Bengali Folk Music

Bengali folk music is the vernacular song culture of Bengal, in Bangladesh and West Bengal, centred on the Baul songs of wandering mystic minstrels and on the river and harvest repertories of bhatiali boat songs, bhawaiya of the northern districts, jari and jhumur. Baul song, composed in a coded mystical Bengali by *Lalon Fakir* and his lineages, seeks the divine within the human body and rejects caste and creed, accompanied by the one-stringed ektara, the dotara lute, khamak and hand percussion. *UNESCO* inscribed the Baul tradition as a masterpiece of humanity's oral heritage in 2005.