Songs of the Bengali Bauls with Ananda Gopal Das Baul

We invite you to immerse yourself in the mystical and folkloric melodies of the Bengali Bauls together with Ananda Gopal Das Baul. Master Ananda is an acclaimed performer in India and the West, who over nearly 40 years has toured every continent with the traditional Baul music of West Bengal (India). A Baul is a „singing philosopher“ whose scripture, prayer and philosophical reflections are all a song. It is precisely because of this unique spiritual content that Baul songs have even been inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The emotional charge of the Bauls is the philosopher's „conversation with the heart“ (Bengali: Monoshikkha), with the teacher, and a deep longing for God. Just as dance is in the Sufi tradition, for the Bauls song is the medium between heaven and earth, through which one enters a spiritual trance. Baul music is founded on improvisation – no musical session has a set list prepared in advance, and everything depends solely on the bhava visiting the performer – an inner state, mood, atmosphere. Accompanying the guest from India will be Kristė Elena Šlajė, who lives in India (vocals, traditional instruments), and Adomas Šimkūnas (bansuri flute). Ananda Gopal Das Baul is an extraordinary master of his genre, a Baul musician representing not only an authentic musical lineage but also a living folk tradition of West Bengal. In his concerts the performer demonstrates subtle tenor vocal abilities and mastery playing traditional instruments (karatalas, khamak and others), delving into the subtleties of the Bengal region's songs: colourful Birbhum Baul music and the melodies of Bangladeshi fakirs, folk songs of North Bengal, the rhythmic jhumur style, and the longing riverside bhatiyali songs. Ananda Gopal Das Baul's biography spans several decades of colourful concerts – the performer has toured numerous European countries, performed at festivals on various continents, and has been especially beloved in France. Kristė Elena Šlajė is an alumna of Asian Studies at Vilnius University, who became interested in South Asian musical traditions during her studies in Indology. Today she spends more time in India than in Lithuania, where she is absorbing the subtleties of Baul music in the traditional way from her teacher Ananda Gopal Das Baul and by travelling through the region. In 2025–2026, under the ICCR cultural scholarship programme, she studied Rabindranath Tagore's musical heritage at Visva-Bharati University in Santiniketan, West Bengal (India). Adomas Šimkūnas performs the north Indian classical music ragas in the "Dhrupad" style. Since 2011 he has studied bansuri flute playing with master Jean-Christophe Bonnafous (France / India). He has taken part many times in flute-playing masterclasses with the world-renowned bansuri flute legend Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia (India). Since 2016 he has been interested in the oldest north Indian classical vocal genre, "Dhrupad", and began studying the vocal and bansuri flute traditions of this genre, which he continues to this day, following the Guru–shishya oral tradition with the world's foremost professor and "Dhrupad" tradition vocal master and composer Dr. Pandit Ritwik Sanyal. At this concert he will accompany the Bengali Baul Songs on bansuri flute. You can buy tickets here.

Adresas: Muzikos magijos klubas

Kaina: Nemokamai