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 […]

Baotipara, a village of Faridpur near the town of Bhanga, was the home of the folk poet Banikanta Das and a place of kirtan. We have done fieldwork in this village many times and on this first trip, the women of Baotipara, aged probably between 20 and 45 years, sang songs of puja and wedding […]

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 […]

Ali Akbar, a young folk singer from Kushtia, arrived at the home of my filmmaker friends Tareque and Catherine Masud, in Dhaka on this December night when I was staying with them. He had come to the capital to take part in some cultural event. The folk music collector, singer and radio and TV producer, […]

This was my second field trip with Sukanta. The first one had also been to the temple town of Tarapith for the songs of the blind singer, Kanai Das Baul, but the session had got washed by rain, so we had decided to return the following week. My familiarity with the music of Kanai Das […]