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Author: Jeanne Openshaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521811255
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
The author charts the rise of Bauls to their present iconic status as minstrels and mystics.
Author: Jeanne Openshaw
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521811255
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 316
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Book Description
The author charts the rise of Bauls to their present iconic status as minstrels and mystics.
Author: Brian A. Hatcher
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317559649
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209
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Book Description
This book offers a new interpretation of the life and legacy of the Indian reformer and intellectual, Ishvarchandra Vidyasagar (1820–91). Drawing upon autobiography, biography, secondary criticism and a range of Vidyasagar’s original writings in Bengali, the book interrogates the role of history, memory and controversy, and emphasises the key challenge of pinning down the identity of an enigmatic and multi-faceted figure. By examining lesser-known works of Vidyasagar (including several pseudonymous and posthumous works) alongside the evidence of his public career, the author calls attention to the colonial transformation of intellectual and social life, the nature of life writing, the limits of standard biographies and the problem of modern Indian identity as such. Based on decades of research and an original perspective, this book will be especially useful to scholars of modern Indian history, biographical studies, comparative literature and those interested in Bengal.
Author: Sukanya Chakrabarti
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000797740
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
This book examines the performance of Bauls, ‘folk’ performers from Bengal, in the context of a rapidly globalizing Indian economy and against the backdrop of extreme nationalistic discourses. Recognizing their scope beyond the musical and cultural realm, Sukanya Chakrabarti engages in discussing the subversive and transformational potency of Bauls and their performances. In-Between Worlds argues that the Bauls through their musical, spiritual, and cultural performances offer ‘joy’ and ‘spirituality,’ thus making space for what Dr. Ambedkar in his famous 1942 speech had identified as ‘reclamation of human personality’. Chakrabarti destabilizes the category of ‘folk’ as a fixed classification or an origin point, and fractures homogeneous historical representations of the Baul as a ‘folk’ performer and a wandering mendicant exposing the complex heterogeneity that characterizes this group. Establishing ‘folk-ness’ as a performance category, and ‘folk festivals’ as sites of performing ‘folk-ness,’ contributing to a heritage industry that thrives on imagined and recreated nostalgia, Chakrabarti examines different sites that produce varied performative identities of Bauls, probing the limits of such categories while simultaneously advocating for polyvocality and multifocality. While this project has grounded itself firmly in performance studies, it has borrowed extensively from fields of postcolonial studies and subaltern histories, literature, ethnography and ethnomusicology, and cosmopolitan studies.
Author: Mimlu Sen
Publisher: Random House India
ISBN: 818400270X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Freewheeling Mimlu Sen lives in Paris, where one day she witnesses an electrifying performance by three Bauls, mystic minstrels from Bengal, who spin like pillars of dust. Their music inspires her to return to Calcutta, and to go on an extraordinary journey with one of them, Paban Das Baul, from her respectable home in the city to his humble village, and further on, into the verdant Bengali countryside that is their common heritage. Paban takes Mimlu through the itinerant Baul’s route—from the festival at Kenduli with its marathon performances, to tranquil Shantiniketan, where Bauls frequently stop en route and disrupt quotidian life; Agrodwip, deep in the Vaishnava world, to Nabasana, where mesmerizing guru Hari Goshain presides over Baul games and ultimately, her initiation; and to Boral, where she holds her own big Baul festival, a mahatsava. Along the way, she encounters tantrics and tribals, exorcisms and witch sightings, catfish that climb trees and esoteric sexo-yogic secrets—and she falls in love. Baulsphere takes you into the heart of rural Bengal, and into the fascinating world of the Bauls. Passionate, enthralling and searingly lyrical, it is a stunning book.
Author: Jeanne Openshaw
Publisher: Foundation Books
ISBN: 9788175962057
Category : Bauls
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
Bauls have achieved fame as wandering minstrels and mystics in India and Bangladesh. They are recruited from both Hindu and Muslim communities and are renowned for their beautiful and often enigmatic songs. Despite their iconic status as representatives of the spiritual East, and although they have been the subject of a number of studies, systematic research with Bauls themselves has been neglected. Jeanne Openshaw s book is new, not only in analysing the rise of the Bauls to their present revered status, but in the depth of its ethnographic research and its reference to the lives of composers and singers as a context for their songs. The author uses her fieldwork, and oral and manuscript materials, to lead the reader from the conventional historical and textual approaches towards a world defined by people called Baul , where the human body and love are primary and where women may be extolled above men.
