Moushumi Bhowmik

Moushumi Bhowmik (Bengali: মৌসুমী ভৌমিক; born 29 December, 1964) is a Bengali singer, writer and researcher based in Kolkata, who works in India, Bangladesh and the UK. She is one of the most significant artistes to emerge from the 1990s. A singer-songwriter, she is known to perform Bengali folk songs, as well as her own compositions. She has released four albums― Tumio Chil Hao (1994), Ekhono Galpo Lekho (2000), Ami Ghor Bahir Kori (2001), Songs from 26H (2017).[1] She has composed for documentaries and art cinema. Bhowmik created The Travelling Archive, based on field recordings from Bengal. She also conducts doctoral research at the School of Cultural Texts and Records at Jadavpur University on wax cylinder recordings from Bengal made in the 1930s, and explores the process and politics of archiving.

Moushumi Bhowmik
Born (1964-12-29) 29 December 1964
Jalpaiguri
EducationPine Mount School, Shilong

Santiniketan

Jadavpur University
OccupationSinger, Songwriter, Music Composer, Researcher, Archivist, Writer, Translator, Editor
Known forComposer and singer of 'Ami Sunechi Sedin' aka 'Swapno Dekhbo Bole', 'Joshor Road' and other Bangla songs; Bengali translator of 'Totto-Chan'.
Moushumi Bhowmik
OriginKolkata, West Bengal
GenresSelf-composed contemporary Bengali songs, Folk, Rabindrasangeet
Years active1994–present
Labels'Tumio Chil Hao' (1994)

'Ekhono Galpo Lekho' (2000)

'Ami Ghor Bahir Kori' (2001)

'Songs from 26H' (2017)
Websitewww.thetravellingarchive.org

Family and early life

Moushumi Bhowmik was born on 29 December 1964 at Jalpaiguri, a small town of North Bengal. Moushumi's father Bhupendranath Bhowmik, who was originally from Pabna district of East Bengal, moved to West Bengal for education and a job. Her mother Anita Sengupta (Bhowmik)'s family was originally from Barisal district of East Bengal, but they settled in Jalpaiguri before the partition. Moushumi is the youngest of two children of her parents. Her elder sister Goutami is a mathematician.

Education

Moushumi attended Pine Mount School in Shilong and for higher school education was sent to Santiniketan. She completed her graduation and post-graduation from the Department of English, Jadavpur University.She is now completing her doctoral thesis on the ethnographic field recordings from Bengal of Arnold Bake, at the School of Cultural Texts and Records, Jadavpur University.

Works

Moushumi Bhowmik has lived in many places since her childhood, including Shillong, Santiniketan, Kolkata and London, and extensively travelled in Bangladesh. Moushumi started her career as a journalist by joining The Statesman as a sub-editor. In 1996, she joined Stree, a Kolkata based independent publisher on gender and society, as an editor and began and developed Stree's Bengali titles. Moushumi began to write songs in Bangla in the 1990s. [2]

Moushumi Bhowmik formed a band named Parapar in 2002 with members from Kolkata and London. The band aimed to stress the continuity between diverse musical traditions– kirtan, bhatiyali, the blues and both Indian and Western classical music– blending them into a subtle and distinctive musical language. They also drew upon folk material collected by Moushumi from West Bengal, Assam and Bangladesh.

Moushumi Bhowmik composed for Matir Moina (The Clay Bird, dir. Tareque Masud), which won the Critics' Prize at Cannes in 2002 and Best Music at Kara Film Festival, Karachi in 2003. She has also composed and sang for some documentaries and art cinema films.

In 2003, Moushumi embarked on a journey of recording and documenting the tradition of Bengali folk music, covering mainly Bangladesh and the eastern Indian state of West Bengal and some adjoining areas of Assam in the east of South Asia; even distant locations such as the Bengali/Bangladeshi neighbourhoods of East London. Moushumi is the co-creator of the field recordings-based project in Bengal called The Travelling Archive, where she explored new avenues of research and dissemination, including archiving and working with archival material, writing and publication, presentation-performance and lectures, collaboration with museums and art galleries, and launching a record label with selections of field recordings.

