The Travelling Archive shares with readers and listeners extracts from a growing collection of folk music of Bengal, recorded in the field by Moushumi Bhowmik and Sukanta Majumdar from 2003.

The collection stands at present at approximately 180 hours of songs and interviews from about 97 sessions, and it is sorted here by performer/ composer, form and place names, with descriptions of the recording sessions, while the audience/viewer is taken through an interactive map. The music is presented in the context of the place from where it comes, the lives of the people who live there and the history and politics of the musical tradition and so on. In other words, The Travelling Archive is concerned with questions of ethnomusicology and deals with music which still belongs to an oral tradition, stressing on the orality and aurality of transmission, dissemination and reception. The extracts are short but representative and they will help, hopefully, to arouse interest in the listener for more. New song clips and videos will be regularly uploaded, as the website evolves and the journey continues.

The Travelling Archive is not merely the story of a personal journey through a world of music, but it is also about other journeys that musicians and scholars have been making, mainly in Bengal, as well as in other places within the Indian Subcontinent, for at least a hundred years. In so doing, The Travelling Archive tries to take its own collection beyond regional boundaries, while placing this research in the larger context of similar research on folk music. Besides, it also looks at certain technical, aesthetic and ethical questions relating to field recording.

The Travelling Archive is a collection of many voices and the collectors have collaborated with colleagues from many other fields to make this presentation more complete than they alone could have done, being aware nonetheless that what is being presented can still only tell a ‘partial truth’ about this music and its place and people. The website invites more voices to join in with clarifications and contradictions, questions and endorsements, opinion and debate, so that we can have vibrant interactions on our blog and take lessons from fellow travellers in sound and music.