Birbhum district, I found many of the songs played in Jhauria to be rhythmically emphatic and melodically repetitive. These are both qualities found in other forms of participatory music such as Southern old-time music in the United States, Peruvian Aymara music

(Turino 1993), and Shona music of Zimbabwe (Turino 2000). Such qualities allow inexperienced and non-specialist musicians to play along; I appreciated these qualities as

I played accompaniment on my fiddle, seeking to familiarize myself with unfamiliar songs. I would later learn to identify these songs as Bangla Qawwali, but at the time I simply appreciated their accessibility and enjoyed the participatory feeling at these sessions. Even when other kinds of songs, such as lālangīti (the songs of Lālan Fakir)

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arose at these sessions, they were played in a less melodically varied and ornamented style than I had heard elsewhere. Additionally, the absence of accompanying melodic instruments such as bāṃśi, harmonium, and khamak made it easier for me to find sonic space for my fiddle at these sessions.

Unfortunately, I found that participatory music sessions were not very conducive to field recording for two reasons. First, I was reluctant to draw extra attention to myself by displaying my Zoom digital recorder. Second, with all of the metal idiophones and loud hand claps, I found it impossible to make a balanced recording that captured the dynamic range and complex sonic texture of these music sessions. I did manage to record some of the musicians in smaller ensembles, but those recordings don’t reflect the full texture of participatory musical gatherings.

Description of Presentational Music in Jhauria

Not all of the musical gatherings in Jhauria were exclusively participatory. On the fourth evening of my visit there was a small utsav, similar to the ritually significant performance events described in the previous chapter. CGF had co-organized this event with a few local musicians, with each contributing money towards food, stage lighting, and sound reinforcement. Around 5:00 p.m., the musicians and sādhus gathered and sat in a semicircle around the stage.19 There were about thirty-five musicians and sādhus in all, and they greeted each other in ceremonial fashion, clasping each others’ hands, and then touching their own chest, then head, then chest while maintaining eye contact. Chillums were circulated, and then a tray was passed from which each participant took one grain of uncooked rice and drank it with a swallow of water, a symbolic meal. Later, a snack of

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jhal muri was distributed, which was to tide over the participants’ hunger until the meal at the end of the performance.

The concert began around 7:30 p.m., after two and a half hours of sitting and ceremony. The musical ensemble included a large electric keyboard, a dotārā with an electric pickup, ektārā, a Bengali ḍhol,20 and my fiddle, along with assorted percussion instruments such as jibri, ḍubki, tambourine, kartāl, and ghuṅur . I played with the group for two or three hours, until my legs began to hurt from sitting cross-legged. I got up and bought some peanuts from a vendor who had come for the event, and listened from behind the seated audience. I observed the wide spectrum of ages and genders present at the event, many of whom enjoyed the music but would never have attended a session at an āśram. As the evening wore on, groups of women and children eventually rose from their mats and returned home. Only a small audience of attentive listeners now remained, huddled in their blankets and scarves against the winter cold. Around 1:00 a.m. the music ended, and the musicians, sādhus, and remaining listeners went into the mud courtyard of a nearby home where the sādhu sebā (literally “service/meal for sādhus,” but actually served to all attendees) was being served. We sat in front of banana leaf plates, onto which rice, ḍal, and vegetable curries were served from huge pots.21 Directly after the meal, about ten people, some of whom lived nearby in the village, returned to CGF’s

āśram to go to sleep. Those who slept in the āśram ostensibly did so to save themselves a walk home late at night; but I also suspect that they did so for the sake of each other’s company. It was a cold night and we slept together like sardines, sharing the sheets and blankets that were stored in the corner of the room. A few old sādhus stayed awake

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chatting and smoking biṛis; one of the men spoke with a booming and raspy voice that he made no effort to lower as the night progressed towards dawn.

On the Bucolic Appeal of Jhauria

All of the social events I attended in Jhauria were marked by the consumption of biṛi, gāṃjā, and tea. As I personally abstained from smoking biṛis and gāṃjā, I often got restless sitting around while the others smoked. Most of these āśrams were surrounded by agricultural fields, and I developed a habit of leaving afternoon social gatherings to roam about the rice paddies and mustard fields. It was a tremendous relief to be in such a quiet, isolated, and rural place after months of travelling amidst the densely populated towns and small cities of Birbhum.22 Many Bengalis pointed out connections to me between local musical styles and the landscape of rural Bengal. One sādhu in a nearby village told me that the music of his region differed from the music of Birbhum in the same way that their landscapes differed: whereas his area was lush and green, the soil of Birbhum was more harsh and arid. Walking through the agricultural fields of Jhauria, I enjoyed the earthy fragrance of the soil, the absence of motorized sounds, and the views of yellow mustard flowers extending to the mango trees on the horizon.

During the course of my visit to Jhauria, I found that the sparsely populated rural setting, the unassuming interpersonal style of the musicians, and the rhythmically driving participatory music-making all conspired to create a euphoric social experience. For the latter half of my fieldwork, I spent a great deal of my time in this India-Bangladesh border region of Nadia and Murshidabad, seeking further experiences within the participatory music scenes of villages far removed from hubs of tourism and commerce.

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MUSICAL LIFE IN LAKSHMIGACCHA, NADIA

Whereas Bāul-Fakir culture occupies a prominent position in Jhauria, where many residents are involved in or appreciative of Bāul-Fakir musical and spiritual life, Bāul-

Fakir culture exists on the margins of mainstream village life in many other areas. In some areas, Bāul-Fakirs’ are tolerated, but nevertheless stigmatized; in other areas, Bāul-

Fakirs have faced violent persecution from their orthodox neighbors.23 When I visited

AAF in Lakshmigaccha, Nadia, I observed a village in which Bāul-Fakir music was tolerated but largely ignored by the surrounding community.

AAF owns a tea stall on the main road that passes through the tiny village of

Lakshmigaccha, the same main road that extends south to the district capital of

Krishnanagar. Like many other tea stalls throughout rural Bengal, his is a small cube of a structure, roughly ten feet in each direction, with bamboo walls and a tin roof. Inside are two benches along the back and side walls, a kerosene stove, a glass jar partially filled with locally made biscuits, and a few shot-sized tea glasses. On most nights shortly after sundown, AAF plays music here with three of his śiṣyas (students or disciples). One is a man about his age, in his early fifties, who plays jibri. When I asked the name of this instrument, I was told that it is called “parbishon,” which I later recognized as a variant of the word “percussion.” The second śiṣya was a twenty-two year old man who played the nāl. The third man, also in his early twenties, clapped his hands to the music, but was primarily in charge of the surprisingly laborious process of preparing chillums. When

AAF saw that I didn’t smoke, he asked if I drank alcohol. When I said that I did, he

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instructed me to give money to this latter young man, whom he sent off to purchase a bottle of rum.

We played music together for several hours, but in the course of the evening, not a single other person came into the shop to listen, participate, or socialize. AAF told me that the village was a mix of Hindus and Muslims, and that, unlike Jhauria, there were very few sādhus or Bāul-Fakirs who lived in the area. It is doubtful that the locals in this impoverished area had alternate forms of evening entertainment, but for whatever reason, they were uninterested, unwilling, or unable to attend his music sessions.

I gained some insight into the situation the following day when I travelled with

AAF and his wife to his in-laws’ nearby village, where a Bāul-Fakir melā was taking place in the evening. When we reached the in-laws’ house, they informed us that they would not be attending the melā, as the local mullah had announced that the festival was sinful. I suspect that some of AAF’s Muslim neighbors would attend his musical gatherings if it were not for the influence of the local orthodoxy. As for his Hindu neighbors, even if they are attracted to his music, it is probable that they risk losing status or caste by socializing with a Muslim Fakir.

The irony of AAF’s local obscurity is that he is one of the most knowledgeable and adept musicians I encountered in my time in West Bengal. He sings an enormous repertoire of lālangīti, many of which are quite long and whose lyrics are obscure, and also pāllā gān, a complex genre in which two singers engage in an intellectual duel through volleying songs that address a particular set of esoteric themes (Jhā 2009, 2010).

Moreover, AAF plays dotārā in a uniquely understated style, and utilizes an unusual

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tuning. Whereas most dotārā players tune to Sā Pā Sā Mā (1 5 1 4), or Pā Sā Mā (5 1 4, with the Sa double-strung), AAF tunes his dotārā to Pā Sā Re Pā (5 1 2 5).24 This lends his playing a beautifully resonant quality, and creates unusual suspensions of the second, rather than fourth, scale degree in his music.

MUSICAL LIFE IN GORBHANGA, NADIA

The village of Gorbhanga, Nadia is located about halfway between

Lakshmigaccha and Jhauria. To reach Gorbhanga from the Nazirpur bus stop along the main road, one must take a flatbed motor cart, bus, or a myājik (Tata Magic passenger van) to a small market area a half mile outside of the village. As in Lakshmigaccha, lālangīti is extremely popular in Gorbhanga. Unlike Lakshmigaccha, however, the local lay people are appreciative of Bāul-Fakir music and spirituality. In fact, Gorbhanga can seem at times like a Bāul-Fakir colony, with musicians and practitioners residing in a high percentage of the homes.25 It is remarkable to wander down the village lanes, and to hear strains of live music coming from so many homes and āśrams.

Banglanatak dot com and Gorbhanga

Gorbhanga is the site of a “resource center” established by the NGO Banglanatak dot com. The Gorbhanga resource center is one of many established by the NGO throughout West Bengal devoted to the preservation and promotion of Bengali folk arts.

Elsewhere in the state, resource centers are devoted to paṭuẏa (scroll painting); chau nāc

(a form of folk dance); jhumur; and ḍomni and gambhīra (forms of theater/music/dance).26 The NGO also organizes an annual Fakiri Utsav in Gorbhanga

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designed to attract affluent urban and international audiences. Visitors can purchase a complete transportation and accommodations package, which includes hot meals, filtered drinking water, and access to sanitation facilities. Though the annual attendance of the festival is rather small, with most of the audience comprised of local residents, it does consistently attract a small number of international guests and affluent Kolkatans who may sponsor future performances for the musicians.

Banglanatak dot com is also active in arranging domestic and international tours for the local Bāul-Fakir musicians. In recent years, they have sent musicians to various cities in Europe, East Asia, and other parts in India. Unfortunately, however, the NGO’s patronage has also contributed to a rift within the community of musicians in Gorbhanga, as described below. Whereas all of the local musicians used to visit each others’ āśrams and play music together, some of them are no longer on speaking terms; some avoid each others’ homes and āśrams, but will speak to each other at neutral locations such as the tea stalls in the market area outside of the village.27

I first travelled to Gorbhanga to attend the annual Fakiri Utsav sponsored by

Banglanatak dot com. On the bus ride there, a young Kolkatan man struck up conversation, and said that he too was going to the utsav. He said that he and two friends had plans to stay at AF’s house, away from the utsav, and that I would be welcome to join them. I had heard AF’s name before, and I looked forward to meeting him. I did not know at the time that AF was one of the local musicians outside Banglanatok dot com’s circle of patronage.

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Over the next few days, I learned of the politicized divide within Gorbhanga.

When Banglanatak dot com first came to Gorbhanga, they chose the land adjacent to

ARF’s āśram as the site for their Resource Center. This infuriated the renowned performer MSF, who was senior to ARF, and who told me that he used to be ARF’s teacher. Ever since, MSF’s circle, including his sons and AF, had kept a resentful distance from ARF’s circle and the activities of Banglanatak dot com. Others such as

LCF, who holds a peripheral place within MSF’s circle, occasionally took advantage of professional opportunities offered through the NGO. According to a few local musicians with whom I spoke, however, the pay scale offered by Banglanatak dot com was very low, and performers often had to arrange for their own means of transportation;28 it is possible that the low pay scale had something to do with why MSF had no association with Banglanatak dot com.

By staying as a guest at AF’s house, I was able to witness two different sides of

Gorbhanga: the side patronized by Banglanatak dot com, and the side that resented the

NGO’s activities. On the weekend of the utsav, I would attend a few hours of the amplified performance, and then walk to the other side of village where there would be unamplified music sessions taking place in a less crowded environment. The rift in

Gorbhanga was all the more striking for the extreme proximity of the feuding musicians’ homes. In fact, AF’s house shared a back fence with ARF’s āśram and the resource center. From the bathroom behind AF’s house, I could see and hear musical activities across the fence, the same kind of musical activities concurrently taking place at MSF’s

āśram. Sometimes, unusual forms of music-making occurred at the resource center. On

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one occasion, a few months after the Fakiri Utsav, I was taking a bucket bath behind

AF’s house when I heard a strange fusion of Bāul music, Swedish folk, and smooth jazz coming from across the partition. After my bath I wandered over and found two Swedish musicians playing guitar and soprano saxophone with the local musician BF, rehearsing for a series of upcoming concerts. The collaboration had been arranged through

Banglanatak dot com, and neither the Swedish musicians nor BF had heard the other’s style of music previously. The musicians were to tour together in Bihar, where local residents would understand neither Bengali nor Swedish. Presumably, the groundwork was being laid for a future tour to Sweden.

Participatory Music in Gorbhanga

Like Jhauria, Gorbhanga is home to a thriving participatory music scene. On most nights at multiple āśrams in the village, musicians gather to socialize and play music together. They use instrumentation similar to that found in Jhauria, with dotārā, ektārā, and percussion instruments like ḍubki, tambourine, ghuṅur, and jibri. Additionally, they often use khol, which helps create a sound closer to that of professional recordings and staged performances.

Thanks in part to the support of Banglanatak dot com, many of the musicians in

Gorbhanga maintain active careers as professional performers in travelling ensembles.

Unlike most of the musicians I encountered in Jhauria, these Gorbhanga musicians have experience interacting with urban and international visitors, and sometimes seek to impress these visitors. As a result, some of the participatory music sessions that I attended in Gorbhanga were less participatory than the sessions in Jhauria, particularly if

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one of the “star” musicians was present. Many times, for instance, I observed one of the star musicians telling another musician not to play. At times these instructions seemed intended for the elevation of the musical sound; at other times these instructions seemed intended only to draw attention to the star’s own authority and social status.

For example, in musical sessions at MSF’s āśram, MSF and his older son often exercised their authority by telling LCF what instrument to play or not to play. LCF is a highly skilled musician with an understated musical style, but he occupies low status within the pecking order of MSF’s circle. LCF comes from a poor family, and possesses neither the imposing stature nor the extraverted charisma that MSF possesses. Instead,

LCF comes off as a humble, sincere, and thoughtful person, and a tasteful musician who enjoys playing various instruments, but doesn’t show off with any of them. At several participatory music sessions I attended, MSF or his older son would tell LCF to stop playing khol, and instead to play a simpler percussion instrument like jibri. It is possible that their critique reflected displeasure with his khol technique, rather than an intent to showcase their own authority. In any case, I had the distinct impression that they were attempting to put LCF “in his place,” to reinforce his lower status within their social circle. As I spent more time in Gorbhanga, I developed two theories as to why they might target LCF in this way. First, as mentioned above, LCF occasionally accepts performance opportunities through Banglanatak dot com, performing as an accompanist for MSF’s rivals; perhaps they begrudged him for doing so. Secondly, LCF had a knack for developing friendships with outside visitors, as his laid-back and thoughtful demeanor made him a more accessible and predictable companion than some of the star musicians

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in Gorbhanga. One European traveler living in West Bengal would frequently visit

Gorbhanga, and preferred to stay as a guest at LCF’s humble home than at the more impressive residence of MSF. On one occasion when some Kolkatan journalists were in the village taking video footage, MSF specifically asked LCF not to disappear with any of the foreign visitors, in the event that the video crews would come and miss the opportunity to film the visiting foreigners. I particularly enjoyed LCF’s company, and would sometimes accompany him on the long walk to his temporary work at an outdoor brick factory outside the village, or to the tea stalls in the small market area.

The musical censoring that I witnessed in Gorbhanga played a role in maintaining a clear and sharply defined ensemble sound, in comparison with the noisily raucous sound of sessions in Jhauria. The only time that I witnessed censoring in Jhauria was when I was trying to make a high quality field recording, and my hosts warned some accompanists not to distort my recording with their metal idiophones. In general, I observed that the music sessions in Jhauria seemed effective in generating an ecstatic mood among participants, whereas the music sessions in Gorbhanga generated merriment and excitement emanating from and directed back towards the star performers. For example, when MSF would sing a song at a session, he would dazzle the spectators with his playful and demonstrative affect, with his hand gestures, eye contact, and sporadic moaning and shouting in between verses. When he played khol, his playing positively thundered and generated a great deal of excitement among the participants. Many of the ecstatic moments of music-making that I witnessed in Gorbhanga occurred as participants played with their eyes glued to MSF, responding with shouts when he shouted, moaning

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when he moaned. In Jhauria, by contrast, the ecstatic mood seemed to be generated from within each individual contributing to the repetitive, driving rhythmic texture of the songs. Nevertheless, there were times in Gorbhanga when these presentational aspects vanished, and an ecstatic group feeling emerged similar to that in Jhauria. This was particularly the case at music sessions at KF’s āśram, which were typically attended by an older, more sedate group of sādhus. In large part however, music-making in

Gorbhanga seemed to revolve around star performers.29 While participatory music- making thrived in both Gorbhanga and Jhauria, the music of Gorbhanga certainly featured more presentational aspects.

