WALTHAM, MA–The Kabir Society of America and LearnQuest Academy of Music are holding the Second Annual Kabir Community Festival to commemorate Sant Kabir Das’s birth anniversary.
This year the festival will be held on Sunday, June 4, 2023 from 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM at 119 School Street, Waltham, Massachusetts.
The festival is free to all members of the public and will feature live performances and food. The festival is supported by a grant from the Mass Cultural Council and also several New England based community organizations.
Kabir lived in India in Varanasi around the 15th century CE. Just like today, those were also times of change, with warfare and conflicting ideas causing anxiety, strife, dislocation and fear. In this milieu Kabir spread a message of harmony, Bhakti and fraternity with a focus on believing in and improving oneself and spreading a culture of positive actions in the community.
One of his famous Bani’s states “Bura jo dekhan main chala, Bura na miliya koy, Jo dil khoja aapana, Mujhase bura na koy”. (rough translation – instead of finding fault and blaming others, look deeply into your own-self. This deep introspection will reveal that the root of the faults we see in others lies within us and our own perceptions and attitudes).
Kabirs message of fraternity, humanism, harmony, bhakti and self-analysis to continues to be very relevant in today’s times. To spread this message a number of community organizations got together and held the first Kabir Festival in June 2022 in Cambridge which was a big success.
Encouraged by the very positive community response and requests to formalize this as a New England tradition, the Kabir Society of America is holding the Second Kabir Festival this year in Waltham.
The festival will feature live performances of Kabir’s Bani in diverse styles. Entrance to the festival is free and food will also be available. In addition to Mass Cultural council, other supporters of the festival include Kabir Society of America, LearnQuest Academy of Music, Jago World, Boston Study Group, South Asia Center, Sanjha Punjab, Sapan, and Subdrift Boston
All members of the community are cordially invited to join.
