Ektara Baul Foundation and Nabani Brijabala Baul Ashram and Vedic Academy

Ektara Foundation is a Non Profit Foundation 

 www.babukishan.org

https://indiafolkheritageofbengal.weebly.com

No copying or poaching, I know it sounds strange, however, this too has been poached? This is the original view Babu Kishan had since the 1970's, now his view has changed. Baul is now extinct and there are so many fake Bauls trying to appropriate Baul and it has become watered down and reduced by false teachings. There is no other lineage of Baul, lineage has been appropriated too, their songs, dress and style have all been appropriated. Our goal now is to stop the twisting of Baul and intellectual property theft.

To Preserve the Legacy of Indian Viashnava Sahajiya Tantric Baul from Birbhum W Bengal and the One and Only Lineage of Vaishnava Tantric Baul. An oral Sanskrit tradition with the roots in Ekachakra Birbhum W Bengal. With their roots in Chand Gosia Das Baul and Dasi

This foundation was created and registered in Mumbai, India in 2007 and has been inactive. Time is precious and it is of the upmost important, Indian Music in its pristine form is disappearing, Folk, Classical, Spiritual, Indian Cinema and Baul has been culturally appropriated by outsiders who are making up lineages.

A major focus for Babu Kishan is on preserving Folk Music and the Yogic Baul minstrel Musical Tradition of Baul  and Baul sadhana clearing up the misconceptions about what Baul is?  It is important to preserve Baul and Baul song and dance accurately because it has been hijacked by Cultural Appropriation and Academics who are changing the narrative. The names of the poets are of the utmost importance. The names and new Baul poetry of today by fake Bauls is not Baul. You can not self-title yourself a Baul or a Baul by a fake Guru.

Babu Kishan aka Krishnendu Das Baul is the only person to preserve Baul since the 1960's through today.

​
Educating and keeping Traditional India Music alive in this world of technology and dynamic change.

Babu is a pioneer on bringing his one and only Lineage to the World, he has created a template for others to follow. He did all the leg work and many have ridden on his coat tails. He has always encouraged but in the past 30 years he has seen the absolute destruction and made up stories that have come out he thinks he has to get a handle on his lineage before all is destroyed because Baul is extinct and it is completely watered down, reduced and dumbed down. All we can now is preserve what are his ancestral teachings. The Essence of Baul is gone, today all that is left is fake 'Nakal' Baul, tourist Bauls, actors and Baul singers.

Baul is Extinct.
This one and only Lineage of Tantric Vaishnava Baul does not follow anyone, everybody follows them.

No one in this world would know about Baul without all the leg work Babu Kishan aka Krishnendu Das has done.

Many have followed him and copied him in his path trying to be him, running around to Universities and trying to get in touch with his friends and musicians and colleages, the places he has traveled, everybody follows Babu wanting into Bollywood ect..

The patchwork Guduri he designed for his father is worn today by many Bauls.
The Baul women's dress he designed for the Film Tagore about his aunt Radharani Dasi is worn today by a new Baul singer. 

There are no Bangladeshi Bauls that is just a fabrication to fundraise.

Baul is extinct all we can do is preserve and all is with Babu not with these new made up lineage.

Without all the work he has done in the 1970's 1980's, 1990's and onward, no one in this world would know what or who Baul is. If not for Babu Kishan's effort and hard work keeping the flame of Baul alive, the flame that his ancestors going back thousands of years to the modern day and the flame of his Grandfather and Father have kept alive.

Babu has organized, managed and created a framework for all to follow in. He has observed that most have taken and made up stories and lineages but have never given credit or mentioned his name? Now it is time for Babu Kishan to preserve and tell his story full and final.

Please help support an authentic 'Baul Guru' from an authentic lineage.  


The Ektara Foundation

​registered 2007 in Mumbai India

Please be careful who you donate too, not all are legitimate Bauls or honest.

