In May 2024, a Indo-Bangla Baul music festival was held in Dhaka to celebrate the 250th birth anniversary of the mystic saint and humanist bard Fakir Lalan Shah.
- In the nine day long festival, famous Baul artists of India and Bangladesh participated .
- Fakir Lalon Shah is considered the most prominent figure of the Baul tradition of Bangladesh and India. Born in 1774 at Horishpur in Jhenaidah district of modern Bangladesh.
- He inspired and influenced people like Rabindranath Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam and the American poet Allen Ginsberg among others.
Baul music
- Baul music was inscribed in 2008 on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
- The Bauls are mystic minstrels living in rural Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. Bauls neither identify with any organized religion nor with the caste system, special deities, temples or sacred places.
- Their emphasis lies on the importance of a person’s physical body as the place where God resides.
- Bauls are admired for this freedom from convention as well as their music and poetry.
- Baul music represents a particular type of folk song, carrying influences of Hindu bhakti movements as well as the shuphi, a form of Sufi song.
