The Travelling Archive is a website about an ongoing journey through the rich and varied folk music of Bengal, covering mainly Bangladesh and the eastern Indian state of West Bengal and some adjoining areas of Assam, in the east of South Asia.

Back in 2004, Bengali singer, composer and music researcher Moushumi Bhowmik had embarked on this journey with sound recordist Sukanta Majumdar, supported by the Bangalore-based India Foundation for the Arts. The years that followed have been intense with music and friendship, festivals and fairs, field recording and documentation, and finally the dissemination of the music through archives and presentation/ performances, lectures and writing, while the two have continued to travel. The map of ‘Bengal’ expanded to include places as far away as Brick Lane and Commercial Street in east London, where immigrant Bangladeshis live. For this part of the fieldwork, Moushumi received support from the Charles Wallace India Trust and an acquisitions grant from the World and Traditional Music section of the British Library.

Through The Travelling Archive now, Moushumi and Sukanta take a step forward in sharing their joy of listening with, literally, a wider world, using the services of ‘our magnificent mass communication technology’.