Please contact Babu Kishan and have a conversation in how you can help.
He has been a cultural representative India and Indian Music around the World for 40 years
babukishanproductions@gmail.com

---

---

Ektara is also known as:
Gopi Yantra aka Gopi Chand

           Gopi Yantra

A Baul Yantra it is called the Gopi Yantra or Gopi Chand more commonly known as an Ektara the one stringed instrument that symbolised peace and unity to the Baul.

The Gopi Yantra is the Bauls tool of focus, it is alive awake and spirit is infused in their Yantra. The Gopis were the lovers of Krishna, when Krishna would play his flute they would go mad with divine love and come running to Krishna they would drop everything and run to him. Baul Gopi Yantra can make one mad with divine desire of love and yearning it is a trance instrument, when Babu starts to play all the world disappears and days go by without my mind I forget what I am supposed to do, it takes one out of this world. The difference between classic tantra and Baul tantra is that the tools and techniques are different not all but some.

BabuKishan.com

https://lineagebaul.blogspot.com/2025/02/indigenous-identity-theft-indigenous.html

I am making distinctions because the word 'lineage' is thrown around so much these days. I have heard people one generations into Baul call themselves a Baul  Lineage, when in actual fact they are new born babies, who sing folk songs or a few Baul songs from this lineage? "they say my lineage", so we all can call ourselves lineage holders. I don't think that is how it works, and in actual fact, lineage is always based on ancestry. Baul is based on indigenous ancestry or many hundreds to thousands of years of practice. It is not a simple path, although it looks simple, just as the an accomplished Kung Fu Master makes it look easy. This easiness is called Sahaja and it comes from generations after generations of indigenous Baul ancestors. Baul is never base on one poet or a few generations, you can not or should not self-title yourself a Baul, you should not act or pretend to be an indigenous Baul, use their songs, copy there dress, and follow them all over the world pretending you are a Baul. There are actually laws in this now that prevent indigenous theft of their intellectual property. 

Pretending to be something you are not waters down the lineage, the reductionism is astounding and now while fake pretendian Baul have now decided they are fundraising to preserve Baul, when Baul has already been preserved over 60 years by Babu Kishan aka Krishendu Das Baul who is an indigenous ancestral Baul.

The new fake pretenbdian Baul actors do not know what they are talking about, they make up fake Baul Guru's and Fake Baul lineages duping people and telling them to come and join us, when Baul does not collect people. These fake Bauls leave out the information, water down the tradition? This is the way with all indigenous wisdom, if nobody says anything, then it is a free for all, as we can see in the Yoga industry, the same is happening to indigenous Baul and has been happening with great intensity since the 1970's when this lineage pioneered Baul throughout Bengal, all over India and globally. Whatever, this lineage did, these pretendian Baul copied and followed, including their dress, songs, dance, instruments, names (Das Baul and Dasi) and followed them around the world, even contacting their own connections and contacts.

Bauls are freedom lovers, but the kind of freedom that is drawing people to the Baul mela's these days is not the kind of freedom Baul was intended for.  

However, in the true sense of a lineage I am talking, "thousands of years, before Christianity, before Buddhism, before Islam. Baul was around long before as they follow the path of Dattatreya, Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma and Shakti Sadhana. This one and only lineage of Baul is (Vayu Tula) the path of Krishna'Kali and every Indian philosophy, Upanishads, Tantra, Oral Sanskrit including manuscripts, it is the path of Upanishads, Puranas, and Itihas the Historical epics, Ramayan, and Mahabharat.

Bauls are not illiterate, they are Sahajiya meaning indigenous natural and spontaneous, indigenous mystics called Vaishnava Sahajiya Tantric Bauls of Birbhum, West Bengal, India

They speak oral Sanskrit, Sandhya Bhasha, Braja Bhasha, and vernacular Birbhum Bengali dialect.

The Bauls of the old days are extinct. All we can do is return Baul to the indigenous Baul and stop all the using and abusing of Baul usually for financial jackpots by outsiders who are faking Baul.  

