Ektara
The ektara is the one-stringed lute of rural Bengal, made from a gourd or a bamboo tube with a skin face and a single steel string that is plucked and struck to produce a thin, continuous drone. It is the instrument of the wandering Baul singers of Bengal, who carry the ektara with their other small instruments and sing songs of the divine within the human body, of love and of the inner search, in an oral tradition that is not written down. The Bauls move from village to village, and the drone of the ektara sets the rhythm and pitch for the song, sometimes with a gopichand drum in the other ha