The Debate Over Improvisation’s Legitimacy in Bengali Devotional Performance: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

For some decades, an impassioned debate has been waged by scholars in Bengal over the value and legitimacy of singing the extemporaneous phrases and sentences called åkhars1 in padåvalî kîrtan. This semi-dramatic musical form, for centuries the most prominent genre of devotional performance in the region, takes its name from the body of lyrics composed from roughly the fifteenth through the eighteenth centuries that are known as the Vaishnava padåvalî. The songs in each padåvalî kîrtan performance constitute lyrical interludes in a narrative recounting a single episode in the love of Rådhå and Krishna or the life of the ecstatic devotee
Chaitanya, widely regarded as a dual incarnation of Rådhå and Krishna. For at least the past several generations, padåvalî kîrtan performers have improvised åkhars in the lyrics of their songs. The controversy surrounding this practice arises from the fact that these åkhars are not found in the printed versions of the pads in the extant Vaishnava anthologies.