Bhungur Khan and his team of Manganiyar singers from Barmer in Rajasthan had been invited to our 10th Baul Fakir Utsav in Jadavpur Shaktigarh in January 2015. For some years we had been inviting a team of bhakti/sufi singers from outside Bengal, to come and sing songs which would have some overlap with the songs […]

Mainadal is a village in Birbhum district, West Bengal, 215 km northwest of Kolkata. It is home of the famous Mitra Thakur family, known for their practice of kirtan around the shrine of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who has been their house deity since the beginning of Vaishnavism in Bengal, about 500 years ago. We reached Mainadal […]

Chandrabati Roy Barman was invited to the Baul Fakir Utsav in Kolkata in 2010. It was through our work that our friends in Kolkata had come to know about her. Our friend and guide in Sylhet, Ambarish Dutta, brought a team to this festival; this became the beginning of a new phase of music sharing […]

When Gour Khepa succumbed to his fatal injuries from a road accident in a hospital in Kolkata on 27 January 2013, there were many friends and bhaktas (devotees) waiting outside to take him to his samadhi or burial in Kankalitala, not far from his home in Bolpur, Birbhum. There this wild and restless artist would […]

We had this session in the courtyard of our late friend, Sadek Ali’s house in Ambikapur bazar, Faridpur. The evening before we had had another session inside his house. Like his mentor, the poet Jasimuddin, Sadek Ali bhai was a true lover of music, which is why he could open his doors to anyone who […]

This was our second recording session with the well-known Sylheti singer Helal Miah, in his Limehouse council flat in East London. Ahmed Moyez had taken us to Helal. First we met in Moyez’s Surma News office, then went to this Limehouse flat on 3 March 2007. There was Helal and his friend Ahmed Ali, the […]

This was my second meeting with Ahmed Moyez, Sukanta’s frst. I had met him in August 2006 in the office of Betar Bangla–a Bengali/Bangadeshi, more specifically Sylheti, radio station in Bethnal Green. Ruhul Amin, Sylheti filmmaker in London, had taken me there and many other people had also come—mainly students and intellectuals from the Sylheti […]

Chandrabati Roy Barman and Sushoma Das were both born and brought up in the natural environment of song and rituals in villages in the Sunamganj area of Sylhet in eastern Bangladesh, a region known for its music and mystic poets. This was the time before Partition in 1947, for both women are now above 80. […]

Ruhitaswar Chakraborty, popularly known as Ruhi Thakur, a man who left such an indelible mark on us with his songs. Perhaps because he would be gone within a year of this recording? At the time of his death from cancer Ruhida was hardly in his mid-50s. A day before this recording session we had seen […]

This audio clip is from a documentary film on people who live in the forest regions of south-western West Bengal and policies which govern their lives, for which I was asked to compose music. I decided to base the music on field recordings and so Sukanta and I went to Jahajpur village of Purulia, to […]

This recording session was organised by our friend and teacher Salamat Khan, a confirmed bohemian who lives in Faridpur town in the west of Bangladesh and knows the place and its people inside out. For years one of his main passions has been songs of the 19th century poet-philosopher of Kushtia, Lalon Fokir, Faridpur being […]

From the time that I had set out for Rangpur in Bangladesh, I was keen to find one singer whom I had heard on a recording made by the ethnomusicologist Deben Bhattacharya (1921-2001), who is known for his collection of songs from the gypsy trail, among other things. Deben Bhattacharya, a Bengali originally from Benaras […]

The senior baul singer, Fulmala, was passing by our room in Kenduli when Debdas Baul’s youngest son, Uttam, saw her and invited her in. She stopped for this short interview and a couple of songs, recorded on camera by Sudheer Palsane. Fulmala said, ‘Those days when I could really sing are gone’. Even though she […]

Ashalata was magical on stage, performing the birth of Krishna through song, narration and dance. Now she was Basudeb, Krishna’s father, now Kangsha, his wicked uncle,  now Jashoda, his adoptive mother. Her team of musicians, including her brother and her husband, both khol players, supported her as she made this mythological tale come alive for […]

This video was shot by Sudheer Palsane and the audio recording was made by Sukanta at the home of Golam Shah, a fakir from Shaspur in Birbhum. Golam Shah was a little over 60 years, but he looked much older, more so because he had not been keeping well. He had been hospitalised a few […]

Monjila is a singer of bichchhed gaan and pala gaan who lives in Dhaka. I met her through the Bangladeshi filmmaker, my friend, Tareque Masud; she had played herself in his and Catherine Masud’s documentary on the oral history of the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, Muktir Kotha (Words of Freedom, 1999) for which I had […]

Changrabandha, is a small town in the India-Bangladesh border in Coochbehar district of North Bengal, where we went to record some bhaoaiya musicians. Abhay Roy, one of the main singers of this session and a health department employee, lived here and the session was organised by our local guides in Coochbehar, Chandan Paul and Amulya […]

I met the Baul couple, Shyamsundar Das and his khepi or partner, Kalpana Dasi, at Bolpur station. It was Nimai Chand Baul, the dotara player and singer, who had told me about Kalpana; he said she was one of the prominent women singers among the bauls now. I was interested, because you don’t get too […]