Lineage Baul is very rare. Nabani Das Khyapa Baul is the last authentic Baul to live on earth, he passed in 1969.

We are the bird people---we do not know how to walk, we like to fly." Babukishan

BabuKishan.com

Indigenous Fraud, Indigenous Intellectual Property Theft!

https://lineagebaul.blogspot.com/2025/02/indigenous-identity-theft-indigenous.html

.

The Black listed Journalist.. A sizzling Baul!

Babu Kishan  aka Krishnendu Das Baul

BabuKishan.org

Do NOT copy, All rights reserved 2010 -2040

Eighteen years after he first comes to my apartment in New York, Babukishan Das, son and rhythm drummer of the celebrated Purna Das Baul, comes to visit me again in the Fall of 2000. I know him as Babu.

He started out phoning me repeatedly a number of years ago. He wanted to come to the U.S. to connect with American musicians. He told me he has become a success in India writing music for a number of the films being ground out assembly "line-style in Bollywood, which is what India calls the capital of its thriving film industry. India's Bollywood, in fact, now rivals America's Hollywood in selling movie tickets. With its name obviously meant as a take-off of America's original movie capital, Bollywood, is located in India's teeming Bombay, now renamed Mumbai for local political reasons of which I am currently ignorant.

Babu's Indian music is not like Ravi Shankar's sitar music. Babu is a Baul, a product of the famous Bengali Bauls, of which his grandfather, Nabani Das Baul, was the patriarch and of which his father, Purna, is currently the celebrated leader. The Bengali Bauls represent not a religion or a sect or a tribe but a way of life grown from performing in the streets. In other words, Baul music is one of India's folk musics. Fusing it with a combination of America's myriad musical genres is an interesting concept. Not a bad idea at all! In fact, the idea is so good, it started rekindling dreams of musical entrepreneurship in my battered brain.

Babu starts out by phoning me a lot. I tell him to buy a computer and email me, because that'll be cheaper. He does just that and starts filling my inbox regularly. But, before we do anything else, he wants me to write a story about him for my website. He sends lots and lots of photos of himself. Every day. I get another email from Babu full of information about himself and about the Bauls. Soon, he sweet talks a web-tekki named Mary into setting up a Babukishan website for him.

But when I finally go to his website to look it over, I get this message: "BROKEN HEART--SITE CLOSED." Turns out that Mary and Babu had a spat and she closed down Babu's website. Next thing you know, Mary thinks it over and recognizes Babu is just following the Baul way of life, which is Casual with a capital C. Next thing you know, Mary fills my inbox with 24 messages containing all the material that had been on the website she erased. Eventually, Babu tells me she now calls herself Mary Das Baul.

Now, I am confronted with a massive overdose of Babu's information. This comes at a time when I am not only overwhelmed by my never-ending duties as editor and one-man staff of THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST, an e-zine that requires a new issue on the Internet every month, but I also have begun the exciting and time-consuming task of publishing THE BEST OF THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST in a series of paperback books. I find myself paralyzed by indecision. Do I really have time to turn my attention to Babu? Then I get this email:

Subject: hi al,i am in newyork...babu
Date: Fri, 26 Sep 2003 08:27:45 -0700 (PDT)
From: babukishan das babukishan@yahoo.com
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com

http://community.webshots.com/user/babukishanon

In New York, Babu is in Queens. My keyboardist son, Joel Roi, volunteers to go get him. Soon, Babu is here in my crowded apartment. It turns out that although Babu, now 41, has a big hit in India and claims to've made a name for himself in Bollywood's relentless movie mill, he still has to tour with his father, the great Purna Das. That's why he's in the U.S. He's touring with his father's troupe, performing for the most part before Indian "migr? audiences across our nation.

In my pad, which is strewn with papers, cassettes, books, pamphlets, computers, files, file cabinets and everything else I can't find when I need it, Babu says he has a kurta punjabi for me---a long Indian shirt like the silk and elegant bright orange one he's wearing. Only, the kurta punjabi is back in Queens. He's forgotten to bring it with him.

He brings me a cassette of his hit, Soulmate, on MIL MUSIC INDIA, which Babu tells me is topping India's music charts. We play it and I find it lilting, delightful and endearing. Again, Babu tells me he wants me to write a story about him like the one I wrote about his father 18 years ago. I tell him I will when I get around to it.

That evening, my son drives Babu to my old friend David Amram's farm in Westchester. David is a famous master musician, who conducts symphony orchestras, leads a jazz group, is a French horn virtuoso, plays almost every other musical instrument known to man and delights audiences by accompanying himself while singing rap songs he improvises on the spot---something akin to the spontaneous bop prosody of his one-time buddy, Beat Generation saint Jack Kerouac. Before leaving my place, Babu says he will be back to see me in a day or two. When I ask Joel Roi what happened when Babu and Amram jammed together that night, he gives me an answer in one word: "Magic."

Dammit! And I couldn't be there! I had to stay chained to my computer. I had an issue of THE BLACKISTED JOURNALIST to get on the web. Or was I being pressed to get VOLUME FOUR OF THE BEST OF THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST ready for 1^st Books Library, the print-on-demand press in Indiana? There are too many things happening at once.

In the meantime, I am in contact with Sally Grossman, the person who, after being alerted to them by Allen Ginsberg, discovered the Bengali Bauls during her trips to India years ago. She is also the one who brought the Bauls to the attention of Bob Dylan and, in addition, she is is the inheritor of the Bearsville estate of her late husband, music magnate Albert Grossman, the entrepreneur who managed Dylan's rise to prominence. Sally graciously offers her Bearsville Studio as a place to record Babu's fusion music---on condition that David Amram is in charge of the production.

But Babu never returns to my place. Instead, he goes off touring the country with his father's troupe to new adventures and new friends. Eventually, I send Babu an email saying:

David Amram, my son Joel (keyboards) and Hayes Greenfield (sax) and Julian Fenton (drummer), stepson of Apple's Neil Aspinall want to make a fusion album with you and Sally Grossman will make her Bearsville studio available. You want me to write story bout you and I want to write it but right now, I'm tied up working on a Bobby Darin book. And my next column. --Al

And eventually I get an email from Babu:

Subject: i am glad to know ....babu
Date: Fri, 14 Nov 2003 11:08:56 -0800 (PST)From: babukishan das babukishan@yahoo.com
To: al aronowitz info@blacklistedjournalist.com

hi al,

wow! i am glad to know that they like to do fusion music with my music. great!!! i'll be in in new york 10th dec and 'll be there up to 30th dec. tell joe i am happy to hear.how r u?

and ur health?

i am ok.

takecare...

babu

Well, for a long time I don't hear from Babu but that's the Baul way. Casual. In fact, that's my way, too, so I understand. In something apparently written by Sir John Wodroffe, an English scholar, I read:

Well, I tell myself, doesn't that just about describe me, too? But there's more:

Bauls have nothing..no scripture, not even to burn, no church, no temple, no mosque..Nothing whatsoever. A Baul is a man always on the road. He has no house, no abode. God is his only abode and the whole sky is his shelter. He possesses nothing except a poor man's quilt, a small hand-made one-stringed instrument called "ektara? and a small drum, a kettle drum called "baaya." That's all that he possesses---a musical instrument and a drum. He plays with one hand on the ektara and he goes on beating the drum with the other. The drum hangs by the side of his body and he dances. That is all of his religion. Dance is his religion, singing is his worship. He does not even use the word "God."

