We first met Linkon when we went to their house to record his mother and other women singing the Padma Puran on our first day in Dumra village in the Shalla region of Sunamganj, Sylhet. Our friend and guide on this trip, Suman Kumar Das, also lives in this village although his family originates from […]

About eight months after we met Hajera Bibi in the courtyard of her house in Ambikapur, Faridpur, the 93-year-old singer and composer passed away, in December 2006. So this is probably the last recording of her voice, or maybe there were other visitors, although when we saw her, she seemed to be living a forgotten […]

This was my first trip to Sylhet, escorted by Shah Alom Boyati. Boyatibhai took me to the shrine of Hazrat Shah Jalal, where we met Abdul Hamid ‘Jalali’. Then we went to Hamidbhai’s house in Sylhet town. Abdul Hamid, originally from Bogura in the north of Bangladesh, is a singer-composer of murshidi, bichchhed and Bangla […]