SHANTINIKETAN, India – Parvathy Baul’s voice unravels over the clay-red earth of the Bengali countryside, sonorous and vast as if in an echoing hall. She is singing about the present, but in the form of an upside-down tree with its roots in the future and its branches in the past.

When Parvathyji sings , time bends. It becomes viscous – no gaps separate the breath and the notes. In listening, you drop your defenses. Categorical thinking – suspended.

“Roots nourish,” she says, “and what is left behind is the flower and the fruits.”

Songs convey meaning, with more than words.

For hundreds of years the songs of the Baul tradition of West Bengal have woven poems of a divine love that evades religious categories. Today, with the election of a Hindu nationalist government that openly attacks India’s Islamic communities, tensions run high in the country’s multiethnic democracy, especially around religious issues. Leaders of various nationalist groups look to the country’s history to support their views. Rather than separate people though, Baul culture incorporates concepts from religions some in India believe are politically incompatible. Bauls can be of Muslim or Hindu descent; even more crucial, the act of singing moves our attention beyond shifting ideological and political boundaries.

Travelers in Time - an audio story

With today’s resurgence of the practice, singers such as Parvathyji are reclaiming narratives around the tradition, not only extricating it from taboos accrued during colonial rule, but also from more current ones about gender. As a woman, Parvathyji is a rarity in a practice more commonly passed on to men – by men. She travels the world performing and teaching and also participates in a global coalition of women performers called the Magdalena Project.

When India’s beloved polymath and writer Rabindranath Tagore settled in the now-storied destination of Shantiniketan, Bengal, he was transfixed by the Baul tradition. He drew inspiration from the singers and delighted in their taming the forces of religions often at odds with one another.

“In the language and melodies of these songs, the voices of both the Hindu and the Musulman have combined,” Tagore wrote. “And there grew up no quarrel between the Koran and the Puran.”

Tagore elevated the Bauls’ craft, and pushed against the othering narratives engendered by colonial rule. As was common among ascetic traditions in India, the itinerant singers would wander from village to village, singing in exchange for offerings. But in the colonial framework, itinerancy was deemed taboo.

In turn the Bengali state government has begun to finance rural traditions such as that of the Bauls, and in 2008 UNESCO inscribed the tradition as an intangible heritage. According to Sukanya Chakrabarti, an artist and scholar of performance at San Jose State University, and herself from Kolkata, India, the designation has triggered debates within the Baul community around notions of “authenticity.” But to her, that “impurity” is also a part of how the culture adapts.

The Baul heritage continues to find new life. From the continuation of direct transmission from guru to student in keeping with the ascetic life such as the one Parvathyji has taken, to the surge of folk music in urban areas like that of Arpan Chakraborty, the word Baul takes on new meanings and remains rooted in old ones. What is common is the reverence for the voice and how song can change one’s perception.

“It is an extremely progressive practice,” Chakrabarti said. “The very fact that they have broken away from conventional mainstream religious systems is because they are against this kind of orthodoxy of form.”

The train to Shantiniketan

The commuter train that is taking me the 200km from the car horns of Kolkata to the cicadas of the Bengali countryside, where Parvathyji’s ashram sits expectantly, is an itinerant city. Vendors leap into the open doors of the rolling train and press their way down the corridor selling tea, snacks, fabrics and shoes only to leap back out again. They’re good at jumping out of moving trains mid-conversation.

When Sujin Das weaves his way onto the train with his khomok, a traditional Baul instrument consisting of a drum attached to a string which is plucked with a large wooden pick, the riders take him into their fold. For them it's a familiar sight, Baul singers were nomadic, and stepping into song on a careening train is but one contemporary example of what it means to continue that tradition.

Sujin Das didn’t just sing and pluck his instrument, he played the train. The bells on his ankles rang at pace with the ironwork. The Bauls have a way of moving with the space they inhabit. Some passengers stayed focused on their morning commute, but others bent to his melody.

“These are songs of the soil,” said Soumitra Banerjee, a passenger captivated by the singing. “We love and admire these sorts of songs.”

Banerjee was on his commute to work, but the sounds of Sujin Das’ singing took him back to his childhood. He grew up expecting the singers to board the train and transport him.

As the demands of contemporary life continue to change, Baul practitioners adapt, seeking ways to keep rooted in their tradition while responding to the needs of the times. But for the Bauls that has been as diverse a response as has been their history.

“There has been a disjuncture between how Bauls have been defined historically and who they are right now,” said Chakrabarti. “They have been established as a kind of mystical figure, and there is some sort of orientalism happening there.”

Chakrabarti, who recently published her book “In-Between Worlds: Performing [as] Bauls in an Age of Extremism,” addresses the many lenses through which they can be viewed.