That's because the Bauls don't believe in an external God? a God in Heaven or in the trees or in nature or in anyplace outsides of themselves, The Bauls believe in a God withinthemselves. To

---

The Bauls don't have to go
to any kind of church
to worship

---

the Bauls, God is inside you, me and everyone. To the Bauls, God is the essence of man. And so each human is his or her own temple or church or mosque or synagogue. And so, a Baul's search for God is "withinwards." This is what I read:

. 
. . on the waves of song and on the dancing, he moves withinwards. He goes on moving like a beggar, singing songs. He has nothing to preach. His whole preaching is his poetry. And his poetry is also not ordinary poetry. He's not consciously a poet. He sings because his heart is singing. Poetry follows him like a shadow. . .He lives his poetry. That's his passion and his very life. His dance is almost insane. He has never been trained to dance. He even doesn't know anything about the art of dancing. He dances like a madman, like whirlwind. And he lives very spontaneously.

Well, I think, if that explains Babu, that also explains me. Except, I don't play an instrument. I used to be a pretty good dancer, though. And, like Babu, I do things when I can get around to doing them. And I'll go so far as to join the Bauls in saying, as one writer has quoted them:

We are the bird people---we do not know how to walk, we like to fly."

And, so Babu's own musical group back in India is called 'the Birds."

Did you ever try to catch a bird? That's like trying to catch Babu. 


In my rekindled dream of musical entrepreneurship, I want to rope him into recording the magic he made with David Amram the night I wasn't there.

Silently, my thoughts call out:

Babu, where are you?

He turns up in New York again in December of 2003 and I try to get my musician friends together.


 I even contact Garth Hudson, The Band's former keyboardist, with whom I helped produce The Bengali Bauls at Big Pink many years ago. But Garth is touring. David Amram is also preparing to tour. He's going on the road with Jack Kerouac's 'sacred scroll," Jack's manuscript of On The Road. As for Hayes Greenfield, he's otherwise busy. And Julian Fenton is still in London. Sally Grossman isn't even around. She's avoiding the winter cold in Palm Springs.

So, Babu spends a night jamming with Joel Roi and one of Joel's musician friends. Joel has invented a device that enables him to stroll and play his keyboard while it's strapped around his neck like a guitar and the next night, he brings Babu to my cramped apartment. Here, Babu delivers the promised kurta punjabi to me. Equipped with a dupki, which is something like a tambourine, and also with a bracelet that he calls a ghoonghoor, Babu begins to jam with Joel in my cramped apartment. They get a riff going, with Babu hitting the dupki and shaking the ghoonghoor with hypnotizing percussion.

Before long, Babu starts singing in Hindi and then starts dancing in my cramped place. There's room only for Joel to sit while I'm perched on the edge of my cot. I can't understand a word of what Babu's singing, but he's sizzling. I find myself spellbound by the gracefulness of his dancing and the passion in his voice. Once again, my dreams of musical entrepreneurship start burning and I?m compelled to imagine girls singing a background refrain in English. Enraptured by the show Babu is putting on, I find myself compelled to rise up on my frail legs and start to dance with Babu. But there's room enough only for me to take a few awkward steps.

Afterwards, we go to dinner, Babu goes back to India and I go back to my computer to write this. I guess I've grown too old to have my rekindled dreams of musical entrepreneurship come true. 
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Footnote:


Babu loved Al Aronowtiz as a Baul loves purely, and in that love there is a deep innocence, he was so sad Al passed away in 2005. He still misses him today.


.Alfred Gilbert Aronowitz (May 20, 1928 – August 1, 2005) was an American rock journalist best known for introducing Bob Dylan and The Beatles in 1964.

A graduate of Rutgers University, Aronowitz became a journalist in the 1950s and his work in that decade included a 12-part series on the Beat Generation for the New York Post.

Al Aronowitz was the original manager of The Velvet Underground; getting the band their first gig at a high school auditorium. The Velvet Underground stole Aronowitz's tape recorder and dumped him weeks later when they met Andy Warhol.