Changes in Gorbhanga with the Increase of Outside Visitors

Like Jhauria and Lakshmigaccha, Gorbhanga features the five socio-economic factors that correlate with Bāul-Fakir participatory music-making: in Gorbhanga one finds active āśrams, intoxicant use, an agricultural rather than mercantile economy, a level of poverty in which few homes possess televisions, and isolation from perennial markets of tourism. As tourism in Gorbhanga gradually increases, however, it will be interesting to see whether or not the participatory music culture also begins to fade. As my comments above suggest, it appears that the professionalization of Gorbhanga’s musicians contributes to presentational trends in their music-making. Unfortunately, professionalization has also contributed to the development of rifts between musicians who would otherwise socialize and play music together. Similar rivalries are readily observed among Bāul-Fakirs in Santiniketan, an area with a longer history of cultural tourism.

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The influx of outside visitors to Gorbhanga is sporadic, with the exception of the weekend of the Fakiri Utsav. During the rest of the year, affluent visitors are somewhat rare. One or two Kolkatans may come for a weekend, but afterwards weeks or months may pass before another affluent outsider visits. When these outsiders do come, they generally bring alcohol, monetary donations for their hosts, and recording devices through which they may produce short Youtube videos. As a result of these postings, many of the Bāul-Fakirs of Gorbhanga possess quite an online presence, despite not owning computers themselves.

My visits to Gorbhanga often overlapped with the visits of a young American woman and a European man. The European had been wandering India for the past several years, during which time he had been a frequent guest in Gorbhanga. Though he spoke very little Bengali, he enjoyed socializing with Bāul-Fakirs, and had formed some close friendships. The American woman, who spoke no Bengali, had come to the Fakiri Utsav on a whim, but had experienced an epiphany of sorts during her time there. She decided to study under a Bāul-Fakir guru who would help her to become a musical mystic.

Whereas the European floated from house to house, drinking and smoking with different people each day, the woman began an intense guru-śiṣya relationship with a renowned local guru, from whom she was learning to play ḍugi.30 Both she and her guru asked me to provide translation services between the two of them, and I found myself an intimate witness to a strange and budding relationship. Both were charmed and puzzled by the other’s intensity and idiosyncrasy, though after a few weeks they had a falling out.

Spending time with these two Western visitors, I observed the ways in which affluent

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outsiders often projected their own desires and Orientalist fantasies onto Bāul-Fakirs, while Bāul-Fakirs learned that Westerner visitors could be eccentric, childlike, and generously absentminded with their monetary expenditures.

Alcohol and Affluent Visitors to Gorbhanga

The sporadic influx of affluent visitors has had one particularly harmful effect on the Bāul-Fakir community of Gorbhanga. As noted in the previous chapters, many outsiders imagine Bāul-Fakirs to be free-spirited individuals with little concern for maintaining regularity or stability in their domestic lives. When urban and affluent outsiders come to Gorbhanga to spend time with Bāul-Fakir musicians, they are often looking to unwind, relax, and forget about the worries and concerns associated with their own professional and domestic urban lives. They are also looking to have a weekend vacation where they can smoke gāṃjā and drink alcohol with musicians in a gorgeous rural environment. Bāul-Fakirs are often flattered to receive such prestigious guests, and are eager to enjoy their guests’ company, meet their social expectations, and maintain their good favor. On several occasions, I observed visitors cajole their Bāul-Fakir hosts into drinking, despite their hosts’ reluctance to consume alcohol. A weekend of hosting urban guests, therefore, can also mean a weekend of late-night revelry, heavy drinking, and neglect of domestic responsibilities. In the case of some visitors who are students, foreigners, or underemployed artists, the visits can last longer than a weekend and can cause serious disturbances in the domestic lives of the Bāul-Fakir hosts.

I noticed a distinct pattern of how evenings would be spent depending on the number of outside visitors. When I was the only outside guest, there would be

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socializing, participatory music-making, and then everyone would go to sleep after a few hours. I would sometimes buy alcohol if my hosts enjoyed drinking, but I would never bring a very large amount that would result in heavy intoxication. When other Kolkatan or foreign visitors came, however, they would generally bring a large amount of alcohol with them, and clearly wanted to have a big night. Everyone would become intoxicated, carry on noisily, go to bed very late, and wake up groggy in the morning. Over time, certain visitors became persona non grata among the women of the village, who were concerned about the behavior of their husbands and sons, and worried about their children’s exposure to alcoholism. On one visit, a local Bāul-Fakir man urged moderation on an outside guest who had been acting disruptively when intoxicated, offering alcohol to the village boys, and shouting in the village lanes late at night. It was okay to consume alcohol, he said, but it was necessary to remain under control when intoxicated. Everyone agreed to these terms, but within a few hours, it was as before, with intoxicated people shouting and carrying on late into the night.

The alcohol issue is complicated by the fact that the same visitors who bring alcohol into the village also make monetary donations to their hosts. While some of these families become displeased with their guests, they can’t afford to turn them away and risk offending them. Fortunately for the Bāul-Fakirs of Gorbhanga, the other local residents are generally liberal in their views. In other more conservative areas, the consumption of alcohol would result in persecution by orthodox neighbors.

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CONCLUSION

As discussed above, Bāul-Fakir music-making in the India-Bangladesh border region of Nadia and Murshidabad is quite different from music-making in the area surrounding Birbhum. Whereas Birbhum is the center of commercial Bāul-Fakir music activity, the India-Bangladesh border region of Nadia and Murshidabad is a hot bed for

Bāul-Fakir participatory music-making. This music-making mostly occurs in small rural villages removed from railroads, industrialized development, and perennial markets of tourism. I have argued that there are five key social factors that correlate with the presence of Bāul-Fakir participatory music-making, and have suggested that the erosion of these factors may result also in the erosion of participatory music practices. However, I do not seek to romanticize the conditions of poverty under which participatory music- making thrives. It is beyond the purview of this dissertation to address the ethics and implementation of economic development in rural Bengal, though it seems clear to me that this development is coming and that it will radically alter the state of participatory music-making in Bengal.

In this and the previous chapter, I have discussed the interactions between Bāul-

Fakirs and other Bengali and international visitors interested in their music. In the following chapter, I discuss the various popular conceptions according to which Bāul-

Fakirs are celebrated. I shift discussion away from those individuals labeled “Bāul-

Fakir,” and instead discuss the appropriation of signifiers of Bāul-Fakir identity by

Bengali artists and intellectuals.

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1 I use participatory in the sense discussed by Turino (2002), as explored below. Other scholars have mentioned, in passing, that music-making occurs alongside other social and spiritual activity at Bāul-Fakir homes and ākhṛās (Ray 1994:66). However, none has identified such music-making as a fully participatory activity, with “little or no distinction between performers and audience” (Turino 2000:48), and in which all present actively contribute to the musical event. To a non-musicologist, perhaps, the “sequential participation” (Turino 2008:48) aspect of Bāul-Fakir music, in which singers take turns singing individual songs, obscures the participatory behaviors of others who clap hands, interject shouts, and play various percussion instruments. 2 See more on the activities of Banglanatak dot com, see http://www.banglanatak.com/sectorlivelihood.aspx (accessed 23 March 2014) and http://www.banglanatak.com/ethnomagic6.aspx (accessed 23 March 2014). 3 As noted previously, various audiences value different aspects of the music. Whereas some audiences prefer merry and lighthearted performances, others prefer sober and introspective presentations highlighting the spiritual content of songs. 4 Qureshi writes, “Later Sufism has also come to emphasize nearness to these saints and their power in spatial terms, at the abode of their final union with God, that is, their tomb” (1986:81). 5 Henry observes: “Some singers in kīrtan groups I witnessed in eastern Uttar Pradesh smoked marijuana [gāṃjā] before they sang, which they said augments the intensity of the experience” (2002:36). 6 A sizeable percentage of Bāul-Fakirs refrain from smoking gāṃjā, either out of respect for their guru’s orders or out of personal preference. Although I describe gāṃjā as being ubiquitous at Bāul-Fakir participatory music sessions, I do not mean to indicate that gāṃjā-use is ubiquitous among Bāul-Fakirs in general. 7 Much of the participatory music-making described by Henry (1988) takes place in similar isolated rural areas. 8 One city in this area that is unusual in attracting many foreign and affluent visitors is Mayapur, near Nabadwip in Nadia. Mayapur is the birthplace of the Vaishnava saint Caitanya, and is home to the headquarters of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, informally known as the Hare Krishna movement. 9 In the first half of my research, I made a considerable error by travelling without a portable water filter. Concerns over potable water caused me considerable and unnecessary anxiety during my early travels. 10 Openshaw observes that most Bāul-Fakirs of a Muslim background in the Nadia/Murshidabad area “are normally indistinguishable in appearance from other householders” (2002:98). 11 M. Ray mentions that local youth are often attracted to Bāul-Fakir gatherings for the gāṃjā, music, and social comradery (1994:66). Such attractions are by no means mutually exclusive with the spiritual attractions of Bāul-Fakir music. 12 Knight (2011) discusses the considerable differences between the lifestyles of men and women Bāul- Fakirs. 13 The jibri is a plastic percussion instrument with small metal cymbals attached. 14 Henry writes: “In all parts of India men (and in some locations, such as Madras, men and women) gather to sing devotional songs. A drummer helps to regulate the tempo and provides propulsion with a barrel drum (e.g. ḍholak or mṛdangam). Others keep time by clapping, playing small cymbals, or playing kartāl” (2002:34). The word kartāl literally means “do rhythm”; not surprising, it is used as a name for a wide variety of simple percussion instruments in India. In this dissertation, I use the term kartāl only in reference to hand cymbals. 15 I discuss the use of ambiguous intonation in Bāul-Fakir songs in Chapter Five. 16 John Cohen used this phrase in his 1963 film The High Lonesome Sound in reference to the intense and high-pitched mountain music of eastern Kentucky. 17 The term modal is used in the context of Appalachian music to refer to melodies featuring suspended fourths, flatted sevenths, and few—if any—thirds (which occur only in flatted or ambiguously intonated form). 18 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoE7p_USoXk (accessed 9 April 2014) for Col mini asam yāba; see Figure 6 in Chapter Five for Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe.

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19 I mention both musicians and sādhus in this sentence because the two do not always overlap. There are many sādhus who are not musicians, just as there are many musicians who have not taken bhek dīkṣā, the initiation that precedes renunciation. Nevertheless, usage of the term sādhu varies considerably. On many occasions, I heard CGF use the term sādhu in reference to individuals who were clearly not renunciants. At some events where I performed alongside Bāul-Fakir musicians, I found myself introduced as an “American sādhu.” 20 The ḍhol is a double-headed barrel drum typically played with two hands, though sometimes played with one hand and one stick. 21 Discussing similar meals in Hindu areas, Capwell writes, “the communal meals are a characteristic feature of the liberal Bengali Vaisnava sects, and one of the reasons that the more orthodox consider them degenerate, since the meals encourage a promiscuous mingling of castes” (1986:71). 22 Santiniketan is also a famously scenic place, and I was fortunate to live in such a peaceful locale. Nevertheless, most of the musicians I visited in Santiniketan lived in densely populated neighborhoods, unlike the agricultural villages where many musicians in Nadia and Murshidabad lived. 23 Jhā has written extensively about the persecution of Bāul-Fakirs (2002). See also Cakrabartī (1992); Haq (1975:299-300); Openshaw (2002:96-7, 106-7); Togawa (2013:25); Banerjee (1997); and http://bdnews24.com/bangladesh/2014/02/25/baul-hacked-to-death-in-jessore (accessed 23 March 2014). 24 These tunings are written in order from the lowest to the highest pitched strings. 25 Openshaw writes that many Bāul-Fakirs of Muslim origin in the Nadia/Murshidabad area “live in clusters rather than isolated families” (2002:99). 26 In addition to preservation activities, Banglanatak dot com also operates a number of social welfare programs addressing issues such as child trafficking, child marriage, illiteracy, hygiene, family planning, and domestic violence (http://www.banglanatak.com/resources/iland%20profile.pdf (accessed 23 March). 27 There are a diverse range of interventions employed by NGOs working for folk traditions in India. Whereas the efforts of Banglanatak dot com are focused on the financial improvement of musicians through helping them develop as professional performers, other organizations take contrasting approaches. The scholar Śakti Nāth Jhā founded the Bāul Fakir Saṅgha as a way to raise awareness of the persecution of Bāul-Fakirs and to empower and unify those Bāul-Fakirs who have experienced persecution (Jhā 2002). Eklavya was an organization formed to raise awareness and foster discussion of the social and political messages of Kabir songs. By foregrounding these messages, Eklavya sought to empower the low-caste devotees of Kabir who are often exploited by the mahants (the gurus and ritual authorities) of the official Kabir panth (Hess forthcoming; see also Shabnam Virmani’s 2008 film Kabira Khada Bazaar Mein). 28 This is in contrast to lucrative performance engagements, in which the employer sends or pays for a van to transport the artists. 29 It is possible that the star musicians assumed a central place in the music-making because I, a visiting foreigner, was present. Perhaps the presentational qualities receded from the music when no outsiders were present. 30 The decision to focus explicitly on ḍugi was hers; it is typically only played in tandem with ektārā.

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Chapter Four: Celebrations and Appropriations of Bāul-Fakir Identity

In the previous two chapters, I have discussed a broad spectrum of Bāul-Fakir music-making in contemporary West Bengal. I have frequently alluded to ways in which

Bāul-Fakirs are imagined and celebrated by affluent audiences, for whom they form a powerful, if contested, sign of Bengali cultural heritage and identity. In this chapter, I recap and discuss these popular conceptions of Bāul-Fakirs at length. I pay particular attention to the symbolic role that Bāul-Fakirs play in the self-imagination of many

Bengali artists and intellectuals. Through appropriating signifiers of Bāul-Fakirs identity, these artists and intellectuals establish their own identities in opposition to mainstream middle-class culture in contemporary urban India. In theorizing this phenomenon, I turn to Robert Cantwell’s work on the North American urban folk revival of the late nineteen fifties and sixties. In both examples, middle-class urban youth appropriated musical, visual, and behavioral signifiers associated with romanticized subalterns of a rural past in order to advocate for an alternative form of modernity and national identity in opposition to the political and commercial mainstream. Following this discussion, I present a short case study of Parvathy Bāul,1 an art school dropout turned Bāul-Fakir. I discuss how

Parvathy Baul’s neo-traditionalist musical approach exemplifies, in an atypical manner, what Thomas Turino calls “modernist reformism,” as she mediates desired aspects of

Bāul-Fakir tradition in a manner accessible to affluent audiences. I also discuss the case of Kolkatan “Bangla bands” that incorporate aspects of Bāul-Fakir music into their rock-, blues-, reggae-, and American folk-oriented music. I conclude this chapter by addressing

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my own implication in the processes of appropriation described above, and reflect on how my own biases and aesthetic orientation informs the focus of my scholarship.

CELEBRATORY CONCEPTIONS OF BĀUL-FAKIRS

Bāul-Fakirs as Romanticized Others

To many foreigners, Bāul-Fakirs embody the image of an exotic pre-modern

India, untouched by Western influence. Bāul-Fakirs appear to them as “authentically”

Indian with their colorful clothes, long hair and beards, and presumably “traditional” instruments and songs. Indeed, if an India-returned traveler wishes to share a slideshow of his travels in the “real” India, he is more likely to display photographs of himself with

Bāul-Fakirs in robes than with other Indians wearing contemporary Western-style dress.

Marketing materials and concert press releases often present Bāul-Fakirs as representatives of spiritual India, as contemporary bearers of an ancient tradition. Indeed, many Bāul-Fakir musicians who perform in the West have capitalized on this image.

Krishnendu Dās Bāul’s various websites, for example, attempt to align Bāul spiritual identity with the prestige and pedigree of Sanskritic Hinduism.2 By doing so, Krishnendu not only stakes a claim as a bearer of ancient religious traditions, but also downplays

Bāul-Fakir’s marginal status amidst the “Great” religious traditions of India. Some foreigners see Bāul-Fakirs as representatives not only of “spiritual India,” but of traditional mysticism even more broadly conceived. When I discussed Bāul-Fakirs with one Western visitor, I was struck that her conception of Bāul-Fakirs drew heavily on stereotypes of Native Americans; she viewed Bāul-Fakirs as having a strong devotion to

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the earth and natural world, and was surprised to learn of their decidedly anthropocentric orientation.

Bāul-Fakirs’ “Other” status in relation to affluent lay Bengalis is particularly complex. On the one hand, Bāul-Fakirs are viewed as iconically Bengali, as cherished symbols of the philosophical, spiritual, and artistic traditions of rural Bengal. This status has been reinforced by a variety of twentieth-century Bengali artists and scholars who were inspired by Bāul-Fakir songs, including Rabindranath Tagore, Kāzī Nazrul Islām,

Satyajit Ray and others. An appreciation for Bāul-Fakir music and philosophy is entrenched at institutions such as Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, and Bāul-

Fakir songs are a part of the basic cultural education received by many Bengali school children (Santanu Datta, pers. comm.). Accordingly, Bāul-Fakirs are seen by many affluent Bengalis as decisively āpan (one’s own), to be treated familiarly and intimately.

On the other hand, affluent Bengalis may perceive individuals Bāul-Fakirs as “Others” when encountered face-to-face. In such encounters, some affluent Bengalis become aware of the gulf of privilege separating their lives from those of often impoverished

Bāul-Fakirs. They may experience fear or mistrust of these Bāul-Fakirs in the same way that affluent people do elsewhere in their unintended but intimate encounters with the poor.

