In the Flow of Songs: A presentation on the migrating music of Bengal
24. November 2010
Moushumi Bhowmik, a Bengali singer, writer and music researcher and Sukanta Majumdar, sound recordist will give a talk and presentation
Moushumi Bhowmik and Sukanta Majumdar have been travelling for over eight years in eastern India and Bangladesh and also among expatriate Bengali communities in London, recording songs and meeting with people for their ethnomusicological research on musical expressions of separation and longing (biraho in Bengali) in Bengal's folk repertoire. In the course of their own journey they have encountered journeys that people have been making for centuries from and into the land of Bengal and seen how those trails get written into the body of its music.
In this 40 minute presentation, using the arts of narration, live singing and audio-video illustration from their own field recordings and recordings made by others, this team of researchers from Calcutta will explore questions of what happens to the music when a land goes through many migrations such as Bengal has done, where many people and thus many musics have found their place and often undergone transformation and change, but which is also a land from which people are forever leaving/having to leave to go to another. The presentation will raise questions about the changeability of borders of lands and borders of music, and what journeys of people can do to alter or fix them.
24 November 2010, 6 pm
Kulturwissenschaftliches Kolleg (Bischofsvilla), Otto-Adam-Str. 5
Contact
Shaheen Dill-Riaz