The music inside

Baul instruments find a ready market as items of home decor, giving the artisans who make them an added source of income.

If you thought that the ektara, the one-stringed musical instrument typically used by the Baul folk singers of Bengal, had lost its relevance today, then think again. Many of these rustic instruments are now finding their way into the drawing rooms of swish homes in India and abroad.

This is happening through the efforts of Antar Jantar, a society of artisans from rural Bengal who manufacture Baul musical instruments, and Sasha, a Kolkata-based non-profit orgainsation that works to develop and market the local crafts.

 

Antar Jantar, which means “instrument of the heart” in Bengali, is a registered society that was started in 1995 by Paban Das Baul, a well-known Baul singer who greatly helped to spread the popularity of this form of Sufi music among urban audiences and even foreigners. The objective of the society was to help the dying Baul tradition by giving it a market abroad. “Today, Paban Das lives in Paris but Antar Jantar still supports the cause of Baul music,” says Subrata Sarkar, supervisor at Antar Jantar.

Antar Jantar currently has about 22 artisans manufacturing these folk musical instruments. “These musical instruments are small and can be used to play simple tunes quite easily. No wonder they are so popular,” Sarkar adds.

Antar Jantar has three workshops in Ranaghat, Panikhali and Aranghata towns in the Nadia district of West Bengal. “The instruments are made from different materials in these workshops, by skilled artisans,” says Sarkar. Aranghata, for instance, specialises in pottery, and skilled porters at the workshop make percussion instruments such as the tabla. The Panikhali workshop specialises in string instruments like the ektara, do-tara (a two-string instrument) and khamak, a desi version of the multi-string guitar. These instruments are given a final polish at the Ranaghat workshop. 

As for prices, they start from Rs 200 and go upto Rs 2,000 depending on the size and degree of customisation. “Antar Jantar keeps a 10-15 per cent profit margin. Even so, the artisans earn about Rs 2,500 to Rs 4,000 per month. Also, they are usually not full-time workers, being porters, leather workers or agricultural labourers who earn some extra by manufacturing instruments,” says Sarkar. Antar Jantar also gives the artisans monthly wages, medical benefits and loans.  

“There is a huge demand for these musical instruments abroad, and we export to Europe and the US,” says Raminder Khan, manager at Sasha. Besides selling original-sized musical instrument the store in central Kolkata also stocks smaller versions. “People, especially foreigners, prefer these as souvenirs,” adds Khan. Being a part of the World Fair Trade Organisation, Sasha ensures that artisans of Antar Jantar get their due in the market, besides guiding them on how to meet demand in the international and domestic markets. “We don’t improvise on the musical instrument because its basic simplicity attracts buyers. But we customise the size,” says Khan.

“We did brisk business in the years before the recession when we had a annual turnover of about Rs 10 lakh. But with the global meltdown there has been a steep decline in demand abroad, so much so that our annual turnover has come down to about Rs 2 lakh,” says Sarkar. But he is optimistic that demand will continue to grow as Sasha helps Antar Jantar enter newer markets with the help of online orders.