| Paban Das Baul | |
|---|---|
Paban Das Baul at Nine Lives concert, 2009. |
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| Background information | |
| Born | 1961 (age 50–51) Mohammedpur, Murshidabad district, West Bengal, India [1] |
| Genres | Baul music, folk-fusion |
| Occupations | singer |
| Instruments | Dubki, Ektara |
| Years active | 1970s–present |
| Labels | Real World Records [2] |
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]
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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 Skiddoo 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] 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.[6]
He also performed at the Jaipur Literature Festival [7] and the "Nine Lives" Concert, 2009 in London, of William Dalrymple.[8]
He met Mimlu as an 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.