Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Badrinath
Below are a few rare pictures of Shri Veena Baba (1916-1990), one of the
greatest Nadayogis and musician saints of modern times. He lived for most
of his life in the holy pilgrimage center of Badrinath, situated high up in the
Himalayas.
He would pass his days playing his veena and singing to Bhagavan Vishnu.
He hardly ever spoke to anybody. He was a maestro of Rudra Veena (which
he is holding in his hands) and some of his extremely rare musical
recordings were made as part of a UNESCO project, which you can hear in
the video below.
Listen to Sri Veena Baba playing his Veena, a recording from a UNESCO
collection:
He would daily sit in the temple compound and would teach me the swaras,
and when others would come we would all sing kirtana lead by him. Sriman
Narayan, Narayan. Interesting was his morning practice of first having bath
in Tapt Kund, a natural hot mineral spring, and then immediately having an
ice cold bath in the grace-filled river of Alakananda. And after this he would
do yogasanas in the sunshine beside the river, ending them with Shishasana,
headstand, and that alone for at least 15 mins.
Although Swamiji spent all his Spring and Summer days in Sri Badrinath
Dham, we were surprised to see that his own Ishtadev, form of worship was
Sri Narsinghji Bhagavan! That amazing image could be held in one hand, and
he was seated on a throne with the child Prahladji on one knee and Sri
Laxmi Devi on the other.
Whenever I sat with Swamiji inside the temple area we would sing and he
would tell us amazing stories of the grace of Sri Badri Narayana, and His
devotees. Only once did I see him in Sri Vrindavan, when there was the
special music festival there in Niddhi Van of Swami Hari Dasji Samaro.
Several times He has been on TV, the Door Darshan featured him playing his
unique Brahma Veena and singing beautiful bhajans.
He is one of the very beautiful saints of India whose grace and blessings I
will always treasure.
Whenever I set with Swamiji inside the temple we would sing and he would
tell us amazing stories of the grace of Sri Badri Narayana, and His devotees.
Only once did I see him in Sri Vrindavan, when there was the special music
festival there in Niddhi Van, The Swami Hari Dasji Samaro. Several times He
has been on TV, the Door Darshan featured him playing his unique Brahm
Vina and singing beautiful bhajans.
Swami Parvatikar, an exponent of nada yoga, tried to spread spirituality
through music. He has given numerous musical performances all over India.
He invented Dattatreya Veena by mixing sitar, vichitra veena and
swarmandal to rudra veena. Alain Danilou has made recordings of his
performances between 1950 and 1955. They are now part of a UNESCO
project UNESCO Collection of Traditional Music of the World. As a tribute to
Alain Danilou, UNESCO re-issued the album on 1997 as Anthology of Indian
Classical Music A Tribute to Alain Danilou.