Baul is about the soul.
There is a reason Baul is secret!
Babu Kishan preserved Baul starting in the 1960's. He has preserved all of Baul, those who are collecting donations and funding to preserve Baul need to know Baul is indigenous and it has already been preserved by Babu Kishan. You can not preserve Baul as an outsider of Baul, no fake lineage can preserve Baul, all you can do is water down and reduce Baul, copy from this lineage and appropriate what does not belong to you.
Baul is extinct, today what you see are fake lineages and Baul singers, they are not Baul.
Babu Kishan aka Krishnendu Das
I can not say it enough Baul is about the soul.
Updated
The misconceptions of What and Who the Bauls are?
The Nakal (fake) Bauls say Baul is from Persia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Buddhism, Bangladesh, Pakistan, sometimes these Nakal (fake) Bauls are so confused they go round and round in circles and will change what and who they are based on what I write.
I have seen it all, Babu Kishan is the eldest of his generation he has seen his whole web site copied and who copied it way back in the 1990's. All of his music and poetry copied and they do not even have a clue this can all be proved.
All Bauls follow this one and only lineage, they dress as them, sing there songs and follow them all over the world.
They say there are 2 types of Bauls some say 4 or 5 types of Baul, this is not accurate, this is made up by people who have appropriated Baul.
1. Hindu Bauls, based on Indian Philosophy, Indian Tantra, shakti sadhana, sanatana dharma and sadhana, they are Vaishnava Bauls, Sahajaya Bauls they have been calling them self Das and Dasi for thousands of years and from an oral tradition of sanskrit speaking people... they add the juice of Buddhism and Sufi.
2. Muslim Bauls, which are a relatively new manifestation. Muslim Bauls are Sufi, Sai, Aul, Dervesh, Fakir, Shah they are NOT Baul.
As with new the new age movement of yoga in the west, the repackaging and liquidation of the ancient Indian art and science of yoga, the Bauls are undergoing a repackaging, reduction, watering down and liquidation of their indigenous traditions.
Confusions by PHD's scholars who speculate and meet people who are not Bauls but say they are and give them all sorts of stories, on problem is that many of the scholars have not master the Bengal language either.
The Nakal (fake) Baul singers from Bangladesh many who came in the early 1970's and were desperate to become something because they were refugee's from Bangladesh, I call these ones the "fake it til you make it Bauls".
Baul essence can never be faked and surely you can not make up lineages, but many did? Many times they take the stories of Babu Kishan's lineage and take out their names add new names and make up stories. These will all be named and stories told in the book.
The most common description of Baul is, afflicted by the wind, this description comes from a Western Scholar and it is copy and pasted over and over, this is not what Baul means, however, you will see this over and over with some variation?
I am sure they have read Babu Kishan's descriptions by now 2023, this article was written in 2011.
I have read Bauls are mad, what does mad mean? I read some 'new age Vaishnava's' calling Bauls degraded by taking 'mad' literally which is absurd, Bauls are mad for God, god intoxicated ecstatic mystics, devotional singers, not mad as mentally disturbed.
A new thing is the creation of lineages that never ever existed.
A new Baul singer is making claims of being a lineage holder (emphasis on the word Sampradaya) it is a fact that the lineage never existed. However facebook fame is easy to make people stupid and thus the reduction of Baul goes unquestioned because of the time we are in.
This term 'lineage Baul' has never been used until Babu Kishan used it, no one ever used it, it is Babu Kishan who is the pioneer in taking Baul from the village of Birbhum to India and then to the world. When I say Pioneer it is because he arranged all of his fathers tours from early 1970 at a very young age, he composed and marketed over 80 % of his fathers music.
I started to use 'Lineage' on this blog calling it 'Lineage Baul' to distinguish between this new phenomena of Nakal Baul and Baul singers and the Bauls who are from the 'lineage of Das and Dasi'.
