(The truth is and is well known in Bengal Sri Nityananda Baul inspired , Sir Chaitanya and gave him the Mahamantra, Hare krishna song and dance.) Baul is an oral tradition and so much has been distorted over time.
Subodh Mitra's 1955 classic oldie Bengali movie Raikamal, was filmed on Nabani Das Baul Babu's grandfather who raised him until he was 8. If a movie is made about you in India in 1955 you can guess that Sri Nabani Das Baul was a figure of importance, a legendary person.
In fact Sri Nabani Das was the guru of many Bengali's of the time, he was Baul Guru of the famous poet Rabindranath Tagore. Nabani Das was a Vaishnava Baul but also a very accomplished Kali Sadhaka at Tarapith, to this day Babu is on the board of Tarapith.
The Hindi movie Hansraj was based on the life of his father, Purna Das Baul in 1985. Raikamal (Bengali, 1955) is adapted from a story by the famous Bengali author Tarashankar Banerjee it starred Uttam Kumar, Kaberi Bose, Nitish Mukherjee, Sabitri Chatterjee, Chandrabati Devi, Jiben Bose, Namita Sinha and others with music directed by Pankaj Mullick..
The eminent US poet Allen Ginsberg holds a prominent role in the exposure of Baul song at the world stage. The poet on his visit to Shantiniketan, heard Nabani Das sing and his instantly fell in love with the baul music and Nabani Das became his Guru. He wrote about Nabani Das Baul in the New York Times.
Babu became friends and visited Allen Ginsberg over decades in New York before he passed away. Allen even wrote a song for Babu, the only piece of Baul poetry Ginsberg ever wrote.
Years later, when the organizers of Woodstock Music Festival decided to represent world music, they invited Pundit Ravi Shankar from India. Ginsberg suggested to the Woodstock organizers to invite Nabani Das, praising him as the eighth wonder of the world.
As the opportunity of performing in foreign shores presented itself, Sri Nabani Das Baul humbly declined the offer and instead sent his two sons to represent baul music on the world stage, thus Purna Das Baul and Luxman Das Baul traveled to Woodstock, they stayed at Albert Grossman's place in Woodstock for months and preformed at Woodstock. Not much is reported about this because they went back to India, where as Ravi Shankar stayed in America, so did Swami Satchitananda.
Babu got the new name Babu Kishan from the Indian Bollywood Cinema Directors Sooraj Salim and Mahesh Bhatt they gave him the name Babu Kishan as they found it difficult to pronounce “Krishnendu”, they started to call him Babu Kishan and that was fine with him as he had left his family in Bengal and was starting over in Bombay.
This is the time he started with RD Burman and ended up spending 13 years of association with one of Bollywood's legendary Music Composers. Babu followed in RD Burmans footsteps composing over 150 musical scores and 60 albums, and was awarded the most promising young composers of the 1990's.
Babu is an award winning music composer both in Bengal, he was composing music for his parents on HMV when he was 10 years old, he was a famous poet from age 8... and many of his poems were published in Calcutta under other names, including Krishnendu, he is a musical and poetic genius... and legendary Baul of his lineage.
Sri Nabani Das Baul is a Gosai, Goswami but took this name off of his name as he did not want anybody to touch his feet, he believed you should worship yourself... however, they are from a brahmin family going back thousands of years, and they do speak sanskrit, but they are Baul, freebirds, free from rules and regulations