This is the inverse of the way that many poor and working-class Bengalis relate to

Bāul-Fakirs’ “Other” status. As embodied individuals, Bāul-Fakirs are quite familiar as members of the local community. As religious practitioners, however, they are often seen as “Other,” with their baffling interpretations of both Hindu and Sufi cosmology, and

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their Tantric-derived esoteric practices. Furthermore, most poor and working-class

Bengalis do not celebrate Bāul-Fakirs’ anti-structural philosophy in the same way that affluent Bengalis do. In some orthodox Hindu and Muslim villages, poor and working- class Bengalis are acutely intolerant of Bāul-Fakirs critiques of caste, religion, and orthodoxy, as is evident by the ongoing persecution of Bāul-Fakirs in such areas (Jhā

2002; Isherwood 1990; Cakrabartī 1992). Such treatment is a far cry from the celebration of Bāul-Fakirs in Santiniketan as messengers of humanism, communal tolerance, and love.

In light of this discussion of Bāul-Fakirs’ “Otherness,” it is interesting to note that many Bāul-Fakirs recognize their own social position as distinctly liminal. Openshaw discusses the unique social position of Bāul-Fakirs that differs from both conventional householders and austere renouncers (2002:125-39). Bāul-Fakirs view both groups as misguided: whereas householders are overly preoccupied with affairs of the world, austere renouncers are misguided in the “dryness” of their austere lifestyle (Capwell

1986:11).3 Bāul-Fakirs, unlike most sannyāsīs (renouncers), are rasiks, or followers of the sensual path, a path through which the human body is instrumental in attaining the divine.4 In this sense, Bāul-Fakirs reinforce the idea at least of distinction, if not of

“Otherness,” between themselves and others. On the other hand, a key aspect of Bāul-

Fakir philosophy is to recognize the essential unity and castelessness of all humans, and to treat all humans as “one’s own” (Debdās Bāul, pers. comm.; Rīnā Dās Bāul, pers. comm.). This philosophy of indiscriminate love is one that I observed in action

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throughout my fieldwork in Bengal. Having seen such behavior, it is inconceivable to categorize Bāul-Fakirs as in any way hermetic, sealing themselves off from others.

Bāul-Fakirs as Spiritual Adepts

As indicated in Chapter One, there are many who revere Bāul-Fakirs as spiritual adepts, as highly knowledgeable practitioners of an esoteric tradition. Some of these people desire to become Bāul-Fakirs themselves, or at least to study some of the basic spiritual practices. Others admire Bāul-Fakirs for their ability to use breath control as a contraceptive method, and wish to access this practical area of Bāul-Fakir sādhanā (Lorea

2014c:6; Openshaw 2002:207). Others are fascinated with Bāul-Fakirs’ spiritual knowledge on an intellectual level, and seek out those Bāul-Fakirs who display the deepest understanding of the philosophy behind the enigmatic song texts. In this last category are many academics, both foreign and Bengali, as well as many independent

Bengali scholars and artists. However, the celebration of Bāul-Fakirs as spiritual adepts is built upon a problematic premise: Bāul-Fakirs are celebrated for their knowledge of an esoteric tradition in which knowledge is limited to the initiated. Accordingly, experienced practitioners would be expected to disclose little to outsiders.5 Nevertheless, outsiders tend to be confident in their ability to judge the “authenticity” of Bāul-Fakir adepts. As a result, they help to create an economy of “authenticity” in which the winners gain prestige and perhaps financial compensation, and the losers are deemed to be poseurs lacking in true understanding of Bāul-Fakir philosophy.

Moreover, the discourse of spiritual “authenticity” tends to dominate assessments of Bāul-Fakirs as musical performers, and performances are often judged by recourse to

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extramusical assessments of performers’ spiritual knowledge. The recent celebration of the Fakirs of eastern Bengal over the Bāuls of western Bengal has much to do with the notion that the Bāuls of Birbhum have been corrupted by commercial forces, and that they lack a deeper understanding of Bāul-Fakir philosophy and spirituality.6 It is unfortunate that the reputation of the musically and spiritually diverse Bāul-Fakirs of the

Birbhum area would suffer as a result of recent commercialization.

Bāul-Fakirs as Cultural Critics

Many of the terms that both insiders and outsiders use to describe Bāul-Fakirs, such as khyāpā, pāgal, and bāul, loosely translate as “crazy,” and lend themselves to both positive and negative connotations. Whereas it is easy to identify the negative connotations of the term crazy, this label can also describe one who sees the world from a radically alternative perspective (Dimock 1966b:252). When Bāul-Fakirs use terms like pāgal and khyāpā in their songs, they are foregrounding their anti-structural views of society and religion. 7 Indeed, Bāul-Fakirs are famous for critiquing the orthodoxies of religion and ritual, for deconstructing ideas of caste and social status, and for questioning the value of material prosperity.8

Many Bengali intellectuals and artists celebrate Bāul-Fakir songs and philosophy as a vernacular example of social critique similar to that employed in Marxist and postmodern scholarship and contemporary political art. Bāul-Fakirs’ social critique has been appropriated into a variety of twentieth-century political campaigns. One notable example is Rabindranath Tagore’s mobilization of a Bāul-Fakir ideal of communal harmony in opposition to the partition of Bengal in 1905. A related example is Kshiti

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Mohan Sen’s work in response to communal violence following the 1947 partition

(Capwell 1988).9 Some more contemporary scholars and artists see Bāul-Fakirs as active in a distinctly postmodern process of social deconstruction and critique. Kolkata, after all, was the seat of the Subaltern Studies Group, many of whose founders continue to publish and teach at the Center for Studies in Social Sciences. Bāul-Fakirs occupy a special place in the context of Subaltern Studies, as a group of traditionally poor, low-status, low-caste mendicant singers that has produced and disseminated a powerful social critique of hegemonic structures. Urban writes, “The Kartābhajā [one of many heterodox groups often encompassed within the larger category Bāul] songs remind us that there are many ways for dominated groups to express their resistance to the dominant order, apart from simple open revolt or violent insurrection” (2003:515). Furthermore, Openshaw counters the idea that Bāul-Fakirs are “passive and uncomprehending recipients of elements of

‘great traditions’ [i.e. that by an accident of history, they inherited a “syncretic” tradition that combines aspects of larger mainstream religions]” (2002:10). She suggests that Bāul-

Fakirs appropriation of Hindu and Islamic elements forms a self-conscious project of

“rejection and equalizing; more specifically, identifying and rejecting [both] Hindu and

Muslim orthopraxy and orthodoxy, and equating all as human beings (mānuṣ)” (Ibid.:11).

Openshaw has also explored the ways in which Bāul-Fakirs critique not only householder society but also renouncer society, which possesses its own hierarchy of seniority, austerity, and knowledge (2002:125-39). Many scholars have discussed the ways in which Bāul-Fakirs’ views of the female body and the importance of female practitioners invert dominant views of gender hierarchy.10

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Kolkatan music aficionados often draw connections between the social critique contained in Bāul-Fakir songs and the politicized critique of songs by artists like Woody

Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, and Kabir Suman. The North American connection is foreground by the connection of Lakṣmaṇ and Pūrṇa Dās Bāul with Bob Dylan. In 1967, the music manager Albert Grossman brought their group to the United States to perform as an opening act for rock and blues bands such as the Paul Butterfield Band and the

Byrds. During this visit, they also made an album for Elektra (The Bauls of Bengal), recorded with members of The Band, and appeared standing next to Bob Dylan on the cover of his 1967 album John Wesley Harding (Sally Grossman, pers. comm.; Lakṣmaṇ

Dās Bāul, pers. comm.; see also Baker (2011).11 Alhough their appearance on Dylan’s album cover was probably incidental, and reflected no apparent artistic collaboration between the artists (Sally Grossman, pers. comm.), it symbolically bolsters the views of

Bāuls as Bengali Dylans, just as Dylan is said to have called himself an “American Baul”

(Ibid.). 12

Bāul-Fakirs as Homegrown Bengali Rock Stars

It is quite common for young Bengali musicians to perform a variety of both Bob

Dylan songs and Bāul-Fakir songs. For many, Bāul-Fakir songs form a bridge between

Bengali national identity and the countercultural music-making of the United States in the nineteen sixties. In addition to the shared emphasis on social critique, there are also certain sartorial similarities between Bāul-Fakirs and the American rock music/urban folk scene: both favor long hair, beards, loosely fitting colorful clothes, and accessories such as beaded necklaces. Some Bengalis view charismatic Bāul-Fakir performers as local

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vernacular “rock stars,” as sources of entertainment, and models of both the “cool” and

“wild” behavior characteristic of rockers.13 Whereas some Bāul-Fakir musicians are magnets for young men who admire their nonchalantly countercultural affect, others draw attention and praise for their unpredictable social antics. Fans fondly recount episodes of certain outrageously bold and erratic performers. For example, many Bāul-Fakir music aficionados love to share stories of the performer Gaur Khyāpā, an outstanding musician and performer from Bolpur, Birbhum, with an electric and irascible personality. Gaur, who was killed in an automobile accident in early 2013, exemplified the wild and eccentric spirit often attributed to the Bāuls of a less commercialized time (though Gaur himself was nevertheless a prominent commercial performer who toured Europe and the

United States). In the course of my stay in West Bengal, I heard countless Gaur stories. In some of these stories, Gaur would playfully excoriate the younger generation of Bāul-

Fakirs, criticizing their lack of expertise or vitality. In one story, Gaur says that if you take away the “u” sound in Bāul, the remaining word (bāl, or “pubic hair”) describes all of these new Bāuls today. In another story, Gaur is in a weakened state of health and lacks the strength to play his khamak; instead, he achieves a poignantly comic effect by playing an ektārā in the manner of a khamak. In a third story, Gaur takes the stage at a

Kolkata utsav wielding a tanpura, the large drone instrument of Indian classical music; such a gesture was self-consciously grandiose, and a stance which no other Bāul-Fakir singer would have had the gumption to adopt. Each of these stories, which are told and retold with delight by Bāul-Fakir music aficionados, reflect both an appreciation for old- fashioned khyāpās like Gaur, and a pride in having gotten to spend time around such

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great musicians and eccentric figures.14 Similar storytelling traditions exist among bluegrass and jazz aficionados, who tell stories that celebrate the forceful and eccentric personalities of star musicians and that highlight the storyteller’s own good fortune to have been a fly on the wall.15

Bāul-Fakirs as Bearers of Folkloric Tradition

Many see Bāul-Fakirs as emblematic of a pre-modern rural Bengali tradition of artistic, intellectual, and spiritual innovation and liberalism that has been carried forth into the modern era by notable Bengalis from Ram Mohan Roy and Ramakrishna to

Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray. The presence of Bāul-Fakirs is an asset to sites of

Bengali cultural tourism like Santiniketan, as it lends them an air of rustic “authenticity,” and imparts both a merry and spiritualized mood to their environs. At celebratory events and fairs through the state, even in those regions where Bāul-Fakir music is not part of local tradition, Bāul-Fakirs are ubiquitous performers. At festivals celebrating other

Bengali expressive mediums, from scroll painting to literature, Bāul-Fakir musicians are often hired to provide a further taste of Bengali folk culture. Likewise, when visiting international artists come to perform at the American Embassy in Kolkata, they are introduced to the Bāul-Fakirs as representatives of local folk culture.

A large number of independent archivists view Bāul-Fakir music as a folkloric form worthy of collection, preservation, and curation. Many archivists post Youtube videos of Bāul-Fakir performances, which occasionally include notes on the social context of the performances.16 Beyond Youtube, Baul Archive [sic] provides an extensive online video library of Bāul-Fakir performances and interviews.17 Founded by Sally

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Grossman, wife of the late music manager Albert Grossman, Baul Archive’s website also provides an overview of Bāul-Fakir religion, descriptions of the musical instruments, and a bibliography of Bāul-Fakir literature. Baul Archive occasionally orchestrates events in

West Bengal, such as a book launch and concert in Kolkata’s Town Hall in 2010, and a

“Rabindranath Tagore and the Bauls” conference and concert in 2012, co-sponsored by

Visva-Bharati University. Other organizations such as Banglanatak dot com, Marfat, and Travelling Archive have produced audio and video recordings of Bāul-Fakir music, often taking care to document obscure repertoires and underrepresented local musical styles.18

COMPARING TWO FOLK REVIVALS

In exploring the stances of Bengali artists and intellectuals towards Bāul-Fakir music, I find it useful to refer to Robert Cantwell’s (1997) book on the urban folk revival in North America during the late nineteen fifties and sixties. In both the Bengali and the

North American examples, educated urban men and women sought out personal meaning in the musical forms of a romanticized subaltern group. In both examples, men and women sought to appropriate certain musical, visual, and behavioral signifiers associated with these groups. In each example, this appropriation had both an aesthetic and a political dimension. Young Americans appropriated the “folk” in advocating for an alternative form of modernity and national identity in opposition to the conservative mainstream of the Eisenhower era. Similarly, many Bengali artists and intellectuals appropriate signifiers of Bāul-Fakir culture in constructing their own countercultural

Bengali identities in opposition to the consumerist and materialistic values of

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contemporary urban India. In the paragraphs below, I draw from Cantwell’s research to shed light on the appropriation of Bāul-Fakir culture in contemporary West Bengal.

Cantwell writes that blackface minstrelsy of the mid-to-late nineteenth century was in several ways a precursor to the urban folk revival of the late nineteen fifties and sixties (1997:55-80). In both, there was a clear power differential between those represented and those who selectively appropriated (Ibid.:58). While white minstrel performers gained renown for their performances of select musical, linguistic, and kinesic traits associated with “blackness,” they simultaneously retained their own racial privilege, and in fact amplified their own whiteness through their blackface performances (Ibid.:64;

Rogin 1992:440). Similarly, folk revivalists could perform the musical styles of poor rural people without losing status or obscuring their own middle-class identities.

Openshaw (2002:28-31) and Bhaṭṭācārya ([1958] 1982:103-4) have written about a remarkably similar phenomenon to blackface minstrelsy in their discussions of late nineteenth-century “amateur Bāuls,” typically educated middle-class men who occasionally sang, composed, and dressed up as Bāuls. In the contemporary context, there is typically a stigma of “inauthenticity” attached to such behavior, although affluent

Bengalis continue to select certain aspects of Bāul-Fakir identity to emulate, and may even bolster their own status as “cultured” artists and intellectuals in the process of doing so.19

A key difference between the sixties’ folk revivalists and the blackface minstrels is that the former did not generally maintain a partition between their performances as

“folk” and their personal identities in daily life. Their adoption of subaltern behaviors

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was not confined to the dramatic stage, nor was it a form of wholesale caricature; rather, folk revivalists were able to appropriate signifiers of subaltern identity in subtle ways, and to integrate these signifiers into their own social personae (Cantwell Ibid.:328-34).

Incorporating these signifiers into their educated middle-class identities, they mounted a social critique of the dominant norms and values of their own social class, without fear of losing their own privileged status as a member of that class (Ibid.:18-9).

Educated urban Bengali enthusiasts of Bāul-Fakir music are similar to these

American folk revivalists in their selective appropriation from romanticized subaltern musicians. Like the American folk revivalists, they mobilize aspects of a subaltern culture in reinventing their own middle-class social identities and mounting a challenge to mainstream notions of national identity. Also like the American folk revivalists, they have the luxury of appropriating signifiers from a low-status group without actually being mistaken for members of this group (Ibid.:36-7). Notably, this privilege to act like a

Bāul-Fakir without losing status is enjoyed only by certain members, usually male, of the middle and upper classes. If a poor or working-class Bengali were to dress like a Bāul-

Fakir, live among them, and play their music, his social status and caste identity would be put into jeopardy. Likewise, women enjoy less leeway in the company they may keep while maintaining a respectable identity (Knight 2011). Whereas the appropriation of

Bāul-Fakir identity markers is a momentous decision for a woman or poor Bengali to make, for an affluent Bengali young man from a liberal family, it represents only a diversion that needn’t jeopardize his future plans.

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Cantwell observes that urban folk revivalists lacked an understanding of the social context and referents for many of the signifiers contained within American folk music.

As a result, they found the music to be richly evocative, deceptively impenetrable in its apparent simplicity, and an ideal canvas on which to project new social meanings

(Cantwell Ibid.:25, 191). Similarly, many young educated Bengalis find Bāul-Fakir music to be evocative and elusive, as do other uninitiated listeners on encountering the intentionally oblique but powerfully suggestive Bāul-Fakir songs. Whereas village youth in much of Bengal would be exposed to Bāul-Fakir music at local fairs and festivals from an early age, urban youth generally have a more limited exposure to the music. When they do encounter the music, they typically experience it through a filter of artistic and aesthetic referents drawn from popular culture. Many people’s experiences of Bāul-Fakir music are colored by the spiritual writings of Rabindranath Tagore; in many of my interactions with educated Bengalis over the age of forty, discussions of Bāul-Fakir music would revolve around Tagore. Younger Bengalis, however, are just as likely to conceive of Bāul-Fakirs with reference to Western folk and popular music.20

Though educated urban Bengalis interpret Bāul-Fakir music in a variety of ways, there are two fairly ubiquitous aspects of their reception. First, most identify Bāul-Fakir music as an essentially Bengali tradition. Second, most recognize the centrality of cultural critique and unfettered spirituality underlying Bāul-Fakir songs. When young

Kolkatans immerse themselves in Bāul-Fakir culture, therefore, they are both seeking their Bengali roots, and discovering new ways of imaging themselves as cultural critics uninhibited by social convention. Returning to their urban lives, they may grow long hair

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or beards reminiscent of Bāul-Fakirs, or incorporate elements of Bāul-Fakir music into their rock-, reggae-, and blues-oriented musical projects. A young Kolkatan musician and actor even told me that he views one of his Western musical heroes, Kurt Cobain, as a sort of Bāul. He told me that he often thinks of Cobain as “Cobain Khyāpā” (Anon., pers. comm.) By reimagining Kurt Cobain as a Bāul, this young man was creating a link between his own Western-influenced social identity and his imagined roots in the spiritual and countercultural traditions of rural Bengal.

