Singing Tantra

Abstract

Abstract From congregational singing to reenactments of the ḍamburu drumming of Shiva, tantric auditory practices reflect a complex religious acoustemology. Sounds and songs in a variety of vernaculars have represented an important component of lived religion in tantric communities. This is especially relevant when dealing with Bengali esoteric lineages. This chapter employs “tantric” as a “post-emic” category, to ensure that heterodox and esoteric Bengali lineages, who do not define themselves as tāntrikas, can fit into interdisciplinary and comparative discussions on tantra. The chapter questions a scholarly paradigm that has constructed music-making as the domain of emotional bhakti and text-based ritualism, violence, and transgression as the domain of tantra and discusses how singing features ubiquitously in the history of tantric communities, urging us to take aural media into consideration for a fuller anthrohistorical understanding of tantra. The focus is also on the Matua community to address practices of sonic liberation that are embedded in tantric ideology. Transformative songs and soundful sādhana thus emerge as co-constitutive of numerous tantric traditions.