Author: William Dalrymple
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307593592
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
From the author of The Last Mughal (“A compulsively readable masterpiece” —The New York Review of Books), an exquisite, mesmerizing book that illuminates the remarkable ways in which traditional forms of religious life in India have been transformed in the vortex of the region’s rapid change—a book that distills the author’s twenty-five years of travel in India, taking us deep into ways of life that we might otherwise never have known exist. A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet—and spends the rest of his life atoning for the violence by hand printing the finest prayer flags in India . . . A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her closest friend ritually starve herself to death . . . A woman leaves her middle-class life in Calcutta and finds unexpected fulfillment living as a Tantric in an isolated, skull-filled cremation ground . . . A prison warder from Kerala is worshipped as an incarnate deity for three months of every year . . . An idol carver, the twenty-third in a long line of sculptors, must reconcile himself to his son’s desire to study computer engineering . . . An illiterate goatherd from Rajasthan keeps alive in his memory an ancient four-thousand-stanza sacred epic . . . A temple prostitute, who initially resisted her own initiation into sex work, pushes both her daughters into a trade she nonetheless regards as a sacred calling. William Dalrymple chronicles these lives with expansive insight and a spellbinding evocation of circumstance. And while the stories reveal the vigorous resilience of individuals in the face of the relentless onslaught of modernity, they reveal as well the continuity of ancient traditions that endure to this day. A dazzling travelogue of both place and spirit.
Author: Mary Young
Publisher: SCB Distributors
ISBN: 193538791X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 307
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Book Description
This book traces the Baul Path, a Tantric spiritual tradition, from its earliest roots in the subcontinent of India, to its dissemination in the West in modern times. “Baul” – meaning “madcap” or “taken by the wind” – describes one who has a vision of reality so piercing & clear that they are called to live in a way that goes against the common grain: the safe, plodding life of the mainstream. In the East, for centuries, Baul bards & yogis wandered the dusty roads of Bengal singing & dancing with joy in praise of God. Their poetry-songs uplifted ordinary people, transporting all above the daily grind for survival & into a direct experience of the sublime. Sahaja is the hallmark of the Baul Way, referring to the naturally ecstatic essence of being. According to the Bauls, sahaja nature is inborn, & underlies one’s human personality & habitual social conditioning. It is a blueprint of love, beauty, bliss, wisdom & dignity. From the Baul view, to rediscover sahaja is to love God. The spirit of sahaja arises in individuals in all cultures, in all times & places, the author asserts. In this book, however, she details the unique & vital approaches to life & spirituality that the Bauls, both East & West, have demonstrated throughout their history, & in their philosophy, teaching & practice. The Baul sadhana, or spiritual life, rests on four pillars: Radical reliance on the guru; Wandering and begging as a way of life; Teachings encoded in song and dance; Yogas of the body: including hatha, sexuality & breath. Each of these tenets is elaborated in depth, as the author highlights the notable differences in their expression “then & now,” in East & West. The outstanding contribution of this book is its first-hand account of the introduction of Baul spirituality to the modern world through the life & work of Khépa Lee Lozowick (1943-2010), an American teacher & the spiritual Heart Son of Yogi Ramsuratkumar, the revered Beggar Saint of Tiruvannamalai, south India. In 2008, M. Young accompanied Khepa Lee to Bengal where they met with eminent Baul gurus & practitioners, many who had long awaited an exchange with their American “brother.” On this trip, his band of Western Bauls shared their American rock & blues in a unique interplay between East & West. Foreword is by Parvathy Baul, internationally acclaimed musician and representative of the traditional Baul path. M. Young’s work is a feast of scholarship, rich in memoir & practical wisdom.
Author: Lisa I. Knight
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199396841
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 232
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Book Description
In this multi-sited ethnographic study, Knight explores the everyday lives of women of the Baul tradition of musical mystics in India and Bangladesh. She demonstrates that Baul women construct a meaningful life as they navigate between conflicting expectations of Bauls to be carefree and of women to be modest.
Author: Graham F. Welch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192576070
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 1201
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Book Description
Singing has been a characteristic behaviour of humanity across several millennia. Chorus America (2009) estimated that 42.6 million adults and children regularly sing in one of 270,000 choruses in the US, representing more than 1:5 households. Similarly, recent European-based data suggest that more than 37 million adults take part in group singing. The Oxford Handbook of Singing is a landmark text on this topic. It is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wishes to know more about the pluralistic nature of singing. In part, the narrative adopts a lifespan approach, pre-cradle to senescence, to illustrate that singing is a commonplace behaviour which is an essential characteristic of our humanity. In the overall design of the Handbook, the chapter contents have been clustered into eight main sections, embracing fifty-three chapters by seventy-two authors, drawn from across the world, with each chapter illustrating and illuminating a particular aspect of singing. Offering a multi-disciplinary perspective embracing the arts and humanities, physical, social and clinical sciences, the book will be valuable for a broad audience within those fields.
Author: M. Khandelwal
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137104856
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
This volume brings together compelling new research on South Asian women who have renounced worldly life for spiritual pursuits. Documenting contemporary women's experiences with intimate ethnographic narratives, this book offers feminist insights into Jain, Buddhist, Hindu and Baul ascetic traditions.
