It's joyful to learn the difference between Kabir in text, song and performance: Linda Hess

BENGALURU: Author Linda Hess's connection with India was forged when she was a 16year-old student at Stanford University. Transcendentalist American writers like Emerson, Whitman and Thoreau, passion for poetry and an inclination for spirituality took her to Bihar on a Fulbright Scholarship in 1964. A “closet passion“ for learning Hindi led to a PhD dissertation on Kabir, one of the saint-poets in the Bhakti movement. Since then, she dedicated her life to the 15th century poet.“That sealed my fate,“ said the 71-year-old author who is in the city to release her third book `Bodies of Song' that traces Kabir's contribution in oral traditions, music and other performative works.

Hess, a senior lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies at Stanford University, has previously written 'The Bijak of Kabir' (with Shukdev Singh) and 'Singing Emptiness: Kumar Gandharva Performs the Poetry of Kabir'.She is also the senior advisor of the Kabir Project, an initiative by film-maker Shabnam Virmani, an artist-in-residence at the city-based Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology.

Why Kabir? “Well, most Bhakti poets have a signature line, all of them addressing their God. Kabir, with his `Suno bhai sadho', dynamically uses the vocative to engage the listener. This makes it gripping and engaging.“

The authenticity of Kabir's poems have often been debated, given that his works were never recorded. Hess's book revisits this oral tradition.

While she was drawn to Kabir's satirical literary narrative and his sharp criticism of both Hindus and Muslims for their sectarian delusions, the book is a 12-year-long labour of love that involves living and travelling with Indian folk musicians and artists featuring Kabir in their work. “It traces singers in the Malwa region of Madhya Pradesh where I travelled with (Padma Shri) Prahlad Singh Tipanya, an extraordinary interpreter of Kabir,“ Hess said, adding that it was joyful to learn difference between Kabir in text, song and performances. “There is a lot of first-person in this book through stories. Some of it academic but most ethnographic and experiential.“