[Reader-list] The Travelling Archive: Folk Music of Bengal

[Chintan Girish Modi]

>From http://thetravellingarchive.org/home.php

The Travelling Archive is a website about an ongoing journey through the
rich and varied folk music of Bengal, covering mainly Bangladesh and the
eastern Indian state of West Bengal and some adjoining areas of Assam, in
the east of South Asia.

Back in 2004, Bengali singer, composer and music researcher Moushumi Bhowmik
had embarked on this journey with sound recordist Sukanta Majumdar,
supported by the Bangalore-based India Foundation for the
Arts<http://www.indiaifa.org/>.
The years that followed have been intense with music and friendship,
festivals and fairs, field recording and documentation, and finally the
dissemination of the music through archives and presentation/ performances,
lectures <http://thetravellingarchive.org/presentation.php> and
writing<http://thetravellingarchive.org/writings.php>,
while the two have continued to travel. The map of ‘Bengal’ expanded to
include places as far away as Brick Lane and Commercial Street in east
London, where immigrant Bangladeshis live. For this part of the fieldwork,
Moushumi received support from the Charles Wallace India
Trust<http://www.britishcouncil.org/india-scholarships-cwit.htm>and an
acquisitions grant from the World
and Traditional Music section of the British Library <http://www.bl.uk/wtm>.

Through The Travelling Archive now, Moushumi and Sukanta take a step forward
in sharing their joy of listening with, literally, a wider world, using the
services of ‘our magnificent mass communication
technology<http://www.culturalequity.org/alanlomax/ce_alanlomax_saga.php>
’.