As Bauls shed the colonial legacy that pushed folk art to the absolute fringes, deeming it either taboo or romanticizing it, its resurgence faces entirely new and equally powerful forces – globalization and neoliberal intervention.

The predominantly left Bengali government reinforces new cultural narratives that gained international support (such as that of UNESCO) to push back against conservative nationalist movements. In fact, narratives around traditional practices remain under contention as politicians appeal to their own versions of history to bolster their political agendas.

Building his case for Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist movement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi supports a revival of the traditional medicinal practice of Ayurveda. Backed by the World Health Organization in the building of a center for traditional medicine, Modi championed the practice as uniquely Indian, and uniquely Hindu – a point on his scoreboard for a culturally homogenous India.

In the case of the Bauls, who represent a more heterogeneous history, Bengal’s government leaned into a more heterogeneous narrative.

Government support bolstered the resurgence of the tradition, but opened up a debate around “authenticity,” Chakrabarti said.

“With this kind of international exposure, there is a tendency for local governments and local hierarchical structures to capitalize, and tend towards touristic impulses,” Chakrabarti said.

She points out that because the tradition has historically adopted so many different kinds of cultures, it is also vulnerable to influence.

“I think there is an anxiety of losing that kind of purity, whenever there is a porosity in the borders,” she said.

But Chakrabarti also sees that ‘porosity’ as a trait that keeps the tradition alive and present.

“The fact that they are adapting to the present times is a good sign for me,” she said.

A map locating Kolkata, India, and the site of Parvathyji's ahsram. Baul singers also hail from Bangladesh, east of Indian state of West Bengal.

Parvathy Baul - a calling to the practice

Parvathyji wasn’t a Baul from the start. She grew up in Assam, a region to the northeast of Bengal. She was exposed to classical Indian music when she was young, and soon began to study music and dance. She did theater. The power of aesthetic experiences pulled her in. But she had never heard of the Bauls.

Then she heard a Baul sing.

“The moment I heard the sound of ektara, and the voice of the Baul, I felt I was one of them,” Parvathyji said. “They were calling me to join them. And so first I avoided that, because I was studying in university. So I said no, no, no, this cannot be the truth. I had no clue because I do not come from a Baul family at all.”

Though Bauls take in newcomers, the culture and tradition is often passed on within families for generations.

And for Parvathyji the voice was clear.

Resolute in her decision, she would not be deterred from becoming a Baul. Though it was less common for a woman to take on the teaching, her calling would guide her through the challenges.

“In such a practice, when a man comes he has to face his own karma,” Parvathyji said. “When a woman comes, she has to face triple or five times more than what a man has to face.”

Baul culture stems back to the 15th century in Bengal. For most of its history it was a distinctly rural tradition and its practitioners mostly men. According to Parvathy, as traditional ascetic practices become less relevant in modern society, women have to take on pressures not only from within their practice, but from critics outside it as well.

But Parvathyji was not disheartened by those challenges. She speaks from inside a tradition inherited through years of oral transmission. She lives an ascetic life and orients every moment of her day toward her practice. She wears the traditional orange sari and dreadlocks that nearly reach the ground. When she speaks, she carries herself as if she were singing. It’s as if she is at work but at play, proving it with her sonorous laugh.

Parvathyji represents one of the many lines of ascetic Bauls whose singing practice reveals a spiritual underpinning. But when she speaks about what she does, she uses pragmatic terms. Where the onlooker may see spontaneous expression, there is a highly detailed work of precision.

But this effortlessness is gained through a practice based on breaking habits, through a constant process of breaking with what you think you know. It is the process of “looking for something” that constitutes sahaj.

The Baul songs are, in this sense, a tool to carry out that practice, and ascetic life is about maintaining it.

“You have to do something that really shakes you, that really challenges you, that really dismantles what you have been carrying so as to arrive in a space which is more free for you,” Parvathyji said.

“If we don't want to do any practice, then what will happen is that we can fall into our fantasy,” she said, “a method created by us which is not time tested.

“Baul tradition is standing for over 1,000 years or more. Why has it survived? We have had so many problems in our history, and still it survived. Even with all the changes, there is some truth in it, people got something from it,” she said.

City Bauls - making a living as a folk musician

Just three weeks before he sat cross legged to perform at his friend’s clothing shop, Arpan Chakraborty shaved his head to mourn his father’s passing. His father Subhas was a renowned Baul singer, and not only that, he was also a television presence and stage performer. His son took after him.

The Chakrabortys show how traditional Baul music can also survive in a lay folk style.

“I believe in spirituality but I don't believe in religion,” Chakraborty said. “Religion is the man-made stuff, so that's why I don't believe in religion. All people are spiritual, whether you are Hindu, Muslim, Christian.”