When a young Bengali musician grows out his beard and facial hair, therefore, it is unclear whether he is emulating a Western hero like Bob Marley, or a domestic one like Tinkari Dās Bāul. A further link between iconic Western musicians and Bāul-Fakirs is their reputation for smoking marijuana and tobacco. If adopting a Bāul-Fakir persona is a way of rebelling again the norms and restrictions of conventional life in Bengal, it loosely parallels the adoption of a rock music persona for a young person in the West. A young Bengali who grows his hair out, smokes marijuana, and plays music on a guitar or dotārā might define his self-image as equal parts Bāul and rocker.

In both the American and Bengali examples, there are some instances in which an individual goes so far in his adoption of a subaltern identity as to obscure his own original social class identity. Such an individual performs a mimetic act of embodiment as thorough as that of the blackface minstrel, but integrates this systemic act of

“ethnomimesis” (Cantwell 1993:4-5) into the fabric of his own personal identity in daily life. Cantwell discusses this in the case of Mike Seeger, a pioneer of the urban folk revival. Among his other musical accomplishments, Seeger carved a unique niche for

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himself by recombining a variety of traditional American musical forms in an unorthodox but traditional-sounding manner.21 Cantwell describes the extent to which Seeger’s dress, affect, stage manner, and musical style evoke a romantic figure of the American past, a

“storied frontiersman…a smaller edition, it might be said, of Abraham Lincoln…a sun- blinded western wagoner of the 1850s at the limit of his endurance, his understanding clouded, his heart hardened and hopeless, his spirit harrowed by some sublime delusion”

(1997:40, 42). Cantwell continues, “What complicates the picture is that while he rescues in folk music the values dear to his class, values that typically include contempt for modern commonplaces such as mass production and mass culture, Seeger is also, through that music, in lifelong revolt against his class” (Ibid.:43). Whereas other folk revivalists adopt sartorial or musical aspects of “folk” culture, Mike Seeger was someone whose entire social persona was saturated with signifiers of the rural American “folk.”

Though his audiences knew that he came from an educated urban family, they also saw in him the embodiment of something exotic, romantic, and pre-modern. Below I discuss a similar figure in the contemporary Bāul-Fakir musical scene.

CASE STUDY: PARVATHY BĀUL

Parvathy Bāul is one of the most commercially successful and internationally visible performing artists of Bāul-Fakir music today. While in many ways she embodies the iconography of the stereotypical Bāul-Fakir, she is also unique in many ways among

Bāul-Fakir performing artists. First, despite her background as a middle-class art student at Visva-Bharati University, she has adopted a Bāul-Fakir identity after receiving initiation and esoteric training from a renowned guru, and is identified by her audiences

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as a “Bāul.” Second, she is one of the few high-profile contemporary performers who utilizes the traditional solo instrumentation of ghuṅur , ektārā, and ḍugi. Though she sometimes performs with a single accompanist on dotārā, she rarely utilizes the large instrumental ensemble used by other Bāul-Fakir professional performers. Third, she is the rare female performer who conspicuously showcases her identity as a Bāul-Fakir. Many other female Bāul-Fakir singers dress more conservatively than their male counterparts, and are cautious of appearing flamboyant or exceptional in the eyes of their layperson neighbors (Knight 2011). Parvathy’s appearance, however, with her patchwork robes and floor-length dreadlocks, is demonstratively “Other.” Finally, whereas many female Bāul-

Fakirs employ a restrained mode of stage performance, Parvathy performs an ecstatic display of Bāul-Fakir dance that is both iconic and exceptional. While singing, she twirls in rapid circles, ektārā held above her head, her dreadlocks spiraling around her person in spectacular fashion. Parvathy’s unique profile is due in part to her background as a middle-class art student at Visva-Bharati University with exposure to a range of theatrical, musical, and other performance art forms. In her performances, she incorporates not only Bāul-Fakir gestures and dance moves, but also a range of choreographic, gestural, and stage design elements drawn from contemporary performance art. Moreover, her childhood training in kathak dance likely contributes to her sensibility as a performer and her capacity to communicate physically with affluent audiences.22

I suggest that Parvathy’s exceptional success as a performing artist is closely linked to her background as an educated middle-class Bengali. Subtly drawing from her

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own middle-class habitus (Bourdieu 1984), Parvathy constructs Bāul-Fakir performances that are accessible and engaging to affluent audiences. While other Bāul-Fakir performers may cater to the tastes of educated affluent audiences, they lack Parvathy’s first-hand understanding of these audiences’ tastes and inclinations.

Despite her current identity as a Bāul-Fakir, affluent Bengali audiences are aware of Parvathy’s middle-class origins, and many experience a greater affinity with her than with rural working-class Bāul-Fakir singers.23 This is similar to the ways in which middle-class American audiences could relate more easily to a suburban Minnesotan folk singer named Bob Dylan than to a Kentuckian construction worker named Roscoe

Holcomb.24

Parvathy Bāul and “Modernist Reformism” (Turino 2000:16)

Parvathy can be characterized as a neo-traditionalist for her use of the older solo performance configuration of ghuṅur , ḍugi, and ektārā; her eschewal of the conspicuous electronic vocal delay so common in contemporary Bāul-Fakir performance; and her avoidance of the short, exoteric songs so popular at most Bāul-Fakir commercial performances.25 Though her music is not overtly innovative or hybridized, its reception among affluent audiences nevertheless exemplifies something that Thomas Turino calls

“modernist reformism.” Turino writes,

Modernist reformism refers to projects based on the idea that ‘a new culture,’ or new genres, styles, and practices, should be forged as a synthesis of the ‘best’ or ‘most valuable’ aspects of local ‘traditional’ culture and ‘the best’ of foreign ‘modern’ lifeways and technologies. Although theoretically “reform” could go either way, what typically happens is that distinctive local arts and lifeways are reformed, or ‘developed,’ in light of cosmopolitan ethics, aesthetics, and worldview because of the cultural positions of the reformers.

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Put more directly, reformism typically objectifies, recontextualizes, and alters indigenous forms for emblematic purposes in light of cosmopolitan dispositions and social contexts and programs. The meanings, ethics, and practices that originally infused indigenous forms are typically not transferred into the reformist mix—that is, they are not considered part of the ‘most valuable’ features of indigenous lifeways, or are not even recognized, by those directing reformist programs. (Ibid.)26 27

In an inversion of the “typical” process described above, Parvathy’s modernist innovation is to eschew undesirable “modernisms” (large ensembles, conspicuous electronic vocal delay), in favor of a neo-traditionalist approach.28 She takes the “best” aspects of traditional Bāul-Fakir music and weds them to a high-brow artistic sensibility of how Bāul-Fakir music should be performed. That affluent audiences receive her presentations of long esoteric songs as high-brow folkloric performance art reflects the extent to which “the meanings, ethics, and practices that originally infused indigenous forms are typically not transferred into the reformist mix” (Turino 2000:16). Though she makes no apparent effort to gloss over the corporeal and sexual metaphors contained within Bāul-Fakir songs, these are not the messages that her audiences generally focus on in her performance. Rather, affluent audiences take from Parvathy’s performances a sense of her ecstatic emotion and a feeling of the spiritualized longing expressed in so many of the Bāul-Fakir songs. When affluent audiences watch Parvathy perform as a

Bāul-Fakir, they vicariously experience a communion with their own “roots” in a pre- modern rural Bengal. Their experience is less about seeking the nuanced meanings of an esoteric religious cult than about experiencing an emotional connection with the expressive traditions of “golden Bengal.”

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Whereas affluent audiences are sometimes unpleasantly aware of the financial ambitions of other Bāul-Fakir performers, Parvathy’s performances are so compelling as to obscure the commercial frame within which they occur. By contrast, a lackluster performance by a Bāul-Fakir mendicant on a train only draws attention to the performer’s financial need and may lead the audience to view the performer as inauthentic, motivated by greed or need. Affluent audiences may be enchanted by the idea of Bāul-Fakir music, yet uncomfortable in the presence of someone who seems rough or unpolished, who doesn’t behave according to the conventions of middle-class performing artists. An outstanding quality of Parvathy’s performances are that they appear to be intimately and

“authentically” Bāul-Fakir, without calling undue attention to the “Otherness” of that tradition, the studied theatricality of her performance, or the irony of bourgeois audiences identifying with a lifestyle and philosophy so alien to their own.

Two Performances by Parvathy Bāul

In November of 2012, I attended two consecutive performances by Parvathy Bāul in Santiniketan. Both performances were for elite educated audiences at high-profile performing arts venues. The first concert was on November nineteenth at the Society of

Visual Art and Design (SVAAD), an upscale arts center and gallery. Most of the attendees at this concert were in their forties or older, and many had a current or past affiliation with Kala Bhavan, the visual arts college at Visva-Bharati University.

Parvathy’s performance at SVAAD was preceded by a program of rabindrasaṅgīt followed by a performance of Odissan dance. Parvathy was the headliner of the evening,

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despite the fact that she would be performing in a town already saturated with Bāul-Fakir music.

It was clear from audience members’ anticipatory remarks that Parvathy occupies a special status among Bāul-Fakir performers. Whereas other Bāul-Fakir performers who have performed at SVAAD are received as local folk talent, Parvathy is celebrated as an internationally-renowned artist. Parvathy’s background as a university art student positions her as an ideal intermediary between the university-educated elite and the working-class folk artisans of the Bengali countryside. In a sense, she embodies the romantic spirit of Visva-Bharati University, which Rabindranath Tagore established as a place where students might pursue their higher education while steeped in and surrounded by the lifeways and traditions of village life in rural Bengal. From my conversations with various attendees that evening, I gathered that Parvathy allows them to feel closer to the traditions of rural Bengal, to imagine what their own lives might be like if they had chosen to pursue a radically idealistic and romantic path.

She began her concert with the usual bandanā invoking the guru and the divine before singing a variety of Bāul-Fakir songs. Unlike most other professional performers, she avoided popular exoteric songs; instead, she sang a number of serious Bāul-Fakirs songs, many at the slow tempos reserved for long, introspective songs. The audience seemed to be fully absorbed in her compelling performance, as she curved and bent her body, whirled about, and sent her body-length dreadlocks spinning around her like helicopter blades. Her voice was conspicuously different from most other Bāul-Fakir vocalists: she displayed the requisite wide vocal range, but avoided the stridently nasal

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vocal tone of so many other Bāul-Fakir singers. I was particularly struck by the lack of electronic delay on her vocals. I had resigned myself to the fact that all amplified performances of Bāul-Fakir music featured heavy delay on the vocals, which creates a

“voice-of-God” effect, but makes the music sound like antiquated or low-budget pop music. Her decision not to use vocal delay made her performance sound more “natural,” and it also highlighted the fact that her aesthetic sensibilities as a daughter of the educated Bengali middle-class were closer to mine, probably, than to those of so many poor and working-class Bāul-Fakir singers. Only her ḍugi playing was less than impressive, as she failed to produce the clearly articulated and thundering tone that other expert musicians extract from that diminutive hand drum.

After the performance, I ran into an older European resident of Santiniketan who had also been at the performance. Though he didn’t understand any of the Bengali, he nevertheless found the performance to be very moving, and told me that it was clear that she really “felt” the music in a spiritual way, and that she was not “performing” or being

“theatrical” at all (Anon., pers. comm.). Indeed, her compelling performance had effectively obscured the performative frame with which it occurred.

The second Parvathy concert I attended took place two evenings later and about a mile away, in the large outdoor sculpture courtyard of Kala Bhavan at Visva-Bharati

University. The mostly student audience was seated on stone benches, folding chairs, and on the ground in front of and to the sides of the stage. A large number of tealights flickered in the breeze at the front of the stage, and the weather was cool and pleasant.

Students chatted and drank from paper cups of coffee and tea purchased at the nearby

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campus canteen as they awaited the evening’s music. This time, Parvathy brought along a musical accompanist, LKDB from Kenduli, Birbhum. LKDB is tall and slender, with a dark complexion, a strikingly upright body carriage, and a serious stage demeanor.

Before Parvathy appeared, he performed two songs, accompanying himself on dotārā. He sang nicely, in the forceful and confident manner of many professional singers of

Birbhum. The audience was appreciative, but I doubt that they would have had patience for any more of his songs without Parvathy; as Santiniketan residents, they frequently hear similar performers on trains, on campus, at the Saturday fair, and elsewhere.

When Parvathy began her program I noticed a key aspect of her stage performance that differentiates her from other Bāul-Fakir performers. Whereas other

Bāul-Fakir performers speak on stage with a certain formality, Parvathy spoke with ease in the intimate manner of other young artists who might perform at urban nightclubs or performing arts centers. In fact, there was something cute about the manner in which she spoke to the audience, a certainty that they liked and admired her. Perhaps she spoke with the awareness that she was addressing an audience of her juniors at her alma mater. At one point while tuning before a song, she teased the audience for being so silent. At other points, she explained some basic philosophical elements of her songs, not in the demonstrative way of some other Bāul-Fakir performers, but in the manner of a gentle guide introducing an unaccustomed audience to a complex spiritual tradition.

Parvathy performed the first few songs of her set without accompaniment. Then

LKDB joined her, playing khamak instead of dotārā.29 Notably, LKDB played into a stationary microphone in a back corner of the stage, while Parvathy moved across the

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front of the stage while singing into her wireless headset microphone. There were several moments of rhythmic discrepancy between Parvathy and LKDB. When Parvathy spun in fast circles, the visual highlight of her show, her ḍugi playing tended to lose its rhythmic precision. At such points, LKDB paid close attention to her rhythmic articulation, and conformed to her time feel with his khamak playing. Overall, however, the performance was impressive, and the khamak added a nice rhythmic texture to Parvathy’s voice, ghuṅur , ektārā, and ḍugi.

Parvathy seemed to leave a powerful impression on the audience of college students and young graduates. As an art student turned Bāul, she represents a woman who has transcended the bounds of middle-class culture in becoming something beautiful, exotic, and unfettered by convention. Among the popular deities in Bengal, there are many powerful and unfettered women, from fearsome Kālī and Tārā, to equally awe- inspiring but devotedly maternal Dūrgā. Parvathy, with her long dreadlocks, ecstatic dancing, and bold public presentation conjures up something of the power, beauty, and unrestrained freedom of these goddesses, while at the same time appealing to middle- class aesthetics with her youthfully round face, smoothly pleasing voice, and incongruously self-effacing laugh. Furthermore, in her adoption of a Bāul-Fakir identity, she demonstrates deep commitment to a spiritual path at the apparent expense of her

“good name” as a middle-class Brahmin woman. In doing so, she evokes an emotional poignancy of the Vaishnava tradition, in which Rādhā’s love for Kṛṣṇa is enhanced by the fact that she has sacrificed all worldly propriety in devoting herself to him. When college students watch Parvathy perform, they admire one who has chosen a radical path

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for a middle-class Bengali woman, and who embodies her new position in a blissful and liberated manner.

Like Mike Seeger, Parvathy “rescues in folk music the values dear to [her] class”

(Cantwell 1997:43), while approaching the music with the orientation of a traditionalist, not an innovator. Whereas other middle-class performers dabble in Bāul-Fakir music,

Parvathy is exceptional for the extent to which she has committed herself to a Bāul-Fakir social and musical identity and spiritual path.

BANGLA BANDS

Parvathy is not the only artist of a middle-class background who performs Bāul-

Fakir music. Many Kolkatan “Bangla bands” collaborate with Bāul-Fakir musicians, and also sing and play Bāul-Fakir music themselves. However, few if any of these musicians would identify themselves as Bāul-Fakirs, nor would others label them as such.

Occasionally one hears the phrase nagar Bāuls (city Bāuls) in reference to urban musicians who play Bāul-Fakir music, mix with Bāul-Fakirs, and live an itinerant lifestyle similar to that which Bāul-Fakirs are imagined to live. But nobody would conflate these urban bohemians with “actual” Bāul-Fakirs.30 Nevertheless, urban audiences enjoy Bangla bands’ renditions of Bāul-Fakir music, which is often performed as a fusion of Bengali folk with various forms of Western popular music.

