ABSTRACT
Recent research on devotional song in South Asia has noted how the “oral-performative” sphere is a space of live interaction between singing and listening bodies, where dynamic transformation calls into question the ontology of the written text itself. This chapter concerns a type of devotional song in Bengal, padābalī kīrtan, where there exists a large repertoire of lyrics that are only sounded and actualized in performance. These interstitial lines expand on the images and affective import of each song text, and further advance the theological, didactic, and aesthetic aims of the repertoire. The absence of these lyrics in the published archive of padābalī kīrtan raises questions about the politics that define the relationship between written texts and the oral-performative sphere.
