Baul festival

News:A three day long Baul festival has concluded in Dhaka with performances by Bauls from India and Bangladesh.

Facts:

About Baul:

• The Bauls are mystic minstrels living in rural Bangladesh and West Bengal,India.
• Baul music represents a particular type of folk song, carrying influences of Hindu bhakti movements as well as the shuphi, a form of Sufi song.
• Bauls live either near a village or travel from place to place and earn their living from singing to the accompaniment of the ektara, the lute dotara, a simple one-stringed instrument and a drum called dubki.
• Bauls belong to an unorthodox devotional tradition influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, Bengali, Vasinavism and Sufi Islam yet distinctly different from them.
• Their emphasis lies on the importance of a person’s physical body as the place where God resides.They are admired for this freedom from convention as well as for their music and poetry.
• In 2005, the Baul tradition of Bangladesh was included in the list of Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO.