Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman

Lorea, Carola Erika

doi:10.1163/9789004324718

Cited by 13 publications

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“…A veritable proliferation of religious movements, groups, and sects, each with their own newly reified names, appear in Bengali sources from the second half of the 19 th century. Bāul for instance, an adjective that positively described the madness of the medieval saints, became a noun for a particular group of antinomian singers and esoteric practitioners (Openshaw 2002;Urban 1999;Lorea 2016). The time roughly corresponds with the maniacal endeavour by colonial ethnographers and administrators to list categories of people, endogamous groups, and tribes of India (e.g., Risley 1892).…”

Section: /01/2024mentioning

confidence: 99%

From Dharma to Sound

Lorea

2024

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This piece takes as a starting point a close reading of Karénina Kollmar-Paulenz’s work and connects it to ongoing debates intersecting the fields of religious studies, the anthropology of religion, sensory studies, Global South studies and decolonial theory. It argues that attention to the layered history of local language categories that articulate religious difference constitutes a form of intellectual labour towards epistemic justice.

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Section: /01/2024mentioning

confidence: 99%

From Dharma to Sound

Lorea

2024

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“…I discuss these aspects in a previous article (Lorea 2018c). 6 On Bāuls, see Openshaw ([2002] 2004), Knight (2011), Lorea (2016; on Bangladeshi Fakirs, see Salomon (1991) andTrottier (2000); on Vais . n .…”

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confidence: 99%

“…66On Bāuls, see Openshaw ([2002] 2004), Knight (2011), Lorea (2016); on Bangladeshi Fakirs, see Salomon (1991) and Trottier (2000); on Vaiṣṇava Sahajiẏā, see Sarbadhikary (2015). On the Matua community, see Lorea (2020).…”

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Sonic matters: Singing as method and the epistemology of singing across Bengali esoteric lineages

Lorea

2022

American Anthropologist

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Songs are knowledge" (g āne jñ ān) is a recurrent saying among Bauls, Fakirs, Sahajiyas, and other Bengali esoteric and heterodox communities. The sonic dimension of songs is related to cosmogonic vibration, seed, food, and feminine bodily fluids. Singing, requiring breath control and concentration, is associated with yoga. How is the performance of songs simultaneously an embodied way of knowing and an act of indigenous scholarship? Can the epistemology of singing coexist with hegemonic sensory epistemologies in a postcolonial South Asia? This article draws upon a ten-year ethnographic engagement with Bengali-speaking gurus and performers to discuss how singing provides a transformative and anthropopoietic knowledge, rooted in bodily experience and exchanged among performers-listeners to build togetherness in ways that subvert dominant ideologies of relatedness. This article also adopts Bengali understandings of ensounded knowledge to question the ocularcentric and scriptist epistemologies that underlie modern academia. Taking songs seriously as ways of knowing in their own right, I suggest singing as method and using the feelingful body as a research tool, not only for an ethnography that reflects the sensory epistemology of the communities I work with but also as a promising way to decolonize anthropology's epistemic ethnocentrism.

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“…In the studies of religion in Western scholarship, scholars have different opinions and interpretations on what can be called a religion. Edward C. Dimock Jr (1966) and Carola Erika Lorea (2016) define Baul religion and culture as both "cult" and "sect," and Atis Dasgupta (1994) defines Baul tradition as "heretic" as opposed to the scholastic scriptures of Hindu and Islamic religious establishments.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…According to Upendranath Bhattacharya (1957), Abdul Wahab (2011), Anwarul Karim (2016), Abu Ishahak Hossain (2015, Baul Taskir Ali (2018), Carola Erika Lorea (2016) and Jeanne Openshaw (2002, the word Baul has multidimensional meaning based on its geographical and philosophical origin. Majority of Baul practitioners in Bangladesh and some scholars of Baul culture believe the word means "mad," "a person who understands the philosophy of air and water," "wise," "non-conformist," "spiritual," and "eco-centric."…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Heterogeneity and Baul Spirituality: The Songs of Baul Taskir Ali in Bangladesh

Rabbani¹

2023

Preprint

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<p>This article briefly explores the contemporary heterogeneous song-texts of Taskir Ali (popularly known as Baul Taskir) from Sunamgonj, in the district of Sylhet, Bangladesh. Bauls are nomadic communities in Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, and they express their profound spiritual philosophy and thoughts through their songs and performance. Taskir Ali belongs to the Baul school of thoughts in Sylhet known as the 'dhamail.' His musical creations address, explore, satirize, investigate, and protest against many historical and contemporary social issues in Bangladesh. The short analysis of his songs in this paper present a variety of aesthetics addressing materialism, eco-centrism, secularism, patriotism, and so forth. Baul tradition and culture are the central features of folklore in Bangladesh, and Taskir Ali’s songs represent the fundamental aspects of diverse and inclusive spiritualties of South Asian oral literature and music.</p>

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Folklore, Religion and the Songs of a Bengali Madman

Cited by 13 publications

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From Dharma to Sound

From Dharma to Sound

Sonic matters: Singing as method and the epistemology of singing across Bengali esoteric lineages

Heterogeneity and Baul Spirituality: The Songs of Baul Taskir Ali in Bangladesh

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