Collaboration with Bāul-Fakirs enhances Bangla bands’ performances in several ways. It adds an element of Bengali pride into the music, incorporating intimately familiar musical elements over which audiences feel a sense of ownership and national identification. This can help with the intergenerational appeal of Bangla bands’ music,

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which may otherwise skew towards younger audiences. Collaboration also lends a dynamic element to bands’ stage presence: whereas Bangla band musicians bob their heads and sway their bodies in ways reminiscent of popular Western musicians, Bāul-

Fakir musicians perform with the distinctly erect carriage, gestural elegance, and characteristic spinning movements of their tradition.31 Having a Bāul-Fakir on stage can actually heighten the “rocker” image of the accompanying Bangla band. This is achieved through the conspicuous contrast of “tradition” and “modernity,” as expressed in the juxtaposition of khamak with guitar, orange robes with jeans and designer clothes, and strident vocal tones of village Bengali with Western influenced vocal stylings. But despite these differences, similarities emerge as well: both may wear long hair, beards, earrings, and bead necklaces; both assert the right of the individual to question preexisting structures of power through song; and both perform together at a distinctly urban, upper middle-class nightclub whose existence is tied to the colonial past of

Kolkata. When a Bangla band performs at such a venue, it is performing a complex cultural legacy inherited from both Bengal and from the West. By collaborating with

Bāul-Fakir musicians at such venues, Bangla bands assert their rootedness in Bengali national identity and tradition, despite their affinities for Western popular music.

For Bāul-Fakir musicians, however, performance at such a venue is a prestigious appointment that demonstrates the potential of Bāul-Fakir music as an avenue towards social mobility. Mere admission to such venues, much less the cost of a drink, is beyond the reach of most people from a humble village background.

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REFLECTIONS ON MY OWN ATTRACTION TO AND APPROPRIATION OF BĀUL-FAKIR

MUSIC

Above, I’ve discussed the celebration and appropriation of Bāul-Fakir music by a variety of audiences, scholars, and musicians. In this final section of the chapter, I reflect on my own attraction to and appropriation of Bāul-Fakir music. I present this material to provide the reader with a better perspective from which to evaluate my scholarly orientation and intent.

I first came to India in search of Malgudi. I wanted to experience the small town

India of R.K. Narayan’s fiction, and hoped to conduct an ethnomusicology research project in such a location. After an initial visit to Tamil Nadu in December 2009, I travelled to West Bengal to meet a friend who had grown up in Kolkata. On a whim, he suggested that I visit Santiniketan, where I could meet some local Bāul musicians. He explained to me that Bāul music was a type of Bengali folk music, and that I would probably enjoy it, given my background in American traditional music. On the train ride to Santiniketan, we met a Bāul-Fakir musician who performed solo with ḍugi, ektārā, and ghuṅur. I loved his vocal phrasing, his ability to play so many instruments at once, and his use of three-against-two polyrhythm, which reminded me of Ghanaian music and jazz drumming. On reaching Santiniketan, we spent time with another Bāul-Fakir musician who invited us to his home and showed us his instruments. The visit was quite inspiring, and I was quite taken with both the music and the people who performed it. I had found

Malgudi, and I had found the music that I would study.

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Like so many others I have described in this dissertation, my attraction to Bāul-

Fakir music was linked to romantic notions of bucolic settings and traditional folklore, in spite of my training in deconstructionist social science. As I began my studies of Bengali, read the secondary literature on Bāul-Fakir music, and returned for future preliminary research trips, I learned more about the religious and philosophical components of Bāul-

Fakir culture. My interest in Bāul-Fakir music was further piqued as I learned about the spiritual tradition. As I learned of the spiritual tradition’s strong component of embodied esoteric practice, I began to explore a fascinating and unfamiliar canon of literature.

What sustained my interest in Bāul-Fakir music most of all, though, was my appreciation for rural and orally-transmitted musical traditions. Since the age of fifteen, I had played banjo, guitar, and other instruments in a variety of traditional and experimental musical groups, and I was always interested in exploring unfamiliar “folk” musical styles. Bāul-Fakir music was a new tradition to explore. That it took place in rural Bengal, the land of Pather Panchali,32 only enhanced my interest.

My appropriation of Bāul-Fakir music has been twofold. As a musician, I now perform some of the songs, and feel that I have some claim on the musical tradition after devoting several years to studying it. When I perform the music in the United States, I enjoy a certain cachet for having learned it “over there.” Nevertheless, I am keenly aware that my assimilation of the music is impaired by my status as an uninitiated non-Bengali who first heard the music as an adult.

My second act of appropriation is as a scholar, as in the production of this doctoral dissertation. Though I now present myself as a scholar of Bāul-Fakir music

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culture, I am aware that I remain an uninitiated foreigner exploring just a few facets of a deeply complex cultural phenomena. I hope, however, that my scholarship sheds some new light on the phenomena of contemporary Bāul-Fakir music, and introduces non-

Bengali readers to an unfamiliar and richly nuanced musical tradition. I realize that I’m privileged to have travelled to West Bengal on a research fellowship and to have been welcomed by musicians, music enthusiasts, and other local residents. As a result, one of my goals in this dissertation has been to convey the generosity of the people with whom I spent time, the richness of the musical tradition, and the fascinating array of social meanings surrounding the music.

Thus far in this dissertation, I’ve focused primarily on the socio-cultural context of Bāul-Fakir music. In the next chapter, I adopt a musicological approach in discussing some remarkable and unexplored features of Bāul-Fakir music. I also present the first published full ensemble transcriptions illustrating the diverse range of contemporary

Bāul-Fakir music. I present this material to shed light on some of the technical features that contribute to making Bāul-Fakir music such a celebrated art form.

1 I retain the spelling Parvathy as used in her promotional materials, as opposed to transcribing her name more literally from the Bengali as Pārbatī. For the sake of uniformity with the rest of this dissertation, I write her title as Bāul rather than Baul. 2 See, for example, http://www.speakingtree.in/spiritual-blogs/seekers/god-and-i/lineage-Bāul- rabindranath-tagore-sri-nityananda (accessed 23 March 2014). I have written Krishnendu’s name without diacritics, in the same way that he presents it in his promotional materials. For uniformity’s sake, I have retained the macrons over the a’s in Dās Bāul. 3 Like Bāul-Fakirs, Kabir also criticizes both conventional society and the subculture of renouncers (Hess forthcoming:Chapter 1). 4 See Bhaṭṭācārya ([1958] 1982), Jhā (2010), Hanssen (2001, 2002), Openshaw (2002), and Salomon (1991). 5 Urban (2001:vii-viii) discusses the difficulties of trying to study a esoteric tradition that is intentionally kept hidden from uninitiates. He writes: “How can one study something that is supposed to be secret—and, indeed, should one in good conscience even try to penetrate something that another culture wishes to keep hidden from the outside world?” (2001:vii).

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6 I base this observation on countless conversations I had with aficionados of Bāul-Fakir music in Kolkata and elsewhere. 7 The terms pāgal and khyāpā also refer to one intoxicated by divine love, an apt description for many Bāul-Fakir adepts. 8 The Kabir tradition is similar to the Bāul-Fakir tradition in its dual emphasis on spiritual mysticism and social critique. Hess points out that “Kabir is uniquely situated among North Indian bhakti poets as a ‘platform’ for [political and socially critical] dialog. We would not be having quite this discussion about Surdas, Mirabai, or Tulsidas. Among the major Hindi bhakti poets, it is only Kabir who speaks out loudly against social inequality, abuse of power, and dishonesty…Only with Kabir do we find trenchant observation of social issues coupled with evocation of profound inner transformation” (Forthcoming:Chapter 6). Bāul-Fakir songs share this quality of encapsulating both the “social-political” and the “religious spiritual” (Ibid.). Many of the same metaphors are found in both Kabir songs and Bāul- Fakir songs (Ibid.: 137). 9 Of course, there is a certain irony in the application of Bāul-Fakir’s anti-structuralism in the service of nation building projects. The promotion of communal harmony, though, is certainly in keeping with core aspects of Bāul-Fakir philosophy. 10 See Salomon (1991), Openshaw (2002), Knight (2011), Hanssen (2001, 2002), Lorea (2014c), and McDaniel (1992). 11 John Wesley Harding is not an explicitly political album, but Dylan’s legacy of songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Oxford Town,” and “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” identifies him as a political songwriter. 12 According to Sally Grossman, the decision to put the Bāul-Fakirs on the cover of album was just another example of Dylan “being weird” (pers. comm.). 13 See Mimlu Sen’s (2010) colorful descriptions of Bāul-Fakirs in these various charismatic roles. 14 For more Gaur Khyāpā stories, see Sen (2010). 15 See, for instance, Rooney (1971) and Berliner (1994). 16 See, for instance, Youtube channels by Folkpick, Soumik Dee, Adam Yoaji, and Baul Archive. 17 See http://www.baularchive.com (accessed 23 March 2014). 18 See http://www.banglanatak.com/ethnomagic7.aspx (accessed 23 March 2014), http://www.marfat.in/songs.html (accessed 23 March 2014), and http://www.thetravellingarchive.org/home.php (accessed 23 March 2014). 19 Santanu Datta, a scholar and vocalist from Bardhaman, described to me his developing interest in Bāul- Fakir music over the course of his childhood and early adulthood, from first learning their songs in Bratacarī childrens’ cultural education programs, to studying the Bāul-derived songs of Tagore as a voice student, to seeing Bāuls begging on trains in their “psychedelic dress.” Finally he became more interested after moving to Santiniketan and encountering Bāul singers “singing here and there surrounded by ‘cultured’ Kolkata people. I wanted to be a ‘cultured’ one too [laughs].” 20 Diptanshu Roy, a mandolinist, dotārā player, and Creative Director at a prominent Koltata advertising firm, told me, “I heard Bāul music as a kid and it never appealed to me. No matter how warped it may sound...I remember liking Bāul music for the first time only after I started loving American roots music.” 21 Of Seeger’s neo-traditionalist originality, Cantwell writes: “Surely, though, no Delta bluesman ever sang ‘Rolling and Tumbling’ to the accompaniment of a guttering, gulping, fretless gourd banjo—Seeger’s was built by a craftsman from a nineteenth-century artist’s rendering of an antebellum plantation instrument— and yet in speculatively back-reading the Delta blues to a much earlier southern rural practice, Seeger wrests a musical truth out of a historical rupture” (Ibid.:42). 22 For more biographical information on Parvathy Bāul, see her website (http://parvathybaul.srijan.asia/, accessed 23 March 2014) and her interview with Arunima Choudhury on the Actuponty website (http://www.actuponty.com/en/tantidhatri/167-artistes/1235-interview-with-PB-Baul, accessed 23 March 2014). 23 Many people, particularly women, that I spoke with in Santiniketan, Kolkata, and elsewhere expressed criticism of the Bāul-Fakirs that one encounters on trains and elsewhere, but spoke effusively about Parvathy’s talents.

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24 Compare Dylan’s recording of “Man of Constant Sorrow” on his eponymous 1962 album with Holcomb’s 1961 recording of the song (“I am a Man of Constant Sorrow”) on the 2003 recording An Untamed Sense of Control. It is quite clear which version best suits the tastes of typical middle-class audiences. 25 The only conspicuously “modern” aspect of PB’s performance is her usage of a small wireless headset microphone, which enables her to dance while singing. 26 Turino uses the term “cosmopolitan” in reference to “objects, ideas, and cultural positions that are widely diffused throughout the world and yet are specific only to certain portions of the populations within given countries” (Ibid.:7). He continues, “The term cosmopolitan often carries connotations of elite status and sophistication. Although not necessarily so by definition, cosmopolitans generally have tended to be of the economic and/or educated elites of any given society or social group” (Ibid.:10). Where I use the term, however, I use it in the broader sense expressed by Breckenridge, Pollock, Bhabha, and Chakrabarty in their co-authored 2002 volume Cosmopolitanism. Here, the term also refers to “the victims of modernity, failed by capitalism’s upward mobility…refugees, peoples of the diaspora, and migrants and exiles represent the spirit of the cosmopolitical community” (2002:6). According to this definition, Bāul-Fakir musicians, patrons, and researchers alike might be labeled “cosmopolitan.” 27 It should be noted that Turino’s comments are situated within a case study of music and nation-building in post-colonial Zimbabwe. His dichotomy of traditional culture versus foreign modernity does not exactly apply in the Bengali example, where three hundred years of British influence contributed to the rise of a bhadralok class of affluent Bengalis with their own well-established conceptions of a “modernity” not necessarily dependent on Western models. 28 See Bakhle (2005) for other examples of neo-traditionalism as modernist reform. 29 It is unusual for a singer using ektārā, ḍugi, and ghuṅur to perform with an accompanist. This instrumentation is typically used by a solo performer. 30 Indeed, the labels “Bāul” and “Fakir” carry strong connotations of social class; Parvathy Bāul is extremely unusual for being labeled as Bāul despite hailing from a middle-class educated Brahmin family. 31 The Bāul-Fakirs’ spinning motions clearly link them to Sufi musicians in other parts of South Asia and beyond. 32 Pather Panchali is a 1955 film of Satyajit Ray, based on the novel by Bhibhūtibhūṣaṇ Bandhyopadhyaẏ (1929). I first saw this film as an undergraduate, and it inspired my interest in Bengal.

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Chapter Five: Musical Analysis of Bāul-Fakir Music

Scholarly discussions of Bāul-Fakir music generally focus on the expression of

Bāul-Fakir philosophy and spirituality through song texts. With the exception of

Capwell’s 1986 Music of the Bauls of Bengal, there has been little scholarship addressing

Bāul-Fakir music through the lens of musicological analysis.1 In Chapter Two, I discussed some of the changes that have occurred in Bāul-Fakir music since the time of

Capwell’s fieldwork, including the multi-instrumental virtuosity and diverse repertoires of some professional musicians; the shift away from the ektārā as a preferred instrument; and the widespread use of “modern” instrumentation and electronic vocal effects. In this chapter, I address a range of more technical musical features that fall beyond the purview of Capwell’s general theory of Bāul-Fakir music, and that have been unexplored in previous scholarship. I discuss polyrhythm, elasticity of phrasing, odd meters, unique melodic modes, and the ubiquity of variable intonation across the full spectrum of Bāul-

Fakir melodic modes.

This chapter is structured around a series of transcriptions, organized by melodic mode, that collectively demonstrate, though by no means encapsulate, the diversity of contemporary Bāul-Fakir music. Aside from a few eight-bar transcriptions in Capwell’s monograph (Ibid.), these are the first published transcriptions of Bāul-Fakir music that include both the vocal and instrumental parts of Bāul-Fakir ensembles.2 I use these transcriptions to exemplify the musical features listed above and to illustrate the roles of the various instruments within different ensemble configurations. By highlighting an

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array of remarkable and idiosyncratic elements of contemporary Bāul-Fakir music, I demonstrate the vitality and complexity of a musical tradition that is consistently overshadowed by its esoteric song texts.

A NOTE ON THE TRANSCRIPTION OF BĀUL-FAKIR MUSIC

Many Bengali scholars have published transcriptions of Bāul-Fakir music in sargam (North Indian solfege) notation.3 Such transcriptions are highly prescriptive, and demand that the reader posses a great deal of familiarity with the transcribed genre.

Sargam transcriptions do not provide details regarding precise rhythmic phrasing or melodic ornamentation, and instead give only a skeletal representation of the basic temporal, melodic, and formal structures of a composition. I do not mean to minimize the value of sargam translations; they are extremely useful for readers already familiar with a musical style, and their minimalist presentation makes them highly accessible to scholars and musicians alike.

The transcriptions in this chapter, in contrast, are in Western musical notation.

They contain a great detail of information regarding precise ornamentation, rhythmic phrasing, and other dynamic elements of performance. Though they may be too cumbersome to be of practical use to musicians, they nevertheless present a degree of detail unavailable in previous literature. Whereas sargam notations of Bāul-Fakir music indicate only the vocal part, along with a mention of the tal, my transcriptions are unique in including the accompanying and lead instrumental parts.

Both sargam and Western musical notation have serious shortcomings as representational mediums of music. Both fail to convey a sense of timbre, which is a

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critical aspect of Bāul-Fakir music. Both also fail to convey the subtle shadings of rhythmic phrasing and pitch intonation that lends music its warmly “human” touch. I present the transcriptions in this chapter as an imperfect representation of an auditory phenomenon too complex, too richly nuanced, and too laden with extramusical significance and emotional import to be adequate conveyed in a representational visual medium. For audio and video recordings of Bāul-Fakir music (which have their own shortcomings as representational media), I refer readers to the bibliography at the end of this dissertation.

CAPWELL’S GENERAL THEORY OF BĀUL MUSIC

Because the Bauls have no body of consciously formulated musical theory, the principles governing the use of pitch material, as proposed in this chapter, are based on my own observations of musical behavior. The Bauls, of course, are not aware of the principles I propose, and so they frequently ‘violate’ them; in this regard, the phrase ulṭo pathik (contrary pilgrim), which is used to describe the unorthodox social and religious behavior of the Bauls, may just as well describe their musical behavior. An account of the contradictions evident in Baul performances would require much verbal description of particular musical details and, if given here, would obscure the discussion of the general theory that is the topic of the chapter; consequently, I will concentrate on a description of the principles governing the selection and use of pitches and not on the many specific ways in which those principles are transgressed (Capwell 1986:123).

Before discussing musical features that Capwell omitted or overlooked, I summarize below the main points of Capwell’s general theory of Bāul-Fakir music.

“Temporal Organization” (Ibid.:115-22)4

“The meters of Baul-gān,” Capwell writes, “are limited to 6/8 and 4/4. Tunes in

6/8 meter frequently alternate or mix 3 X 2 and 2 X 3… while those in 4/4 often exhibit

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an additive rearrangement” (Ibid.:116-7). He goes on to link these two meters to lophā tal and kaharvā tal, respectively (Ibid.:118).