When Babu went to Bangladesh in the 70's there were no Bauls in Bangladesh. Lalon Fakir (Shah) is not a Baul he is a great poet, but he is not a Baul no one even hardly knew about Lalon Shah. Just because he put music to Lalon poetry and his famous father sang the songs, then other Bauls copied does not mean Lalon Fakir is a Baul. Scholars and others not knowing, you could say were ignorant and made assumptions and of course Bangladeshi's are famous for fundraising and making up stories. Baul became popular and one Bangladeshi UN official convinced them he was preserving Baul and obtain 9 million by making up a lie stating Baul is from Persia?
It was Babu Kishan who went back to Calcutta and brought some Bangladeshi singers and he recorded them singing Lalon Fakir Songs.
Some of the first Lalon songs recorded by Babu Kishan he put music to Lalon's poetry. Babu Kishan is a poet himself and he loves other great poets of which are many including his friends Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan of which we have seem many Bauls say they are associated with and they are not.
Babu recorded his father Purna Das Baul singing many of Lalon's poetry in which Babu Kishan composed all the music for, that is how and why Lalon Fakir has music others followed.
Baul is a Sanskrit name from Ekachakra Birbhum West Bengal India. If I tell you what Baul means I will see it all over as if other Nakal Bauls knew this. I will let them copy and paste inaccuracies for now. Now I understand why Babu Kishan does not want to give out any teachings, it is because of the fake Nakal Bauls who cheat and make up stories and it is rampant. He has a huge Baul Archive and has preserved Baul but the risk is the fake Bauls who steal Nabani's songs and make up stories and lineages. This is about ethics and when someone does that they are cheating so in the mean time you will have to wait for our copy righted book. We watch to see what will be copied next, copied and twisted.
I was having a conversation with BabuKishan this morning about this description of Bauls it says,
"Many of them ( Bauls) practice a type of psycho-physical manipulation or tantric yoga which emphasizes control of sexual union, the purpose of which is to enable the couple to achieve a break with phenomenal existence, to escape the endless cycle of death and regeneration, and to achieve a state of eternal stability or samadhi. This practice involves the retention of semen during intercourse and ingestion of bodily secretions..."
This is not the focus of what a Baul is, but this is the first thing written on a Baul Archive, I think now removed?
There is nothing wrong with this description of Sacred Sexuality, however, you will see this over and over again like a broken record as if this description is the only focus, of what Baul is.
The focus of what Baul is the soul (sat chit ananda) the atma, the divine, God/dess. Baul is all about he soul, they are soul singers, soul teachers, Babu's lineage Gotra is Satchidananda, this is the soul. There are many practices in Baul, beginner practices, secret advanced yogic practices. Asana, Body Sadhana ect is preliminary. Baul is being misrepresented, it is a mystical tradition, if you want to practice Baul learn about your soul, learn the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita.
The more I dig in my research the more I realize that Baul like Tibetan Buddhism will only survive by being preserved, the world has changed and there appears to be so many forces that are disturbing the natural innocence that the Bauls are. And like the Tibetan Buddhist there is much deception going on behind the scenes.
Writers are focued on sex..sex sells and the freedom implied to be a Baul, sex all day, smoking ganja singing and dancing, begging for money?
Baul songs are not folk songs, they are seed songs of higher philosophy, one must know the discourses that go along with the song. Babu listens to what Bauls are singing they are either singing his family lineage songs or are singing folk songs, some sing his lineage songs but shorten them thus destroying the meaning.
Some unscrupulous Bauls even sing Nabani Das Baul songs and give other poets names. Many are singing Babu Kishan's poetry and they do not even have a clue, all can be proved because all was preserved and recorded many years ago.
All will revealed in Babu Kishan's new Book to be released in late 2023 it is taking way longer because so many users and abuser of Baul have come out of the woodwork, it is insane.
But there is a karma from stealing someone else's work and family history and her-story.
Temporarily you may get a benefit but the truth will come out, it is just a matter of time.
