Banyan Roots (2026) is a podcast series about the Baul and Fakir, musical mystics from Bengal, presented by Lucia Thomas and Subhajit Sengupta, philosophy and stories interwoven with field recordings and interviews Lucia Thomas recorded while studying in West Bengal, India.
Praner Alap—Meeting of Hearts (2025) is an album by Ochin Pakhi that breathes new life into Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry collection Gitanjali (Song Offerings). Released on Innova Recordings with a companion booklet of paintings inspired by each song, alongside Lucia Thomas’s own English translations of the Bengali lyrics.
Baba Yaga’s Stew (2019) is an album brewed for the whirling dance floor, flying across continents with wild renditions of international folksongs and enchanting original tunes from a band started by Lucia Thomas and Dianna Davis to bring global melodies to American contra dances.
The World in Chicago is an album (2015) by Chicago Folklore Ensemble and a book of immigrant stories (2016) celebrating five master musicians who carried their homelands—Argentina, Thailand, Jordan, Ghana, Serbia—across oceans to the neighborhoods of Chicago, their voices and instruments braided with string quartet in arrangements by Lucia Thomas and Sam Hyson.
Lucia Thomas is a multi-instrumentalist, music educator and folklorist based in Chicago. Her musical interests span the globe, and she has performed throughout Europe, in India and Mexico, as well as toured extensively in the U.S. with various projects. She is a two-time Fulbright awardee, with which she was able to create Banyan Roots, a podcast series in which songs and discussions from the Baul and Fakir, musical mystics of West Bengal, India and Bangladesh, guide conversations on history, ethnomusicology, and spirituality.
Lucia was co-founder and artistic director of the Chicago Folklore Ensemble, which aimed to celebrate immigrant communities by gathering and performing oral histories and traditional music from master immigrant musicians. With this ensemble, she has toured major venues, festivals and universities in the Chicago area and beyond.
Lucia’s most recent publication on Innova Records is a collection of Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry in an artful poetry/album pairing called “Praner Alap–Meeting of Hearts.” In 2019 she released an album with an all female band called “Baba Yaga’s Stew.” Lucia is the co-author of a 2016 Chicago Folklore Ensemble release called “The World in Chicago,” which is an album/book pairing of music and oral histories from Argentina, Thailand, Ghana, Jordan, and Serbia.
Lucia has collaborated with incredible Hindustani classical musicians such as Arman Khan and Ojas Adhiya, great Chicago jazz musicians like Orbert Davis, and Arabic musicians such as Wanees Zarour and Ronnie Malley. She is now pursuing a solo career as a Hindustani violinist, under the guidance of her guru, maestro Indradeep Ghosh. She is the string conductor of Ravinia’s El Sistema Middle School Orchestra. Driven by a strong commitment to human connection, Lucia bridges cultural divides with music, building on its age-old foundation of honoring human commonalities, challenging injustice, and celebrating everyday beauty.