Once a performer has begun a measured song, he usually continues to the end in the same meter. There are, however, two common exceptions. In the first, the singer changes from measured rhythm to parlando rubato to deliver a short passage of text, normally the end of a stanza…during this time the accompanists are silent. After this parlando passage, the singer starts the refrain in measured rhythm and the accompaniment returns. The second exception involves a sudden change in meter, called tāl phertā (meter change), a term borrowed as, perhaps, was the device itself from the more sophisticated style of kīrton (padāboli). The tāl phertā normally occurs nearer the end than the beginning of a performance, is followed by a return to the original meter, and is more often a change from compound to simple duple than the reverse, although the latter does occur (Ibid.:118-20).

Another notable feature that Capwell mentions is the gradual increase in tempo that typically occurs in songs (Ibid.:118). Such tempo increases are important aspects in the “intensity-building” (Henry 2002:38) found in many Indian musical genres including kīrtan (Slawek 1986, 1988), qawwālī (Qureshi 1986), and birahā (Henry 1988).

“Pitch Use and Tonality” (Ibid.:123-45)

Capwell states that “every Baul-gān uses a heptatonic scale” (Ibid.:124) and that

“the tonalities of Baul-gān may be said to be basically of two types” (Ibid.:129): those with a predominantly occurring natural third degree, and those with a predominantly occurring flatted third degree.5 He then provides an overview of the rules governing pitch use within those two tonalities. He states that in songs with a natural third, there are two movable scale degrees: the third and seventh. In songs with a flatted third degree, he writes, the second, sixth, and seventh degrees are all movable. However, only when the flatted sixth degree “is the primary form of that degree is the flatted second degree used”

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(Ibid.:137). Furthermore, he writes “although the alternation of the flatted and natural forms of the sixth and second degrees may be characteristic of many songs in this tonality, most do favor one form or other of those two degrees” (Ibid.:139). The sharped fourth degree may occur in songs with a natural third degree, Capwell writes, though “its occurrences are rare, unpredictable, and uncharacteristic; it is used only as the fourth above the tonic (not in the position an octave higher)” (Ibid.:129). Of songs with a flatted third degree, he writes “although the sharped and flatted fourth, flatted fifth, and even the natural third degrees are to be heard in this tonality, they are rare and ornamental and never occur except in the positions closest to the tonic” (Ibid.:136).

“The Structure of Baul-gān and its Realization” (Ibid.:146-77)

The musical structure of Bāul-Fakir songs is formed around the couplet stanzas of the song texts. “The musical setting is organized into three units”: the first part of the refrain (A); the second part of both the refrain and all other verses (B); and the first part of every verse except the refrain (C). The A typically recurs after each B, so the resultant song form is “ABA, CBA, …CBABA” (Ibid.:153). Although Capwell provides this theory of form, he is careful to point out that many irregularities arise within actual performances of Bāul-Fakir songs, and that these irregularities differentiate the form of

Bāul-Fakir songs from the asthāẏī/antarā form typical of other Indian folk genres

(Ibid.:173-5). He demonstrates these irregularities of form through a lengthy transcription and formal outline of a vocal performance by Śaśāngka Dās (Ibid.:153-71).

Of the introductions that precede songs, Capwell writes:

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Since only the refrain-couplet [AB] is used in the rhythmically free introductions that may precede measured song and are analogous to ālāp in art music, only the music associated with the refrain (A and B) is to be heard in them. An instrumental introduction may precede a vocal one; if the instrument is capable of producing a melody, as the dōtārā or sārindā are, the performer will render on it phrases of A and B music. Whether or not a performer gives an introduction of these sorts depends largely on his own preference and habit, but rarely does he commence without at least perfunctorily sounding his instrument once or twice and singing a little turn around the tonic to the vowel ā (Ibid.:153).6

EXPLORING FURTHER FEATURES IN BĀUL-FAKIR MUSIC

Thanks to Capwell’s work documenting a general theory of Bāul-Fakir music, I am free focus on some of the more idiosyncratic elements in the music. It is probable that some of these elements represent innovations, alterations, or additions to the repertoire since the time of Capwell’s research. It is likely that I was exposed to a broader range of

Bāul-Fakir styles, as many of the musicians I encountered were well-travelled and learned in a variety of regional Bāul-Fakir and other Bengali folk styles. One feature that

Capwell commented on and I discuss at length is the use of ambiguous intonation

(referred to elsewhere in this dissertation as variable intonation). Capwell writes:

In the tonality with a flatted third degree, ambiguity of intonation of the moveable notes is more common than in the opposite tonality [tonalities that primarily feature a natural third degree]; indeed in songs such as ēmon ulṭa deś and mānob deho mōṭor gāṛi, the intonation of the third degree itself is often closer to being natural than flatted. This wide intonational flexibility is one of the characteristics that sets this kind of performance apart from that in the tonality with a natural third degree; in the latter there is, in those songs using both forms of the third degree, more an impression of contrasting two notes than of varying the intonation of a single note (Ibid.:137-8).

Although Capwell’s observations on the phenomenon of ambiguous intonation is incisive and accurate, he devotes little further attention to this matter, as his primary goal is to illustrate the more systematic and predictable occurrences in Bāul-Fakir music. In

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my transcriptions below, I give many examples of variable intonation in tonalities with a flatted third, as well as in tonalities with a natural third. I demonstrate that variable intonation, typically in the moveable scale degrees, is a ubiquitous feature in Bāul-Fakir music, and one that lends the music a uniquely “earthy”7 character. When unaccustomed listeners encounter Bāul-Fakirs singers, they are sometimes struck by the singers’ apparent lack of training or polish. Such listeners find this quality to be either endearing or unpleasant. Whereas some of these listeners criticize Bāul-Fakir singers for their lack of musical training, I suggest that such critiques reflect listeners’ failure to appreciate the unique aesthetics of Bāul-Fakir music.

TRANSCRIPTIONS AND NOTES

In the transcriptions below, I have generally reproduced apparent “imperfections” as they occurred. I suggest that many of these “imperfections” are “participatory discrepancies” (Keil 1987) that lend the music an emotionally rich quality. However, in a few instances below, I have transcribed not what the musicians did, but what they surely intended to do; in these instances, I call attention to my correction in a footnote. One minor musical detail that I have not notated, but that occurs somewhat frequently, is a glissando descent in pitch that occurs on the final note of a long musical phrase, sung with an extremely low volume immediately preceding a breath. I have excluded this detail from my transcriptions because it strikes me as an unintentional phenomenon, and one that is nearly inaudible in live performances.

Finally, I have excluded from my transcriptions the incidental sound made by ghuṅur and jibri during their upward motions in between beats, as well as the sound of

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the foot patting the ground that coincides with every emphasized beat on the ghuṅur.

Though often inaudible, this sound resembles certain tones made on the ḍugi , and in some settings contributes a valuable percussive element. This can be heard in Nakṣatra

Dās Bāul’s performance of Bidhi kār kapāle, transcribed below.

Finally, I wish to emphasize that the performances transcribed below are not intended to represent the “correct” or “authoritative” versions of these compositions, as if such a thing existed within as fluid, idiosyncratic, and ever-changing a tradition as that of

Bāul-Fakir songs.8 However, unlike sargam notations, these transcriptions do illustrate some of the nuances of Bāul-Fakir music as it exists in contemporary performance by musicians steeped in the oral musical tradition. I have included transcriptions by a variety of musicians from Birbhum, Bardhaman, Nadia, and Murshidabad districts, and have included songs associated with both West and East—not to mention North and South—

Bengal. Accordingly, the transcriptions below, while by no means exhaustive, demonstrate the diversity of Bāul-Fakir music performed in contemporary West Bengal.

Songs with a Sharped Fourth Degree and no Flatted Seventh Degree

Although Capwell states that occurrences of the sharped fourth degree in songs with a natural third are “rare, unpredictable, and uncharacteristic” (Ibid.:129), I nevertheless encountered a number of songs that made frequent and consistent use of the sharped fourth in addition to the natural fourth. These are also among the only Bāul-Fakir songs I heard that exclusively use the natural seventh degree. It is possible that these songs reflect a classical or kīrtan influence.

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Indriẏa daman āge karo man

This song, performed by Debdās Bāul, features voice, ghuṅur, ḍugi, and ektārā.9

The ektārā suggests a 3/4 feel throughout, whereas the ghuṅur alternates two patterns, suggestive of a metric modulation between 3/4 and 6/8.10 When the ghuṅur plays only the first beat of each measure, as in mm. 1-7, it combines with the vocal melody and the ektārā part to evoke a 3/4 meter. However, when the ghuṅur plays the first and fourth beats of each measure, as in mm. 8, it unambiguously establishes a 6/8 meter.11 The ghuṅur alternates between these two feels, evoking a 3/4 meter in the C sections, and reestablishing a 6/8 meter in the A, B, and instrumental sections. The ḍugi plays irregular patterns throughout, contributing rhythmic interest across both time feels.

Throughout his performance, Debdās intonated many of the sharped fourths quite low.12 These are the first of many examples in this chapter of variable or “non-standard” intonation.

The line in the ektārā staff indicates the tonic pitch. The bottom line in the ḍugi staff indicates a low tone. The space between the lines indicates a low tone of slightly higher pitch. The upper line in the ḍugi staff indicates a muted high-pitched sound. Notes in parentheses are ghost notes; x’s indicate muted tones.

The transcription begins at the start of the fixed tempo section, after a rhythmically free AB.

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Figure 1: Indriẏa daman āge karo man

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Figure 1, cont.

166

Figure 1, cont.

167

Figure 1, cont.

168

Figure 1, cont.

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Figure 1, cont.

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Figure 1, cont.

Other Songs Without a Flatted Seventh

As mentioned above, Indriẏa daman āge karo man is unusual in featuring only the natural form of the seventh scale degree. I include in this section two other songs that also omit the flatted seventh degree. One of these songs, Opār deśiā omits the seventh scale degree altogether, and thus contradicts Capwell’s observation that “every Baul-gān uses a heptatonic scale” (Ibid.:124).

Opār deśiā13

Opār deśiā is a recently composed song by Dina Daẏāl of Ghoshpara, Nadia, performed here by Rīnā Dās Bāul.14 This transcription, like many others included in this chapter, demonstrates the fluidity of both the texts and the musical forms of Bāul-Fakir songs. Note that m. 28 is an extra measure added to the A section, set to the text, “o bandhu” (oh friend). Repetitions and short additions to the text are quite typical in Bāul-

Fakir songs, as Capwell has noted (Ibid.:161).15

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Like most Bāul-Fakir songs, the precise rhythmic phrasing of this performance eludes transcription. The meter is better written in 6/8 than 4/4, but the typical three-note dotārā phrase of this performance sounds more like a quarter note followed by two eighth notes than like three evenly spaced eighth notes. Although I have not notated duplets or quadruplets in the vocal part, they occur there as well, in a subtler form masked by the fluidity of phrasing typical of vocal performances. This unique pattern of rhythmic phrasing evokes the stilted phrasing of a jhumur tal.16

This song has one additional feature that suggests a jhumur influence: in m. 4 and

27, Rīnā plays and sings neutral third degrees—written in my transcription as flatted thirds—short after playing and singing a natural third degree. This is a characteristic that

I have noticed in many Birbhum Bāuls’ performances of major-key songs; it is especially prevalent in performances of the crowd favorite Lāl pāhāṛir deshe yā, a song that

Bāsudeb Dās Bāul of Santiniketan, Birbhum characterizes as a jhumur gān (pers. comm.).

I suggest that the neutral thirds found in other major-key songs in Birbhum reflect the significant influence of jhumur in this region. I have not encountered this feature towards the Bangladesh border, away from the regions where jhumur exists. The absence of the seventh degree may also point to a jhumur influence, although it is just as likely borrowed from bhāṭiẏāli; as S. Ray has noted, bhāṭiẏāli songs often skip the seventh degree in ascent from the sixth to the tonic (1973:111). The dotārā in this performance is tuned to Re Pā Sā Mā (2 5 1 4). In this performance, as in many transcribed below, the vocalist occasionally sings extra vowel sounds at the end of words; I have written these extra sounds in parentheses. This transcription begins on the repetition of the B section.

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Figure 2: Opār deśiā

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Figure 2, cont.

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Figure 2, cont.

Sonār mānuṣ āche ekjanā

This transcription features an unusual instrumental configuration for Bāul-Fakir music in West Bengal. Whereas the sārindā, a “bowed short lute” (Capwell Ibid.:103) similar to the sarangi, was once a common instrument in Bāul-Fakir music, it has been largely replaced by the violin.17 However, I encountered very few players of either the sārindā or violin during my time in West Bengal.18 Here, Nūr Mohāmmad plays violin in a highly animated style, with ḍubki accompaniment provided by Phājlu Śāha.19

One fascinating feature of this performance is the wide variety of rhythmic phrasings in the voice, violin, and ḍubki. Nūr articulates a heavily swung rhythmic feel on his violin throughout; the swing-ratio in his vocals, however, varies considerably according to the melodic passage and phrase of text. The ḍubki player utilizes a swung feel reminiscent of qawwālī. Note the pulsing violin accompaniment throughout, reminiscent of the Southern

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Appalachian fiddling of Tommy Jarrell, which adds considerable excitement and momentum to the performance. The violin is tuned in the same intervals as a Western violin, with the tonic pitch on the second string. Most of the natural sevenths in the vocals of this performance are intonated somewhat low, especially the one in the mordant in m.

50. The natural sixths played on the high string of the violin are intonated very high; the sixth in m. 22 are closer to flatted sevenths, although they are clearly intended as sixths.

The bottom line of the ḍubki staff indicates the low tone of that drum. The x’s in middle line indicates muted slaps. X’s in the upper line indicate muted high-pitched slaps.

Throughout this ḍubki performance, whenever a low eighth note is immediately followed by a muted eighth note, the low note rises in pitch as the skin is tightened in anticipation of the muted note. I have not indicated this rise in pitch in my transcription.

Figure 3: Sonār mānuṣ āche ekjanā

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Figure 3, cont.

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Figure 3, cont.

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Figure 3, cont.

Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh, but not the Flatted Third

The tonalities described in this and the following three sections characterize the majority of Bāul-Fakir songs.20 The use of a flatted seventh, but no flatted third, is typical of much East Bengali Bāul-Fakir music and as well as of many bhāṭiẏāli songs (S. Ray

Ibid.; Capwell Ibid.:143). Below I discuss four contrasting examples of this tonality. The first, Prem karbi ke āẏ, is typical of much Bāul-Fakir music played in parts of Nadia

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district. The second, Nabī mar paraśamaṇi is actually a nazrulgīti (song of Kāzī Nazrul

Islām)21 that has been integrated into the Bāul-Fakir repertoire, as both the text and music lend themselves to Bāul-Fakir interpretations.22

The third and four examples might be placed into separate categories from the ones above, although they contain the same pitches. Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe skips the third scale degree in key phrases of the refrain, lending it a tonal characteristic reminiscent of jhinjhoṭi rag (S. Ray Ibid.). Finally, Prem rasikā haba kemane features a variety of unique intervallic phrases and melodic gaps discussed in detail below.

Prem karbi ke āẏ

This performance by Āmirul Fakir features dotārā accompaniment similar to that in Capwell’s transcribed excerpt of Tumi se nā deśer kathā re man bhule giyecho

(Ibid.:117).23 This style of accompaniment, with its emphasis of all four beats, and its frequent use of sixteenth notes, differs markedly from the dotārā accompaniment used in other 4/4 songs such as Pāre calo ār belā nāi (Figure 9) and Nadī bharā ḍheu (see Figure

12).

The dotārā here is tuned to Pā Sā Sā Mā (5 1 1 4), with the third and second strings passing so closely together through the instrument’s bridge as to form a pair.

Accordingly, these strings are always struck as a pair. Therefore, all of the lower-register tonics, seconds, and thirds indicated in the dotārā transcription below are sounded as two- voice unisons.

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Figure 4: Prem karbi ke āẏ

181

Figure 4, cont.

182

Figure 4, cont.

Nabī mar paraśamaṇi

This performance by Bāsudeb Dās Bāul on dotārā and vocals, his son Bholā on

ḍubki, and wife Urmilā on kartāl includes a number of interesting features.24 Throughout, the flatted sevenths are intonated quite high, somewhere between the flatted and the natural pitch. This occurs, for example, in m. 45; on the repeat of this phrase in m. 49, the seventh is closer to being a natural. In contrast, many of the natural thirds, both in the voice and dotārā, are intonated very low throughout this performance.25 The dotārā in this performance is tuned to Re Pā Sā Ni (2 5 1 4).

This song also features some interesting rhythmic characteristics. Whereas the kartāl establishes a 6/8 meter throughout, the ḍubki, dotārā, and voice emphasize a three-

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part division of each measure suggestive of a 3/4 meter.26 As the performance unfolds,

Bāsudeb suggests a metric modulation through his use of the ghuṅur. Towards the beginning of the performance, he plays ghuṅur either on the first beat of each measure or not all. However, at m. 53, with the return of the A section, he begins to play on both the first and fourth beats of each measure with the ghuṅur, clearly emphasizing a 6/8 meter.

For the remainder of the performance he plays ghuṅur on beats one and four in many of the remaining A and instrumental interlude sections, but only on beat one in the B and C sections. I interpret this alternation as a gesture towards metric modulation between 6/8 and 3/4 feels. I have heard similar modulations occur overtly in other performances, when the kartāl player utilizes two contrasting rhythmic patterns. The rhythmic articulation of this song resembles that of Opār deśiā, transcribed above, wherein the first and fourth eighth notes are considerably longer in duration than the second, third, fifth, and sixth (although the effect here is less pronounced than in the performance of Opār deśiā). As discussed above, this trait reflects a jhumur influence.

