| Paban Das Baul | |
| Birth Name: | Paban Das |
| Birth Place: | Mohammedpur, Murshidabad district, West Bengal, India[1] |
| Genre: | Baul music, folk-fusion |
| Occupation: | Singer, composer |
| Years Active: | 1970s–present |
| Label: | [2] |
Paban Das Baul (born 1961) is a noted Baul singer and musician from India, who also plays a dubki, a small tambourine and sometimes an ektara as an accompaniment. He is known for pioneering traditional Baul music on the international music scene and for establishing a genre of folk-fusion music.[3]
Born in Mohammedpur, a small village in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal, where his early musical influences were his father, and wandering baul singers.
In 1988, Das Baul started collaborating with Sam Mills, a London-born guitarist who had performed with experimental, avant garde group 23 Skidoo between 1979 and 1982. Their collaboration resulted in the acclaimed album Real Sugar (1997), a Peter Gabriel's Real World Records release,[4] it marked one of the first fusions of Bengali music and Western pop music.[5] The album features psychedelic elements to it and has been compared to the work of artists such as George Harrison, Ananda Shankar and The Bombay Royale.[6] He has also collaborated with the London-based State of Bengal and Susheela Raman. In 2005, the Baul tradition was included in the list of "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity" by UNESCO.[7]
He also performed at the Jaipur Literature Festival[8] and the "Nine Lives" Concert, 2009 in London, of William Dalrymple.[9]
He met Mimlu as a concert audience in 1982 in Paris, they later married and lived in Paris for many years. He has taught himself to read, not just Bengali, but Hindi, English and French.