Chakraborty is primarily a performer, not an ascetic. Between sets he stepped out for a smoke with his bandmates, enjoying the balmy polyphonic air of New Market, Kolkata. But for him it's about the songs not about the lineage, albeit he comes from one of his own. But his is a lay, city Baul tradition.

Chakraborty does not practice sadhana, the Baul term for breath, the spiritual wind that they say takes them adrift with the song – at least not consciously. His work is that of a folk musician, someone giving a new urban life to traditional songs.

His bandmate Amrit Sarkar does not see that as a dilution of the tradition.

“I think the tradition changes all the time,” Sarkar said. “Traditions change because of our lifestyle. Nowadays, we're living in cities. We have to move to cities because cities are our workplaces.”

So Sarkar and Chakraborty coast around the city in a banged-up white car and honk down the wrong way on one-way streets. They pick up in a whirlwind when there is air of a place to perform. That’s how they make a living. Chakraborty’s wife is a popular radio D.J. Her voice and tracks often flush out the car speakers as he and his cigarette jolt down the road.

Chakraborty and his bandmates move about with fast-paced affection for one another. When they speak, they’re full of praise and jokes. They chat about jamming to classic Cuban tunes, then suddenly joke about what it felt like to buy a joint in a back alley when they were teens. Their music is vigorous, the percussion trills like rolling R’s, the banjo flutters, and Chakraborty’s voice is pungent with emotion and pathos.

“If you’re talking about traditional musicians,” Sarkar said, putting down his coffee cup, “if we don't change, then the traditional won’t [continue]. So nowadays, the climate changes, the music changes.”

UNESCO - Intangible Heritage

Despite many positive effects stemming from more international attention around Baul culture, Sukanya Chakrabarti acknowledges it is complicated.

The stamping of the culture with a UNESCO designation, according to Chakrabarti, comes with an influx of money, but also with new frameworks for perceiving the tradition. She identifies a kind of new age romanticism imported along with the international audience.

“There is some sort of orientalism happening there in terms of imagining the mysticism,” Chakrabarti said.

The growth of the tourist economy and the role ashrams play in attracting curious visitors looking to explore their spirituality has become yet another aspect of the culture. Sometimes this distorts its image on the international stage.

In turn, the question of what “the culture” is, and what is “authentic” is funneled through the lenses of institutions that try to profit on the culture.

“Everything has a flip side, with this kind of international exposure there is a tendency for local governments to capitalize on it,” Chakrabarti said.

But Chakrabarti flips that coin again – under certain conditions international access can also lead to more agency.

Chakrabarti suggests that Parvathyji’s work is an example of that.

“I find it very interesting that she is so rooted in tradition, but she has the privilege of an English-speaking education and she can represent herself,” she said.

Rootlessness

“The ektara, we call it a yantra,” Parvathyji says.

She holds up her instrument tenderly and plucks its one string.

“What you see in there, all that happened,” she says as the sound keeps resonating, “is also one Yantra. Something to hold. To hold the knowledge of that. That is the Yantra – to hold the knowledge of the Baul.”

Baul poetry not only evokes the experience of singing, but also uses metaphors to describe what the singing practice connotes.

One foundational poem speaks of an integral concept for the Bauls – rootlessness.

“When we say rootlessness, we mean cutting from this idea of past or future,” Parvathyji said. “We say that there is an upside down tree, which is a tree of time with its roots in the future and branches in the past. Roots nourish, and what is left behind is the flower and the fruits.”

In this light Parvathyji also sees tradition as a source that feeds the present. She also sees it as her responsibility to provide access to that tradition, especially to women and children.

She has built a permanent space to house her teaching, the Sanatan Siddhashram, but she also travels around the world sharing the art of her practice. She is keen on the role women can play in performance training, as well as global critical discourse around performance and tradition.

Her student of 11 years, Ram Chandra, has been by her side helping flesh out many of these efforts. Before joining Parvathyji he served at a charitable hospital that provides free services to children with congenital heart conditions. He sees in the Baul practice not only a space for personal transformation, but also for larger social action.

“One of the things that modern education does to an individual is to instill low self-esteem and low self-confidence about [their] own knowledge systems,” he said. “And if you by any chance expose having any of these values, you are looked down upon, and perhaps even considered out of your mind.”

Ram Chandra says that at the ashram they actively work to overturn that taboo to counter what “modern education and especially the colonial hangover bring into the system.”

Parvathyji is attuned to the challenges such work poses, and knows that for women they are even greater.

“When they receive the challenges of society,” she said, “some will break down, some will face the challenges and some will not be able to overcome.”

But faced with that, she identifies in Baul culture a potent tool – community. In coming together in the practice, in sharing the sadhana, in singing together, it’s possible to move past those boundaries, and to move into a present that operates by different value systems. And this too can be seen as a form of travel.

“The Bauls are travelers,” Parvathyji said. “Travelers in time.”