Some Music, Babumoshai?
Even though I don't "get" much Bengali, by the virtue of having spent some happy formative years in Bangla-land, I have been infected with a certain kind of Bangla-ness. The foremost symptom of this syndrome is an instant attraction for any music that has Bangla in it. In fact, one major reason why I particularly dig Nitin Sawhney's music is the way he integrates a certain Bangla soundscape into him music: street conversations, women in a market bargaining, boatman songs etc.
Within Bangla music, one particular strain that I find particularly attractive is that of the bauls, the wandering ministrels of Bengal. Osho, who spouted much nonsense, had this to say about bauls:
"The Bauls are called Bauls because they are mad people. The word 'Baul' comes from the Sanskrit root vatul. It means: mad, affected by wind. The Baul belongs to no religion. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian nor Buddhist. He is a simple human being. His rebellion is total. He does not belong to anybody; he only belongs to himself. He lives in a no man's land: no country is his, no religion is his, no scripture is his. His rebellion goes even deeper than the rebellion of the Zen Masters--because at least formally, they belong to Buddhism; at least formally, they worship Buddha. Formally they have scriptures--scriptures denouncing scriptures, of course--but still they have. At least they have a few scriptures to burn.
Bauls have nothing--no scripture, not even to burn; no church, no temple, no mosque--nothing whatsoever. A Baul is a man always on the road. He has no house, no abode. God is his only abode, and the whole sky is his shelter. He possesses nothing except a poor man's quilt, a small, hand-made one-stringed instrument called ektara, and a dugdugi, a kettle-drum. That's all that he possesses. He possesses only a musical instrument and a drum. He plays with one hand on the instrument and he goes on beating the drum with the other. The drum hangs by the side of his body, and he dances. That is all of his religion.
Dance is his religion; singing is his worship. He does not even use the word 'God'. The Baul word for God is Adhar Manush, the essential man. He worships man. He says, inside you and me, inside everybody, there is an essential being. That essential being is all. To find that Adhar Manush, that essential man, is the whole search."
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Among the bauls, Lalon Shah (or Lalon Fakir) songs in the recent years have become particularly popular in Bagla music. This New Age BD article also indicates that Lalon was given to investigations into male-female identities, and social power structures in his songs:
"Lalon is brilliant in raising very fundamental issues relating to woman-man relationships playing on the margin between biological and the social construction of this relation. The famous song ‘mayere bhajile hoy tar baper thikana’ is based on a story known in rural Bengal. Parvati, one of the great Hindu Mother-Goddesses, the wife of Mohadeva or Shiva, was once asked by her husband about the origin of the world. ‘Is it from the masculine or the feminine principle?’ Mohadeva asked Parvati. Parvati thought for a while, but decided consciously not to reply, she went into ‘silence’. Why? Because if she said the world originated from women, implying her, she will be a sinner for being a bad wife, since patriarchal rules were dominant. On the other hand, if she said it is from the masculine principle, implying Shiva, she will become a liar. So her ‘silence’ became her words, or her words are constructed by her silence. Silence is the the feminine punctuation in the masculine discourse and it must be rewritten as a methodology known in Lalon’s philosophy as the ‘nigam bichar’. It is the task of the sadhus or the saints to read the ‘silence’ and break the dominant structure of the existing discourse."
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But since this post is supposed to be about music, check out the Bangladeshi band "Bangla"'s folk rock take on Lalon's songs in Kingkortobbobimur and Prottutponnomotitto. Their female lead singer, Anusheh's husky voice rocks! Also here is a review on these albums.
Music Posts
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Garga
graycharisma.blogspot.com
Dreams, broken and otherwise
I am infected by Anadil now. A nice article.Will visit again.Visit my blog sometime.
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