Figure 5: Nabī mar paraśamaṇi

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Figure 5, cont.

185

Figure 5, cont.

186

Figure 5, cont.

187

Figure 5, cont.

Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe

Capwell includes several transcriptions documenting the angular accompaniment style of the khamak. At the time of his research, the khamak was used primarily as a rhythm instrument. While this is still the case, it has become increasingly common for khamak players to play melodies as well. I have transcribed an impressive and lengthy melodic khamak solo (mm. 55-70) by Kārtik Dās Bāul of Guskara, Bardhaman.27

Following Capwell, I utilize x’s to indicate indeterminate pitches. I have omitted the dotārā from this transcription, as it is well-represented elsewhere in this chapter. I have also omitted the ghuṅur for most of this transcription, as it primarily doubles the open tones played by the kartāl. In a few instances (mm. 24-26, m. 46, m. 64), however, I have placed ghuṅur transcriptions on the kartāl staff line. In these places, the kartāl player has stopped playing, presumably to readjust the strings with which the instrument is held.

Note the virtuosic use of sixteenth notes by the kartāl player in passages such as mm. 55-

62.

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There are a few strange melodic details in vocals in performance. While glissandos are quite common, it is unusual for the natural seventh in m. 8 to be sustained for quite so long during a glissando between the flatted seventh and the tonic. Another strange occurrence is the flatted third in m. 17. This is the only instance of a flatted third throughout this performance, and I suspect that it occurred by error. In other instances, the natural sevenths are intoned quite flat, such as in m. 32.

The bottom line of the ḍhol staff indicates the lower-pitched drumhead played by the right hand. The x’s in middle line indicate muted slaps played by the right hand. The upper line indicates the higher-pitched drumhead played by the left hand. The accent lines in the ḍhol staff modify the notes on the lower drum staff only. Like Opār deśiā and

Nabī Mar Paraśamaṇi, the first and fourth beats have an elongated duration.

Figure 6: Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe

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Figure 6, cont.

190

Figure 6, cont.

191

Figure 6, cont.

192

Figure 6, cont.

Prem rasikā haba kemane

This is a very popular song throughout Bengal, transcribed here from a solo performance by Āmirul Fakir that I recorded at his home. This song possesses some interesting and unusual melodic and intervallic features. During the refrain, over the line

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“āmi premer rasikā haba kemane” (how will I ever become a connoisseur of love?), there is a beautifully strange melodic passage (mm. 33-5) that begins with a descent from the fifth to the fourth and then a leap to the flatted seventh; the seventh degree towards the end of this phrase is often variably intonated, lending a further degree of melodic complexity. Another striking phrase is the opening line of the C section (mm. 1-2), where the melody ascends from the fourth to the fifth to the natural seventh, where it lingers before resolving upwards to the tonic. Elsewhere, as in Bāgher ḍāke antar kāṃpe, the melody skips the third in its ascents (mm. 3, 36). This song diverges from the “ABA,

CBA, …CBABA” (Capwell 1986:153) format in that only the second half of a B section occurs with the A section in the beginning and ending of the song. I have omitted the dotārā from this transcription.

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Figure 7: Prem rasikā haba kemane

Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh and Third

Mānuṣer janye mānuṣ

This song, performed by Ābdul Hālim of Rampurhat, Birbhum, features a great deal of complex vocal melisma.28 Although the resultant transcription is impractical as a prescriptive notation, it nevertheless conveys the melodic detail that characterizes many performances of Bāul-Fakir songs. In many instances, the rhythmic subtlety of these

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melismatic phrases defies transcription. Nevertheless, this transcription demonstrates the extent to which vocal phrasing in Bāul-Fakir music can be independent of the overall rhythmic matrix. In many places, the vocalist showcases the words by delivering a phrase almost in a spoken manner. In these instances, the vocal phrases seem to float above— rather than clash with—the rhythms of the percussive instruments.

As in previous songs, there is some ambiguity in the intonation of the sevenths here. For example, the final natural seventh in m. 17 is quite flat, not far from the flatted seventh in m. 18.

Towards the return of the A section in m. 24, the ghuṅur begins to emphasize a double-time feel. In the instrumental section following the A (not transcribed), the khol also begins to play a double-time feel. This shift to a double-time feel is typical of songs performed at ritually significant events, especially after several hours of musical performance.29 The khol in this performance is transcribed in the same manner as the

ḍhol in Bāgher dāke antar kānpe.

Figure 8: Mānuṣer janye mānuṣ

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Figure 8, cont.

197

Figure 8, cont.

Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh, Third, and Sixth

Pāre calo ār belā nāi

This is a transcription of a performance by Rīnā Dās Bāul on vocals, dotārā, and ghuṅur, accompanied by her husband Dibākar on ḍubki. The flatted sixths in this performance all occur in the dotārā during instrumental sections (m. 3 and m. 42).

However, at the end of B section, in m. 80, Rīnā sings a very low natural sixth that might be labeled as neutral.

In this and the other transcriptions below, whenever a mordant is written above a dotārā double stop (as in M. 39), it indicates a mordant on the high note only.

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Figure 9: Pāre calo ār belā nāi

199

Figure 9, cont.

200

Figure 9, cont.

201

Figure 9, cont.

202

Figure 9, cont.

203

Figure 9, cont.

204

Figure 9, cont.

205

Figure 9, cont.

Āmār ei gharkhānāẏ ke birāj kare

This is a transcription of a performance by Mallikā Fakir accompanied by her husband Chota Golām Fakir on tambourine, Ābul Kālām Fakir on dotārā, and an unidentified man on kartāl.30 There are several notable rhythmic features in this song.

The dotārā, while generally playing a repetitive stream of eighth notes, emphasizes the second and fifth beats throughout. The emphasis on the second beat is sometimes achieved through the use of two sixteenths notes, as in m. 18; the emphasis on the fifth beat is achieved by playing it slightly louder and later than expected. Such an emphasis in

6/8 meter is unfamiliar to Western listeners, but is a typical feature of Bengali music.

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The kartāl establishes a 6/8 meter throughout by sounding the first and fourth beats of each measure, and muting the second, third, fifth, and sixth beats. However, the second and fifth beats are so delayed at some points as to create the sense of a 4/4 time feel, wherein the sounded notes are quarters and the muted notes are eighths. This is a typical effect achieved by kartāl players throughout West Bengal. Despite creating a tension with the rhythmic articulation of the other instruments, it does not interfere with the cohesion of the group. I suspect that this feature is derived from jhumur, which tends to display a remarkable elasticity of rhythmic phrasing.

All the notes in this performance transcribed as flatted sixths are intonated very high. Perhaps, these notes would be best described as neutral sixths. Many of the thirds in this song are ambiguously intonated as well; in m. 30, for example, each subsequent third is intonated lower than the preceding one.

Figure 10: Āmār ei gharkhānāẏ ke birāj kare

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Figure 10, cont.

208

Figure 10, cont.

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Songs that Include the Flatted Seventh, Third, Sixth, and Second

In the above songs, flatted sixths occur somewhat rarely and often with a considerably raised intonation. In songs featuring a flatted second, the flatted sixth degree occurs more often and is typically intonated in the “standard” manner.

Bidhi kār kapāle

This solo performance by Nakṣatra Dās Bāul of Rampurhat, Birbhum on ektārā,

ḍugi, and ghuṅur contrasts markedly with the solo performance by Debdās Bāul transcribed above.31 The main difference is in their use of the ḍugi: whereas Debdās' ḍugi performance features a large number of ghost notes and rhythmic irregularities, this performance by Nakṣatra is concise and repetitive, with every ḍugi note clearly defined.

Nakṣatra’s minimalist approach to ḍugi may be related to his manner of stage performance. At the various utsavs and melās where I saw Nakṣatra sing, he enhanced his performances with his dramatically angular poses and dances. Despite his advanced years, he moved around the stage in powerful and elegant manner. With such attention to the theatrical elements of his performance, it is unsurprising that his musical accompaniment style is rhythmically strong but sparse.

Nakṣatra uses the ḍugi throughout this performance to reinforce the beginnings of vocal phrases. For instance, in short interludes between vocal phrases, he typically omits the low ḍugi tone on beat one (e.g. mm. 17-18). When he continues singing, he emphasizes the downbeat of the measure with a low ḍugi tone (e.g. m. 19).

In mm. 38-39, towards the end of the B section, there is a very unusual melodic phrase.

Nakṣatra descends from the flatted seventh, through the natural sixth, and fifth to the

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natural third degree, but then ascends back through the fourth and fifth to the flatted sixth. The pairing within a single phrase of the natural third and flatted sixth is highly idiosyncratic. It is worth noting, however, that the natural third here is intonated rather low.

Interestingly, Nakṣatra concludes his performance with a rhythmically free vocal descent from the fourth scale degree down to the flatted third, flatted second, and tonic

(not transcribed). This is the only instance of a flatted second in this performance. By the song’s end, Nakṣatra has used eleven pitches in this performance.

A final noteworthy feature of this performance is Nakṣatra’s repeat of the first half of the refrain in m. 47, ending on the unresolved second degree. This is typical of the subtle variations and omissions that master Bāul-Fakir singers incorporate into their performances to create excitement and anticipation.

Figure 11: Bidhi kār kapāle

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Figure 11, cont.

212

Figure 11, cont.

213

Figure 11, cont.

Nadī bharā ḍheu

Capwell writes: “Songs in which the flatted forms of the sixth and/or second degrees are primary may also use the natural form as a lower neighbor tone” (Ibid.:139).

Throughout this Bhabā Pāglā composition, as performed by Bāsudeb Dās Bāul,32 the natural forms of the second and sixth occur only as lower neighbor tunes. However, one outstanding occurrence of the natural second is in mm. 55-7, where Bāsudeb leaps to the second from the low fifth and sustains it for over eight beats before resolving upwards to the flatted third. This and other features of this performance reflect a classical influence in Bāsudeb’s musicianship. In mm. 32 and 35, for instance, he plays dotārā runs unlike other instrumental phrases encountered in Bāul-Fakir music; and in m. 53, he quite subtly doubles the tabla part (not transcribed) with his dotārā line. Bāsudeb’s rhythmic phrasing of the dotārā line in m. 17, in which the third and fourth eighth notes are given an unusually long duration, evokes the typical drum “break” found in much Bengali popular and folk music.

Ten pitches are represented within this transcription; in a C section later in the performance (not transcribed), Bāsudeb sings the flatted fifth degree in an ascending

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stepwise passage beginning on the tonic. Like Bidhi kār kapāle, therefore, this performance features eleven different pitches. In a departure from the typical “ABA,

CBA, …CBABA” (Ibid.:153) form mentioned above, Bāsudeb omits the first and final B sections that typically accompany an A section. The dotārā in this performance is tuned to Pā Sā Mā Ni (5 1 4 7).

Figure 12: Nadī bharā ḍheu

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Figure 12, cont.

216

Figure 12, cont.

217

Figure 12, cont.

Songs in Odd Meters

Although Capwell states that “the meters of Baul-gān are limited to 6/8 and 4/4,” there are additionally a number of songs that occur in odd time signatures. It is likely that the odd meters of these songs reflect the influence of rāmprasādī ṣyāmāsaṅgīt

(devotional songs for Mā Kālī composed in the eighteenth century by Rāmpraṣād Sen) or kīrtan.33 The odd-meter Bāul-Fakir songs that I encountered were all associated with composers from East Bengal.34

I have included below three transcriptions of the song Jāt gela jāt gela bale, commonly attributed to Lālan Fakir.35 Each is set to a different meter. Lakṣmaṇ Dās Bāul sings and plays khamak on the version in 7/8;36 Āmirul Fakir sings and plays dotārā on the version in 5/4;37 and Mān Kumārī sings the version in 3/4, with unidentified accompanists.38 All three versions feature intonational ambiguities. In the versions set to

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7/8 and 5/4, many of the flatted sevenths are intonated considerably high. The flatted thirds in my transcription of the 3/4 version might alternately be labeled as neutral thirds.

In the 5/4 version, some of the oddly displaced vocal phrases (e.g. m. 2) occur as a result of the singer taking a rapid breath on the downbeat on the measure.

The vocal ornaments in the 3/4 version are quite unique; I have only heard women vocalists utilize this particular manner of ornamentation. This raises the question of gendered norms of Bāul-Fakir musical performance, an issue to be addressed in future research. I have omitted the accompanying instruments from my transcription of Mān’s this performance.

Figure 13: Jāt gela jāt gela bale in 7/8

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Figure 13, cont.

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Figure 13, cont.

Figure 14: Jāt gela jāt gela bale in 5/4

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Figure 14, cont.

Figure 15: Jāt gela jāt gela bale in 3/4

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Figure 15, cont.

CONCLUSION

I have constructed this chapter as an amendment to Capwell’s (Ibid.) general theory of Bāul-Fakir music. Building upon the foundation of his scholarship, I have discussed just a few of the many subtle and idiosyncratic features that have made Bāul-

Fakir music so well-loved and enduring. By providing full-ensemble transcriptions, I have presented future scholars with a visual aid for understanding Bāul-Fakir music and comparing it to similar musical styles elsewhere.

1 Such scholarship as does exist generally discusses Bāul-Fakir music in reference to other Bengali folk musics, with little musical description or analysis beyond comparing its melodic and rhythmic types to those found in classical music (Kuckertz 1975; S. Ray 1973; B. Roy 1980).

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2 I provide transcriptions of voice, ektārā, dotārā, ḍugi, ghuṅur, kartāl, ḍubki, ḍhol, khol, and violin. I have not transcribed ensembles that include tabla, bāṃśi, harmonium, and electric keyboard, as these ensembles exhibit few features that are unique to Bāul-Fakir music. 3 See for example B. Ray (2007), Cakrabartī ([2001] 2012), and Dāś (1985). 4 For the section headers in my summary, I have borrowed the titles of Capwell’s chapters. 5 He also mentions the possible existence of “a subsidiary type [of tonality] having a third degree between these two [i.e. between the flatted and the natural third]” (Ibid.). He cites the example of one such melody which appears in Śeṣer dine sejan bine, sung by Pūrṇa Dās Bāul on the 1967 recording The Bauls of Bengal (Ibid.:141). 6 A similar free rhythm intro paralleling that of classical music is found in other vernacular genres mentioned above, including kīrtan (Slawek 1986, 1988), qawwālī (Qureshi 1986), birahā (Henry 1988), as well as Langa and Manganiyar music recorded by Komal Kothari for the Rajasthan Institute of Folklore (1973). 7 I use the term earthy because it subjectively conveys the intimate, embodied quality of Bāul-Fakir music, and also because it reflects the commonly expressed view, among both audiences and performers, that Bāul-Fakir music is closely linked to the land of Bengal. To practitioners, the earthy metaphor further emphasizes the link between Bāul-Fakir music and the dehotattva (philosophy of the body) that underlies many Bāul-Fakir song texts. 8 See Hess’ discussion of the futility of trying to pin down the “original” or “correct” versions of Kabir song texts in North India (Forthcoming:Preface, Chapter 2, Chapter 3). Many of her conclusions, including the following statement might be aptly applied in reference to Bāul-Fakir songs of Bengal: “Now we know that oral Kabir is an ocean whose boundaries remain unmapped after nearly 600 years of continuous rolling, its coastlines curling unpredictably, its depths and currents shifting” (Ibid:Preface). 9 I recorded this performance at Debdās Bāul’s āśram in Bolpur, Birbhum. Capwell includes an eight-bar transcription of a different song using this same instrumentation, also in a 6/8 time signature (1986:119). He doesn’t discuss any features of the transcribed performance other than to observe the simultaneous use of ektārā, ḍugi, and ghuṅur. Nevertheless, there are several notable musical features evident in his transcription which I will briefly point out here. In his transcription, the ektārā plays a near-constant stream of eighth notes, with an occasional pair of sixteenth notes beginning on the second and fourth beats of each measure. The ghuṅur in his example emphasizes a 6/8, as opposed to 3/4 time feel, by playing on the first and fourth beats of each measure (with the exception of the first measure). The ḍugi in his transcription plays irregular patterns suggestive of a 3/4 time. An unusual feature of his transcription is that the vocalist sings for several measures in eighth note duplets, suggesting a 4/4 meter superimposed against the already polyrhythmic texture of the instruments. 10 What I refer to here as a metric modulation, Capwell refers to as a “[alternation] or mix [of] 3 X 2 and 2 X 3.” (116). However I have frequently heard kartāl players in such situations switch from an emphasis of one and four to an emphasis of one, three, and five. In the latter situation, they are clearly articulating a 3/4 meter, though they might theorize it as existing in the same tal as the 6/8 feel. 11 I say “establishes” because the ghuṅur, along with jibri, kartal, and handclaps, plays an unambiguous role in setting the meter of Bāul-Fakir songs. 12 Additionally, one four-note passage, from the G in M.22 through the final G in M.23, is intonated roughly a quartertone flat. I attribute this to Debdās’ somewhat advanced years rather than to aesthetic intent. 13 Ref. include rina’s comments on it? 14 I recorded this song at Rīnā’s home in Prantik, Birbhum. 15 Capwell writes, “Many of the additional fragments of text are conventional apostrophes or exhortations used by most Bauls, such as mono re (oh, mind), ābār (again), boli (I say), and bhāi re bhāi (hey, brother)” (Ibid.). Other common such phrases include khyāpā re (oh khyāpā) and man āmār (my mind). 16 For the unique phrasing found in jhumur, see the performance of shun go bideshi tora [sic] under “jhumur” in the “collection” section of The Travelling Archive website (thetravellingarchive.org/search.php, accessed 29 April 2014).

