Around 2003, at the start of her yet-unformed music research, Bengali singer and writer Moushumi Bhowmik was randomly listening to things at the British Library’s Sound Archives. It was there she first encountered the work of Arnold Bake. The first recording she made a note of was C52/1761, a Baul song sung by Acintadasi, recorded at Joydev Kenduli in January 1932. Between the lines of that catalogue entry and beneath the unfamiliar sounds of the wax cylinder seemed to lie a whole mysterious world and she felt totally drawn to it. Over the years, Moushumi’s own research and her collaboration with audiographer Sukanta Majumdar (www.thetravellingarchive.org), have both moved in many directions to produce the most fascinating sonic maps of Bengal. Arnold Bake has been one of their fixed destinations; a place to leave from and return to. In this presentation, Moushumi will talk about these maps and also about their process of map-making, tracing contour lines from listening, to recording, to listening to recordings, to recording the act of listening. An endless exercise, where we cannot sometimes remember what was at the source of the motion: the Bake-in Bengal archives scattered in many places, or what lies beyond? 
Moushumi Bhowmik is a singer, writer and music researcher based in Kolkata, who works in India, Bangladesh and the UK. She is co-creator, with audiographer/sound artist Sukanta Majumdar, of ‘The Travelling Archive: Field Recordings and Field Notes from Bengal’ project. Moushumi is currently researching on ‘The Politics of Archiving: Arnold Bake in Bengal’. She performs, publishes and lectures in both Bangla and English. She works with artists and scholars across many disciplines. Forthcoming is her collaboration with the Welsh poet Sophie Mckeand.

The Bake-in-Bengal Archives, and Beyond

The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world's greatest libraries. We hold over 13 million books, 920,000 journal and newspaper titles, 57 million patents and 6 million sound recordings. Open to everyone, the Library offers events, temporary exhibitions and a Treasures Gallery that displays over 200 items, including Magna Carta, a Gutenberg Bible and lyrics by The Beatles.