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It’s easy to identify a Baul singer from his uncut, often coiled hair, saffron robe (alkhalla), a necklace of beads made of basil (tulsi) stems. They can often be identified by their distinctive clothes and musical instruments.

To them we are all a gift of divine power and the body is a temple, music being the path to connect to that power. They share only one belief -that God is hidden within the heart of man and neither priest, prophet, nor the ritual of any organized religion will help one to find Him there. Bauls neither identify themselves with any organized religion nor with the caste system, special deities, temples or sacred places. Bauls from far off places come to participate in the Kenduli Mela and the Pous Mela–the two most important fairs held in West Bengal for Baul music.īauls belong to an unorthodox devotional tradition, influenced by Hinduism, Buddhism, Vasinavism and Sufi Islam, yet distinctly different from them. In Bangladesh, the districts of Chittagong, Sylhet, Mymensingh and Tangyl are famous for Bauls. Later, the Baul domain stretched to Tripura in the north, Bangladesh in the east, and parts of Bihar and Orissa in the west and south respectively. But what we know is that originally the district of Birbhum in West Bengal was the seat of all Baul activity. Therefore little concrete documentation is available when exploring the group’s origin. The Bauls have made no effort to record their practices, lives or beliefs, for they are reluctant to leave a trace behind.

The Bauls are wandering minstrels of West Bengal and Bangladesh, whose song and dance reflect the joy, love and longing for mystical union with the Divine. The word Baul comes from the Sanskrit word “Batul,” which means mad and is used for someone who is possessed or crazy for God.