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17 Capwell reports that the sārindā was already rare during the time of his research (1986:103), and in 1973, S. Roy wrote that the sarinda was “facing extinction” (108). For a fine demonstration of sarinda playing, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPtZSzP2-i0 (accessed 29 April 2014). 18 The violin is more commonly used in Bāul-Fakir music in Bangladesh than in West Bengal. 19 The performance was recorded by Baul Archive (http://www.baularchive.com/index.php/performances/view/10, accessed 23 March 2014). The performance took place in the garden of the Santiniketan home of the clip’s videographer, Aditi Sirkar. 20 I use the term tonality more narrowly here than does Capwell. He uses the term in reference to one of two categories of songs: songs with a major third, and songs without a major third. I use the term to refer to a larger variety of melodic modes. 21 Kāzī Nazrul Islām is a celebrated figure among many Bāuls. Āmirul Fakir began his musical training learning nazrulgīti, and keeps a sticker of Nazrul on the front of his dotārā (pers. comm.). 22 Lorea writes of the absorption of outside songs into the Bāul-Fakir repertoire: “The principles of sandhyā bhāṣā do not only act as a traditional device for new compositions, but also as a retroactive force that allows originally non-Baul songs to be reshaped, reinterpreted and finally included in a Baul repertoire: a passionate and melancholic love song such as Tabuo tomāy bhālobāsibo (“nevertheless I'll love you”), composed by Ram Kanai, may be adopted for a performance since it could remind of the unconditioned and hard-fought love of Radha; a song on the beautiful natural elements of a Bengali landscape such as Lāl pāhāṛir deśe jā (“go to the land of red hills”), composed by Arun Cakravarty, may be incorporated in the current repertoire since ‘mountains, rivers and all the things existent in nature are to be found within one's body’ [Ashid Khyāpā, pers. comm.]” (2014a:427). 23 I recorded Āmirul’s performance at his house in Gorbhanga, Nadia. 24 I recorded this song at Bāsudeb’s āśram in Santiniketan. 25 See the note above about jhumur and the phenomenon of the low natural thirds. 26 In fact, I have heard Basudeb and his son play this same ḍubki pattern to songs in a 3/4 meter. 27 My transcription is of a performance captured on the 2005 commercial recording Gobinder Sondhane [sic] by Kārtik Dās Bāul on the label Bestseller, recorded live at Auroville, Tamil Nadu. He is accompanied by Srīdām Dās on ḍhol, Rāju Dās Bāul on dotārā, and an unidentified person on kartāl. I have omitted the dotārā from my transcription, as it is well represented elsewhere in this chapter. The front cover of Gobinder Sondhane features a laudatory quote spuriously attributed to Jeanne Openshaw (Openshaw, pers. comm.). 28 My transcription is from a concert recording of the 2010 Baul-Fakir Utsav [sic] in Jadavpur, Kolkata. This recording is commercially available through Marfat on the CD Baul-Fakir Utsav 2010. Ābdul Hālim plays dotārā; the accompanying musicians are unidentified. 29 Slawek discusses a similar feature in the performance of nām kīrtan in Benaras (1986:111-12; see also Henry 2002). 30 I recorded this performance at Golām and Mallikā’s ashram in Jhauria, Murshidabad. 31 This transcription is based on a performance on a train recorded by Diptanshu Roy and posted on his Youtube channel, Folkpick (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyL1SJ5cMKY [accessed 23 March 2014]. 32 This performance appears on a 2009 commercial recording on the Folkpick label, produced by Diptanshu Roy, and recorded at a studio in Bolpur, Birbhum. It is available for online purchase and download at http://folkpick.bandcamp.com/ (accessed 23 March 2014). I have transcribed only the vocal, ghuṅur, and dotārā parts. See Capwell (Ibid.:202-3) for a translation of the lyrics. As noted above, Bāsudeb omits the first B section; he also substitutes the phrase “māyār tarī” (boat of worldly illusion) for “tor nijer tarī” (your own boat) thus giving a different philosophical emphasis to the song’s refrain. 33 I would like to thank Arko Mukhaerjee and Soumik Datta for their valuable input on the question of the origins of odd time signatures in Bāul-Fakir music (pers. comm.). For examples of syāmāsaṅgīt in odd times signatures, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-YdfN8ATFU (accessed 23 March 2014) and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWfQGDnwg-c (accessed 23 March 2014). S. Ray mentions the use odd metered tals in kīrtan (1973:110).

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34 For another example of a Bāul-Fakir song in an odd time signature see http://www.worldmusic.net/battle/track/fakir-gonjer-shah-shondo-ki-ma-nondo-rani/ (accessed 23 March 2014). 35 The Lālan scholar, playwright, and actor Sudipto Chatterjee told me, “During my fieldwork in Kushtia [the site of Lālan Fakir’s ākhṛā in Bangladesh], I discovered that many Fokirs [sic] believe that ‘jaat [sic] gelo’ is apocryphal and a 'sthul' song appended to Lalon's oeuvre by party/parties unknown” (pers. comm.) 36 I recorded his performance at the Saturday market in Santiniketan. He is accompanied by Uttam Dās Bāul on dotārā and Doẏāl Khyāpā on kartāl. 37 I recorded this at Āmirul’s home in Gorbhanga. 38 Mān’s performance appears on the 2001 commercial recording Inde: kobiyals, fakirs, and bauls: Oral Traditions Of Bengal, released on the Buddha Records label, recorded live in Calcutta.

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Chapter Six: Conclusion

SUMMARY

Throughout this dissertation, I’ve discussed the spectrum of contemporary Bāul-

Fakir music-making and how notions of spirituality, modernity, and Bengali authenticity inform its presentation and reception. In Chapter Two I wrote about recent developments in the commercial music scene around Birbhum district. I highlighted the virtuosity and versatility of professional musicians who negotiate the divergent aesthetics and expectations of their various audiences, many of whom see Bāul-Fakirs as emblematic of a pre-modern spiritualized Bengal. I discussed the use of “modern” instrumentation not only in commercial performances but also at events organized for Bāul-Fakirs insiders; I explored Bāul-Fakirs’ roles as performers of secular Bengalis popular music; and I discussed the relationships that Bāul-Fakirs cultivate with outside visitors and potential patrons. Throughout this chapter, I emphasized that entertainment value and spiritual value are by no means mutually exclusive qualities in Indian popular music, and that most Bāul-Fakirs do not find “modern” instrumentation to detract in any way from the music’s spiritual character. In Chapter Three I shed light on the participatory Bāul-Fakir music tradition overlooked in previous literature. I identified five socio-cultural factors that correlate with participatory Bāul-Fakir music in West Bengal and suggested that similar factors correlate with the participatory music-making of heterodox spiritual groups elsewhere in South Asia. I also discussed the gradual influx of urban visitors to the isolated villages along the India-Bangladesh border where participatory Bāul-Fakir

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music occurs and described the musical and social changes occurring as a result of this increased cultural tourism. In Chapter Four I discussed various ways in which Bāul-

Fakirs are conceived and celebrated by affluent Bengalis. Drawing parallels with

Cantwell’s scholarship of urban folk revivalism in North America (1997), I examined the ways in which Bengali artists and intellectuals appropriated signifiers of Bāul-Fakir identity in constructing their own countercultural identities. Finally, I explored the case of

Parvathy Bāul, a middle-class art student turned Bāul-Fakir, who captures the imagination and the admiration of affluent audiences with her neo-traditional performances. In Chapter Five I presented the first published transcriptions featuring the full instrumental ensembles of contemporary Bāul-Fakir music. I also drew attention to an array of musical features unexplored in previous scholarship. I sought to shed light on the enduring popularity of Bāul-Fakir music by illustrating the nuanced complexity and diversity of its contemporary repertoire. In this chapter I offer some concluding thoughts regarding the position of scholars and other public commentators in relation to Bāul-Fakir musicians.

A FINAL REFLECTION

Scholars, like performers of Bāul-Fakir music, are intermediaries between the lay public and Bāul-Fakir esoteric tradition. Both carefully select and frame certain aspects of Bāul-Fakir tradition that they feel will be of interest to others, and earn a livelihood in doing so. Unlike Bāul-Fakir performers, however, scholars do not generally invest their whole social persona into this endeavor, and do not risk the loss of good name and personal safety should the public image of Bāul-Fakirs take a negative turn.

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On the other hand, scholars are like audiences of Bāul-Fakir music in that they benefit from the fruit of Bāul-Fakirs’ committed practices (whether musical, spiritual, intellectual, or physical) without having to commit themselves to the rigors and hardships of a Bāul-Fakir path. For the lives of Bāul-Fakirs, despite all of their joys, are difficult indeed. The hardships of renouncer life are clear enough; but the hardships of Bāul-Fakir musicians’ lives are sometimes masked by their carefree stage manner and the commonly expressed skepticism regarding musicians’ knowledge of and commitment to esoteric practice.

Hanssen poignantly emphasizes the trials of Bāul-Fakir musicians who support themselves by begging on trains. She describes the physical toll of singing over the mechanical noise,1 breathing the polluted air, and making the rounds of the crowded train cars. She reports on two musicians returning home from the trains with hoarse voices,

“frequently [speaking] of gases erupting [in their stomachs] or a fever approaching…[clutching] their heads and [heaving] their chests” (2001:146). Tara, one of her informants identified a metaphysical cause behind their ailments: “‘We exert ourselves when we sing…A melody contains a thing (jiniś), which bears a life’ (ekṭā jiban āche, prāṇ āche). She measured out a little space between her thumb and index finger, stating that the life (prāṇ) within the song derives from seed, and that during the course of singing, life is projected into the melody. Tara said, “Even though you cannot see it, it resides within the song’ (Dekhā jāinā, kintu gāner bitare [sic] āche)”

(2001:147). Whereas Bāul-Fakir esoteric practices revolve around the retention of the seed, the storing up of vitality, the performance of music involves an expenditure; Tara

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and her husband were conscious of giving not only musical entertainment, but something far more substantial.

In my travels, many of the musicians I spent time with complained of sore throats and hoarse voices; however, these musicians had no choice but to continue travelling far and staying up late for their performances, singing despite health issues and cracking voices. After such a performance, musicians would have a late meal and go to sleep on a mat in a crowded and smoky room full of eight to twenty other musicians and sādhus.

Alternately, they might attempt to sleep for a few hours during the long and bumpy overnight drive back to their village in a rented van, and would arrive home at dawn much depleted. Perhaps visitors from the city would show up later that day, and the musicians would be expected to sing for—and stay up all night socializing with—their prestigious and well-rested guests.

In addition to these daily occupational hardships, Bāul-Fakir musicians also face uncertainty regarding the continued demand for their music in a market saturated with younger and more colorful competitors (Murase 1991; Ray 1994), dependency on a seasonal labor market in which a lack of lucrative pūja contracts can spell financial disaster, and the knowledge that deteriorating physical health will eventually prevent them from travelling and performing music as a viable livelihood. Moreover, Bāul-Fakirs in conservative areas live under the specter of persecution by their orthodox neighbors and have little recourse should public opinion veer towards the right (Jhā 2002;

Isherwood 1990; Cakrabartī 1992).

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Scholars, along with other enthusiasts of Bāul-Fakir music and spirituality, owe a special debt to performers of Bāul-Fakir music active in the maintenance and transmission of musical and philosophical traditions. If scholars appropriate the philosophy, song texts, and esoteric knowledge as research topics, but then label contemporary performers as imposters, they commit a grave injustice. Similarly, if affluent audiences cherish their imagined ideals of Bāuls-Fakirs but reject the legitimacy of embodied performers, they commit a serious error. If public images of Bāul-Fakirs were not quite so exoticized, the spectrum of contemporary Bāul-Fakir identities would no doubt be more readily accepted. Suspending concerns over musicians’ “authenticity,” we should respect all Bāul-Fakirs in public life who spread a message of love and tolerance through song, who inspire listeners of all social stations to develop critical modes of social and spiritual thought. All scholars and aficionados of Bāul-Fakir music and religion have received gifts of songs, hospitality, comradery, and good will from

Bāul-Fakir musicians whose philosophy is to love and serve humans. These musicians are surely owed something in exchange.

1 See also Murase (1991:148).

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Glossary

ākhṛā. A large āshram, in some cases large enough to accommodate hundreds of people.

Bāul-Fakir ākhrās are typically temporary structures formed for annual festivals

and celebrations. In some cases, Bāul-Fakir ākhrās serve as permanent residences

for large numbers of practitioners.

āpan. “One’s own”; used in reference to people considered to be family or intimate

friends.

āśram. A place of rest devoted to spiritual activity. bahurupī. A versatile character actor; literally a “chameleon.” bāṃśi. The wooden flute used in various popular Bengali folk genres. bandanā. The invocation of guru/the divine that traditionally begins Bāul-Fakir

performances. bāul. Mad or crazy; synonymous with khyāpā and pāgal. bhāb. Mood or emotion bhadralok. Bengali middle and upper classes. bhāowāiẏā. The genre of North Bengali songs traditionally sung by bullock cart drivers. bhāṭiẏāli. The genre of songs sung by boatmen in the East Bengali delta. bhek dīkṣā. The third initiation that Bāul-Fakirs undergo in order to become renouncers. biṛi. Locally produced cigarette. chillum. Pipe for smoking gāṃjā.

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ḍhol. A double-headed barrel drum played typically played with two hands, though

sometimes played with one hand and one stick. dotārā. A four-string fretless lute.

ḍubki. A small frame drum.

ḍugi. A small kettle drum similar to the bāṃẏā tabla drum, supported by a strap around

the waist, and played by a singer’s left hand.

Dūrgā Pūja. A six-day religious holiday in honor of Goddess Dūrgā; the most elaborately

celebrated holiday in West Bengal. ektārā. A one-string drone instrument held in a singer’s right hand. gāṃjā. Marijuana. gān. Song(s). ghuṅur. Bells on a thin rope attached around the ankle. hāṭ. A market where produce and other goods are sold. jaẏ guru. The customary greeting used by many Bāul-Fakirs; literally “victory/praise to

the Guru.” jhumur. A form of music and dance that is, despite its complex cultural history, typically

associated with “tribal” groups of Purulia district. jibri. A plastic percussion instrument with small metal cymbals attached.

Kabir. Fifteenth-century poet-saint whose songs express a similar philosophy to that of

the Bāul-Fakirs kartāl. Two small hand cymbals tied together by a rope or string. Referred to elsewhere

in South Asia and manjirā. 233

khamak. A double-strung neckless chordophone resembling an open-ended barrel drum. khol. A large double-headed, asymmetrical clay barrel drum common in Bengali kīrtan;

also known as mṛdaṅga; played with two hands. khyāpā. Mad or crazy; synonymous with pāgal and bāul. kīrtan. Devotional Vaishnava music. lālangīti. The songs of Lālan Fakir. madhukari. Literally “honey-gathering”; the practice of alms collection, often through the

performance of songs. mahotsav. Festival or celebration, often hosted by a Bāul-Fakir; literally a “grand/great

utsav.” mājār. A shrine devoted to a Sufi or Fakir saint. maner mānuṣ. Person of the heart; the divine within. mānuṣ. Human being(s); often spuriously translated as “man” or “men.” melā. Fair or festival. murshid. Sufi or Fakir guru. nabī. The prophet Mohammad; also used in reference to the indwelling divine principle. nāl. A large barrel-shaped double-headed drum similar to a pākowāj, typically played

with one hand and one stick. nazrulgīti. Songs of Kāzi Nazrul Islām. pāgal. Mad or crazy; synonymous with khyāpā and bāul. pīr. A Sufi or Fakir saint. pūja. Hindu devotional worship; also Hindu religious celebration. 234

opār bāṅlā. The other side of Bengal, i.e. Bangladesh. rabindrasaṅgīt. Songs of Rabindranath Tagore. rasiks. Connoisseurs of feeling, followers of the sensual path through life. sādhak. Male spiritual practitioner. sādhanā. Spiritual practice. sādhikā. Female spiritual practitioner. sādhu. Literally a renunciant, but often used in reference to a wide range of spiritual

practitioners, including householders, in Bengal. sādhu sebā. Literally a “service/meal for sādhus,” but typically served to all attendees at

an utsav or mahotsav. sahaj. Direct, simple, or innate; often used in reference to Sahajīẏā-derived philosophy.

śaktipīṭhs. Places where the pieces of Goddess Satī’s corpse fell to the earth. sampradāy. A community; often used to differentiate between different religious groups,

lineages, or sects. sandhā bhāṣā. Intentional language, used to conceal the esoteric content of songs. Also

known as sandhyā bhāṣā or “twilight language.” sannyāsī. Renouncer. sargam. North Indian solfege. sārindā. A “bowed short lute” (Capwell 1986:103) occasionally used in Bāul-Fakir

music; today the sārindā has been largely replaced by the violin. silpī. Literally “artist”; often used to reference to musicians.

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śīkṣā dīkṣā. The second of three primary initiations taken by Bāul-Fakirs; it marks the

beginning of Bāul-Fakirs’ instruction in esoteric practice.

śiṣya. Student or disciple. utsav. Festival or celebration, often hosted by a Bāul-Fakir.

236

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