Chandrabati Roy Barman. 13, 14 January 2010, Kolkata

1. Kanai ki abhabe kar bhabe bhai

Artist:
Chandrabati Roy Barman
Composer:
Unknown
Form:
Kirtan
Song region:
Sylhet

2. Presentation at Jadavpur University with Chandrabati Barman

Artist:
Moushumi Bhowmik and Chandrabati Burman
Composer:

Form:
Presentation
Song region:
Kolkata

Chandrabati Roy Barman was invited to the Baul Fakir Utsav in Kolkata in 2010. It was through our work that our friends in Kolkata had come to know about her. Our friend and guide in Sylhet, Ambarish Dutta, brought a team to this festival; this became the beginning of a new phase of music sharing between Sylhet and Kolkata.

JU Conference

I was to speak at a seminar on orality and dissemination at Jadavpur University, Kolkata, at this same time. So I decided to make this presentation with Chandrabati mashima.

Masima singing at our place

The next morning, before I took mashima to her relatives in Birati, she sang a song I was trying to learn from her. She sat on the unmade bed and holding in her hands my notebook in which I had written down the words she had dictated to me, with light flowing in through the open windows and the water pump humming in the background, accompanied by a cacophony of crows, the attempt was to keep a record of the song, not so much to reach perfection in singing or recording. Now this song and her photograph in our house remain as her final gifts to us–the fact that she came to us and touched our lives with her grace.

Written in 2011. Last section added on 28 August 2014.