Staging An Oral Tradition: Studying contemporary Baul Performances in Bengal
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Abstract
The term Baul has been used by various scholars to denote among other things, a syncretic marginal sect, a tradition, a community, a cult, an order of singers, a spirit, and a class of mystics or a religion- positioned within a specific landscape. The colonial representations of the Bauls of Bengal, with respect to the bradralok discourses, mentioned that Bauls were uninformed, ignorant, unsophisticated, nomadic, and non-analytic entertainers. Baul Gaan (the songs of the Bauls) in sondhya bhasha- a linguistic strategy of secrecy in their songs- not only concealed their esoteric beliefs and practices but, the songs replete with metaphors—grounded in the exigencies of their immediate reality—were also drawn from and mediated by the Bauls’ position as a member of the larger rural society, their resistance and negotiations with the structure of domination and their socio-historic experiences. The 21st century records a huge repertoire of Baul Gaan performances and concerts all over the world. Baul Gaan as a process, therefore, has largely dealt with adaptation to changing circumstances, generational struggles, governmental intervention and tendencies of universalization. Baul songs as the folklore of communication, and not as material facts, therefore constantly negotiates with its overlapping companions—-the individuals, the venues, the patrons, the music, and the contextual identity of the song in performance. Therefore instead of looking at the corpus of the songs through an exclusive interrogation of their esoteric beliefs and practices, my thesis aims to enquire about the negotiations of Baul composer—Baul performer—the audiences and their patrons by a multi-local analysis of the multitude of performative settings of Baul songs. My thesis sensitises the readers to locate Baul songs texts through an author function instead of traversing the slippery path of individualism, authenticism, or divine revelations. It also deals with the socioeconomic profiles of the performing Bauls from the ethnographic field, and separately deal with the notion of gender—Baul women, their voices, their expectation and experiences. My intention throughout the thesis, thus, had been a constant effort to re-insert Bauls and their songs within a flexible socio-economic and performative framework.
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Bauls, Baul women, Performance, Social Sciences, Social Sciences General, Sociology