Moushumi Bhowmik's work is in the Women's Revolutions Per Minute (WRPM) archive, a collection dedicated to music by women, now housed in Special Collections at Goldsmiths College, London University.

Writings

Moushumi Bhowmik's essays have been published in both English and Bengali in journals, both international as well as regional. Her essays have been included in several volumes on music and sound, including On Listening (London and Sheffield: CRiSAP and RGAP, 2013), edited by Cathy Lane and Angus Carlyle and Poetics and Politics of Sufism and Bhakti in South Asia: Love, Loss and Liberation (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2011), edited by Kavita Panjabi.

Moushumi Bhowmik has written and translated for children, edited anthology of Bengali muslim women's writings.

Discography
  • Matir Moyna (2002)
  • Ami Ghor Bahir Kori (2001)
  • Ekhono Golpo Lekho (2000)
  • Tumio Cheel Hao (1994)
  • Songs from 26H (2017)

References
  1. বই-টই - Moushumi Bhowmik, Facebook
  2. "You do not have a so called structured training in music. Do you think that turned out to be an advantage in your case? I cannot really see it as my advantage or disadvantage. There are circumstances in people's lives, those circumstances can be both limiting and liberating. I think it is more a question of what you make of your circumstances and where you go from there. 'Structured' training is something I did not have, sure, but if you map my trajectory, you will probably find some kind of a structure in it too. I walked a certain path because I did not/could not walk some other. I can only talk about the road that has been mine. What else could have happened had things been different, had I learned things properly, methodically, within a given system--it is only a matter of conjecture. If I knew how to recognise all the ragas, if I knew each and every mythological allusion I heard in a kirtan, if I had the vocal agility of greats like Ashwini Bhide Deshpande which would allow me to span octaves, if I had the finesse of Rajeswari Dutta or the virtuosity of Malati Ghoshal, or if I was able to distinguish Baroque from Romantic, just like that, would that not be nice? It sure would. But I can do none of those things. And that is my reality. That is all I can say. You see, 'structure' is also such a social and political thing. You are a singer and songwriter. How is a song born? Also do the singer and songwriter often quarrel with each other and if so, how do you resolve the tussle? This is hard to say. I began to write songs in the 1990s. That was a long time ago. Each song was born out of some lived experience or some felt emotion or both. I am still like that, although I write far fewer songs now. I was never very prolific anyway. Once a song begins to form, I cannot say what comes before and what after. The words and the melody flow--sometimes words and melody are born at the same time. Joshor Road for example, I wrote all sixteen verses and one look at them, I sang the whole song at one go. Don't know how. Sometimes a song is born from a word, just one word, sometimes a phrase. But I don't force myself to write anything. If a song comes to me, then it does. Then it is hard to explain the creative process. But of course a lot of chiselling and fine-tuning goes on after a song is born and it changes, evolves, and becomes something else as time goes by. It has a life of its own and because it has a life, so sometimes I also have to see it die. For many listeners, you mark an epoch in Bengali music almost introducing a new kind of aesthetics with minimal instrumentation. Would you agree? Also what are you trying to achieve or address through your music? I do not know about epochs. That is for the historian to say. I merely began to work in a certain time and will work for a certain number of years. Whether anything of my work will remain, I cannot say. I do not think of such things. I have not tried to achieve anything with my songs. I write and sing because I am moved to do so, that is all. Music is a part of my natural being. Your songs are classified as the modern song (adhunik) type. How do you respond to such categorisation? That is a Wiki classification. And I have long had in mind to edit that bit. But I am also too busy and lazy. What is Bangla adhunik gaan? I think of a certain sound when I think of adhunik gaan — 1950s, 60s, sweet, rich, sentimental, romantic. Things we heard as children, on 'Onurodher Ashor', things the cover artists, 'remake shilpi's as they are called in Bangla, tried to revive. And they were also pretty successful. In this post-adhunik time, why freeze a song and a singer in a certain musical era? Is my sound 'adhunik'? Then again if you think of adhunik being also contemporary, I could also be seen as adhunik. I am of my time, after all. Again, say contemporary before a Western musician and that will immediately suggest a certain genre of Western music. Therefore labels are always problematic. But now our politics is all about defining one's identity. How to escape it?" https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/music/interview-with-moushumi-bhowmik/article19683055.ece
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