A Bridge to Bauls and Fakirs: Songs for Heart, Soul, and Life

Name: A Bridge to Bauls and Fakirs: Songs for Heart, Soul, and Life
Start: 2024-06-02T14:00:00-07:00
End: 2024-06-02T18:00:00-07:00
Location: 2820 Seventh Street,Berkeley,94710,US

Schedule

Sun Jun 02 2024 at 02:00 pm to 06:00 pm

UTC-07:00

Location

2820 Seventh Street,Berkeley,94710,US | Berkeley, CA

Join us for a celebration of the powerful and enchanting music of the Bauls and Fakirs to transform your heart, soul, and life.

Bauls and Fakirs are folk poets who were originally from what is today Bangladesh and West Bengal, India, although they have since become a global phenomenon. They compose songs on love, yoga (called "jog" or "jog sadhona"), and other esoteric and tantric teachings about the body that are designed for people to connect to regardless of their social or religious identities. Join us for a day of celebrating and building a bridge to their powerful and enchanting music, allowing it to penetrate our hearts, souls, and lives (hridoy, atma, jibon).

Every living human being has a heart. For most Bauls and Fakirs the heart is also the seat of the mind, of thoughts and emotions. The most famous Baul, who went by the name Lalon, believed—as many others still believe today—that there was a "person of the heart" (moner manush) whom one could contact through prayer and meditative practice. This person often also took the form of a human partner in the intertwining play of romance and spirituality. Related to this was also speculation on how to discover one's invisible soul or self (atma, the Sanskrit atman), which was likened to a bird locked within the cage of the body. Finally, the songs relate to daily life, taking up time, sorrow, smoking, misguided paths, cooking, and even playfulness, and also human destiny and fortune.

This celebration of Baul and Fakiri music and esoteric lyrics will rely on singing as well as the performance of Bengali folk musical instruments. Everyone is welcome to take part, whether through playing along on the instruments or singing, engaging in intellectual discussion, or sitting in quiet reflection. Original Bengali lyrics and English translations of the songs will be printed and provided to all participants.

Dr. Keith Edward Cantú is an academic, musician, and polyglot with a deep professional and personal interest in South Asian religion and spirituality, especially yoga, tantra, alchemy, and global esotericism. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian Religious Traditions at Harvard University's Center for the Study of World Religions, and was previously a Visiting Assistant Professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York following positions in Germany and Poland. He is fluent in both speaking and reading Bengali and has advanced training in Sanskrit, Tamil, and Hindi. His most recent publication is Like a Tree Universally Spread: Sri Sabhapati Swami and Śivarjayoga , published last year with Oxford University Press.

On the personal side, Keith has lived among Baul and Fakiri, Tamil Shaiva, and other Tantric communities over the course of his eleven years of fieldwork in and writing on India and Bangladesh, and also has a personal affiliation with the esoteric movement Thelema. He has had an especially strong connection with the Bauls and Fakirs of Bengal for over a decade, and has learned many Lalon songs by heart from several different gurus and guru mothers, two of whom initiated him in 2019 into the Baul line of the humanist poet Lalon Fakir (d. 1890) and constantly encouraged him to sing and represent Baul and Fakiri path even as a non-Bengali Hispanic white "bideshi" (foreigner). Keith currently lives in Cambridge with his Bangladeshi wife Nasrin, who also is a constant source of encouragement and inspiration.

Over the past two years Keith has also been co-teaching a well-attended course on Tantric meditation and music at the Esalen Institute, and is delighted at the opportunity to see how this material percolates at the Alembic as well.