Paban Das Baul | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Paban Das |
Born | 1961 (age 62–63) Mohammedpur, Murshidabad district, West Bengal, India [1] |
Genres | Baul music, folk- fusion |
Occupation(s) | Singer, composer |
Instrument(s) | |
Years active | 1970s–present |
Labels |
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Paban Das Baul (born 1961) is a noted Baul singer and musician from India, who also plays a dubki, a small tambourine and sometimes an ektara as an accompaniment. He is known for pioneering traditional Baul music on the international music scene and for establishing a genre of folk- fusion music. [3]
Born in Mohammedpur, a small village in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal, where his early musical influences were his father, and wandering baul singers.
In 1988, Das Baul started collaborating with Sam Mills, a London-born guitarist who had performed with experimental, avant garde group 23 Skidoo between 1979 and 1982. Their collaboration resulted in the acclaimed album Real Sugar (1997), a Peter Gabriel's Real World Records release, [4] it marked one of the first fusions of Bengali music and Western pop music. [5] The album features psychedelic elements to it and has been compared to the work of artists such as George Harrison, Ananda Shankar and The Bombay Royale. [6] He has also collaborated with the London-based State of Bengal and Susheela Raman. In 2005, the Baul tradition was included in the list of " Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" by UNESCO. [7]
He also performed at the Jaipur Literature Festival [8] and the " Nine Lives" Concert, 2009 in London, of William Dalrymple. [9]
He met Mimlu as a concert audience in 1982 in Paris, they later married and lived in Paris for many years. He has taught himself to read, not just Bengali, but Hindi, English and French.