Aronowitz introduced Bob Dylan to the Beatles. According to his own journal entries, at this meeting he brought a marijuana joint which would be the first pot smoked by the Beatles.

On August 28, 1964, the Beatles were staying in the Delmonico Hotel in New York City. Aronowitz brought Dylan to meet the band and also introduced them to marijuana that evening. According to John Lennon's interview in Rolling Stone magazine, Dylan "thought 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' - when it goes 'I can't hide' - he thought we were singing 'I get high.' So he turns up with Al Aronowitz and turns us on, and we had the biggest laugh all night - forever."

Aronowitz also claimed that Dylan wrote the song “Mr. Tambourine Man” while staying in Aronowitz’s Berkeley Heights, NJ home.

Aronowitz's son Myles is a well-known photographer, often credited as the still photographer on feature film productions

--------------------------------------


Mary passed away in 2006 from cancer, she worked relentlessly on Babu's web site, and re-editing, and promoting Babu, they were friends, in which Mary became attached to Babu, thus in anger at never being able to capture Babu, she took with her his "Web site www.babukishan.com", all his instruments, his bank account ect. 

Mary lived in Seattle Washington.

Pioneer, ONlY Lineage of Baul, all Bauls follow this Lineage!

https://lineagebaul.blogspot.com/2025/02/indigenous-identity-theft-indigenous.html

BabuKishan.org

CopyRight all rights reserved 

NO poaching, No name dropping, taking names off! Means do not use, taking names off and making Baul generic or random as in Baul did this and that, Baul has a name. Baul did not get Padma Shree it was Purna Das Baul, stop using Baul and including random Baul. Use correct Photos not random Baul photos on someone a Bauls story.

This lineage is the only lineage of Baul, they brought Baul to India and the World.

There story has been culturally appropriated, new lineages made up and their songs and poetry stolen under the guise of fake lineages.

All Bauls follow this lineage! They sing their songs, never give credit to the poets.

Take names off even making statements that Bauls do not care who the poets are?

Only an authentic Baul knows who the poets are, to say Bauls do not care is the statement of a fake Baul, someone who is using Baul and making it up as they go watering down and reducing Baul. This is what has led to a Cultural Genocide.

Baul is an indigenous Indian Hindu tradition from Birbhum Bengal Indian. Vishnu Shiva Brahma dvaita (dual) and Advaita (non dual) synergistic within Sanatan Dharma (Hinduism).

The Vaishnava Tantric Bauls of Birbhum are an oral Sanskrit tradition, vernacular Birbhum Bengali and they use a secret coded language called Sandhya Bhasa.

The ones teaching today are teaching, out of books or hearsay. Some repeat over and over that their are 5 types of Baul? This is wrong and has been copied from Babu Kishan's web site, then copied into his fathers book because they copied from Babu Kishan who put it there to see who was copying his writings, long ago, because he could sense that whatever he did was copied and so it was. Baul is NOT Aul, Sai, Dervish, Fakir, Shah, Baul is not Muslim, this is a long story and it will prove one thing that everything Babu Kishan has done has been copied without any attribution?

Reductionism and watering down of Baul, yet collecting donations to preserve Baul? Baul has been preserved by Babu Kishan starting decades ago, since the 1960's and he has observed all the fakes who take and use, making up new lineages that never existed.

They sings the songs of this lineage, they dress as this lineage, especially in Babu Kishan's own design the colourful patch work dress called Guduri, they dance and sing Nabani Das Kyapa Baul style which is Ektara Baya and Nupoor, that is Nabani's style, how can you say you are a different fake lineage? The problem is their Guru copied everything this lineage did, and they have not been around long enough, they just make up lineages and follow what this lineage has completed and then take their names off and call themselves LEGENDARY??

They follow this lineage around the world, calling themselves Legendary and Pioneers.

Making video's of entering the village and people touching their feet, seriously a Baul never lets people touch their feet, let alone to show this is the way of Baul?? Baul never collects people!

BabuKishan.org

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