Debalina & Folks of Bengal / Bengal

The members of the ensemble brilliantly feature motifs of Bengali culture and tradition. As a result noble music of the source sound is created, likely to attract both world music connoisseurs and listeners who get in touch with this kind of art for the first time.

The leader of the group is Debalina Bhowmick of Calcutta, a Bengali vocalist, with a classical music background. She performed all over the world with her traditional Folks Of Bengal group. The sound of the Folks Of Bengal is created by such instruments as ektara, dotar, khamak and tabla.

At the EtnoKraków/Crossroads Festival, Debalina will be starring as the leader of the group consisting of five musicians, co-created by Rabi Mondal (aka Rabi Das Baul, a fantastic vocalist who also plays the traditional string instruments: dotar and khamak), Anurup Mallik (a vocalist specialising in traditional music of North Bengal and Assam), Arpan Thakur Chakraborty (playing dotar and banjo) and Sandip Bag (playing the tabla and percussion instruments).

The Baul are but a small fraction of Bengali population, but with a significant influence on Bengali culture; since 2005 their tradition has been on the UNESCO list of oral and intangible heritage of humanity. Folks Of Bengal pursues the Baul tradition of itinerant musicians singing about peace and love, and the Bahwayia tradition of the North Bengal and Yuhmur communities, as well as Bahtiali (the river song).

Debalina performed at many top music festivals, including Copenhagen World Music Festival and Essouria Hadrat Festival in Morocco; she has worked with such artists as Arnob (Bangladesh) and Ale Moller (Sweden). The artist has five records to her credit. One of them has reached the top thirty records on the prestigious World Music Chart in 2014.

 

The concert took place in 2017.