Sonic matters: Singing as method and the epistemology of singing across Bengali esoteric lineages

Abstract

Songs are knowledge" (g āne jñ ān) is a recurrent saying among Bauls, Fakirs, Sahajiyas, and other Bengali esoteric and heterodox communities. The sonic dimension of songs is related to cosmogonic vibration, seed, food, and feminine bodily fluids. Singing, requiring breath control and concentration, is associated with yoga. How is the performance of songs simultaneously an embodied way of knowing and an act of indigenous scholarship? Can the epistemology of singing coexist with hegemonic sensory epistemologies in a postcolonial South Asia? This article draws upon a ten-year ethnographic engagement with Bengali-speaking gurus and performers to discuss how singing provides a transformative and anthropopoietic knowledge, rooted in bodily experience and exchanged among performers-listeners to build togetherness in ways that subvert dominant ideologies of relatedness. This article also adopts Bengali understandings of ensounded knowledge to question the ocularcentric and scriptist epistemologies that underlie modern academia. Taking songs seriously as ways of knowing in their own right, I suggest singing as method and using the feelingful body as a research tool, not only for an ethnography that reflects the sensory epistemology of the communities I work with but also as a promising way to decolonize anthropology's epistemic ethnocentrism.

Decolonizing scholarship? Plural onto/epistemologies and the right to science

“…In this hierarchy human "races" are classified according to the sense organ that supposedly characterizes them. This classification positions the white European "eye-man" at the top and the Black African "skin-man" at the bottom (Lorea, 2022). Carola Lorea shows that this classification is also gendered: "Women were associated with debased oral culture, gossip, folklore, the realm of tales and superstition, while men were assumed to represent the propriety of grammar, logic, and literature" (Lorea, 2022, p. 842).…”

Gender, Education and Citizenship as Ideological Weapons of an ‘Army of Holy Women’ in Bengal: The Matua Matri Sena

“…This energetic excess is considered by devotees as a manifestation of the Vaishnava theology of feminine egalitarian devotional love (prem bhakti) towards Hari/Krishna, and is expressed also through emotional outbursts, in the form of weeping, hugging and touching all devotees present, irrespective of their sex. In such affective states, devotees enter trance-like conditions called bhaber bhibor (literally, hypnotized by emotions) (Lorea 2022). The Matuas have thus been associated with synonyms of lunacy-an excess, often linked with feminine domains of emotionality and affect-and marked by states of being "naamey premey matoyara" (maddened by [Hari's] names and love), which again is deemed as feminine, subservient, and yet strong and motivated (see Lorea 2020a, p. 3).…”

“…The embodied techniques of sound, rhythmic repetition and the dynamicity of movements enable a meditative manipulation of breath. This mindfulness is built upon a conception of the subtle body that can be directed towards divinity through sound (Lorea 2022). The mother gurus of the Matri Sena claim that the sonic path towards divinity also has direct influence on Matua social lives.…”

“…The mother gurus of the Matri Sena claim that the sonic path towards divinity also has direct influence on Matua social lives. Songs of sadhana (spiritual discipline) which the mother gurus rehearse and propagate, are believed to liberate one from kam (desire), since rather than viewing women as objects of sexual desire, they elevate them to the status of divine mothers (see Lorea 2022).…”