Baul musicians are gypsys from India who walk from village to village, singing with an open voice of madness and playing khamak, khangira and ektara. The band leader Bapi Das Baul represents the 8. generation of this famous artist family with the guidance of several philosophical traditions: Hinduism, Tantrism and Sufism all have influenced their music.
The songs on this album are deeply drawn from Bapi`s roots: self-knowledge - a favorite Baul-Sufi theme. Like overflowing joy of being alive, rhythmical- pulsing, trancelike, drifting. All the richness of the universe seems to be stretched between the dark- gurgling sounding Tabla-strokes and the delightful sound of the the flute. The one string ektara, the violine and banjo melt into melodic courses with the smooth language of the Bengali songs - and when then the cooing commentary of the khamak comes along, one can feel the power of the story-telling-tradition of the last 600 years.
"The songs are ecstatic communications with the Divine within ourselves. The human is the Divine.
Paradoxes abound on the Baul path.
Listening to Bapi Das Baul sing Sufi-inspired songs does not contradict the traditional Baul search of the Man of the Heart-
Maner Manush, the ideal within us, so close and yet so far that it entails a lifetime`s search."
Kent Hunt