The Bauls are mystic minstrels living in rural Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. The Baul movement, at its peak in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has now regained popularity among the rural population of Bengal. Their music and way of life have influenced a large segment of Bengali culture, and particularly the compositions of Nobel Prize laureate Rabindranath Tagore. The music of the Bauls, Baul Sangeet, is a particular type of folk song. Their music represents a long heritage of preaching mysticism through songs in Bengal.

The word Baul comes from the Sanskrit word “Batul,” which means mad and is used for someone who is possessed or crazy for God. The Bauls are wandering minstrels of West Bengal and Bangladesh, whose song and dance reflect the joy, love and longing for mystical union with the Divine.

They can often be identified by their distinctive clothes and musical instruments. It’s easy to identify a Baul singer from his uncut, often coiled hair, saffron robe (alkhalla), a necklace of beads made of basil (tulsi) stems. Bauls use a number of musical instruments: the most common is the ektara, a one-stringed “plucked drum” drone instrument, carved from the epicarp of a gourd, and made of bamboo and goatskin. Others include the dotara, a long-necked fretless lute (while the name literally means “two stringed” it usually has four metal strings) made of the wood of a jackfruit or neem tree; besides khamak one-headed drum with a string attached to it which is plucked. The only difference from ektara is that no bamboo is used to stretch the string, which is held by one hand, while being plucked by another. Drums like the duggi a small hand-held earthen drum, and dhol and khol; small cymbals called kartal and manjira, and the bamboo flute are also used. Ghungur and nupur are anklets with bells that ring while the person wearing them dances.

Before, the Bauls roamed Bengal on foot to earn their living from singing to the accompaniment of their instruments. In each village there was a special house set aside for them to stay in, and they would stay as long as they pleased. But unfortunately modern India can no longer support their nomadic way of living, so therefore they have had to adapt. Now bauls have their own houses and they stay in one place, not moving around.

Travelling in local trains, specially to Santiniketan and attending village fairs are good ways to encounter Bauls. Their devotional songs can be traced back to the fifteenth century when they first appeared in Bengali literature. Baul music represents a particular type of folk song, carrying influences of Hindu bhakti movements as well as the shuphi, a form of Islamic Sufi song exemplified by the songs of Kabir. Bauls pour out their feelings in their songs but never bother to write them down. Theirs is essentially an oral tradition. It is said that Lalon Fokir (1774 -1890), the greatest of all Bauls, continued to compose and sing songs for decades without ever stopping to correct them or put them on paper. He composed a thousand songs, of which just 600 can be traced. It was only after his death that people thought of collecting and compiling his repertoire.

He rejected the division of society into communities, protesting and satirising religious fundamentalism of all kinds. Lalon’s metaphysical lyrics raise a basic question – that if there is a single creator then why so many religions exist ? This is a pertinent problem in today’s world; we all know that the different ‘Gods’ have created acrimony between races and sects and as of today this concept of different ‘Gods’ remains the most decisive divisive force on planet Earth.

Bauls live either near a village or travel from place to place and earn their living from singing to the accompaniment of the ektara, the lute dotara, a simple one-stringed instrument, and a drum called dubki. Bauls belong to an unorthodox devotional tradition, influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, Bengali, Vasinavism and Sufi Islam, yet distinctly different from them. Bauls neither identify with any organized religion nor with the caste system, special deities, temples or sacred places. Their emphasis lies on the importance of a person’s physical body as the place where God resides. Bauls are admired for this freedom from convention as well as their music and poetry. Baul poetry, music, song and dance are devoted to finding humankind’s relationship to God, and to achieving spiritual liberation. Their devotional songs can be traced back to the fifteenth century when they first appeared in Bengali literature.

Baul music represents a particular type of folk song, carrying influences of Hindu bhakti movements as well as the shuphi, a form of Sufi song. Songs are also used by the spiritual leader to instruct disciples in Baul philosophy, and are transmitted orally. The language of the songs is continuously modernized thus endowing it with contemporary relevance.

The preservation of the Baul songs and the general context in which they are performed depend mainly on the social and economic situation of their practitioners, the Bauls, who have always been a relatively marginalized group. Moreover, their situation has worsened in recent decades due to the general impoverishment of rural Bangladesh.