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Jamming with Baul
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Traditional Baul music from Bengal meets the electric guitar in an incredible fusion performance under the stars
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Kartick Das Baul, straight from Santiniketan — Photo: K.V.Srinivasan
ON THE FACE of it, they were all wrong. Baul music from a band based in Chennai. Using electric guitars. Jet setting across the world. But the evening at the Rainseed Festival featuring the band Oikyotaan was surreal. The band takes its name from Oikyo meaning "harmony" in Bengali and taan meaning "one universal melody" in Sanskrit.
For a first-timer to the venue — TransIndus — getting there is half the experience. Journeying out past the city lights onto the Kanakapura Main Road, past the big factories, past the Valley School turn off onto a little dirt track with occasional incongruous arrow signs pointing the way to the community. Bumping through Thatguni village as the trees close in on the road it seems unlikely that there could be an evening of Baul music at the end of this journey.
Unique sound
Then suddenly you hear the full throated calls of Baul music as the gates of TransIndus come into view, opening up to a rolling landscape and an intimate amphitheatre, where Oikyotaan performed.
The 2001-formed band blends folk influences and contemporary sounds to produce an unusual brand of music, unique to them. Formed by Bonnie Chakraborty, the band has percussion sounds ranging from the mridanga to djembe, traditional sounds of the ektaara and the modern sounds of the electric guitar.
Kartick Das Baul from Santiniketan, who often performs with the band, was here, lending his desolate and tremulous voice to jam with the variety of instruments on stage.
Dressed in a colourful costume, dragging his foot across the ground to temper his music with the occasional strike of the ghungru, Kartick is a traditional Baul singer. The Bauls, often considered the last wave of the Bhakti movement, were essentially rebelling against the Hindu orthodoxy. They struck out against the confines of traditional social norms, practised relationships outside of conventional marital ties, and as travellers, had few material possessions. In their brand of music, likened to Sufi music, they allowed themselves the simplest instrument: the ektaara — a single wire in a taut frame. In this context, it was ironic to hear Kartick lend his powerful voice (amplified by mikes) to compositions with the electric guitar.
But Oikyotaan is not about espousing the beliefs of a movement, it is about unconventional music. Kartick himself was unfazed by the elaborate accompaniments to the essentially religious Baul music. "The guitar plays the same notes that we would use in the music traditionally," he explains. Apparently a seasoned international traveller, Kartick has sung at gatherings across the world, opening up his music to varied influences and a motley of different sounds.
He retains his integral image which is now a USP. The gypsy-like patchwork costume, the precise, tiny dance steps in a circular movement, which earlier might have traced his steps in mud, is now translated to carefully stepping across the many wires that crisscross the stage.
New sounds
Centred around Fakiri, Bhatiyalli, Jhumur and Bhavaiyya Bengali folk melodies, Oikyotaan's sound searches for (and often finds) a space where folk and contemporary music weave in and out of each other, replacing one's notes with another's in a tapestry of different, unpredictable sounds.
The crowd listened, alternately mesmerised and infected by the Sufi, Baul and traditional Rajasthani music that Oikyotaan offered.
Bundled up in shawls, under a full moon sky, people relaxed on the low stone steps, on benches, on rocks swaying and nodding to the music, as Oikyotaan sang of displacement, devotion and personal relationships.
HEMANGINI GUPTA
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