Did the songs of Narottam Das Thakura and others not protect the popular Gaudiya tradition?
When the songs were available, and the songs also contained the philosophy, didn't that guard the tradition? Yes, the songs were there.
At the same time, what happened was, there were many upper sampradas also came. And the upper sampradas, they also had their songs. And sometimes, what is there is not as important as what is popularized.
So what Bhaktivinoda Thakur did was, quite often he would take the musical meter and the poetic structure of the songs of these upper sampradas, Aula Baula, and he gave pure Vaishnava Siddhanta in that meter, in that music. So like we have mantra, Prabhupada did in Avalon Ballroom, the same mantra, but in the contemporary musical genre. So that's how, at that time, see music also, it keeps changing.
So what was there, the kind of music, Bengali music, at the time of Narottam Das Thakur, that is not always the same as, say, by the time of Bhaktivinoda Thakur. It's like in movies also we see, the kind of songs 50 years ago or 100 years ago, and the kind of songs now, they are different. So at that time, what was contemporary, Bhaktivinoda Thakur took that time.
And he represented that in his songs also. Yeah, he was brilliant.