Summer fieldwork · Twelve conversations
A Stranger from Home
Bengali songs, memory, and the lives we carry with us.
“The first thing I learned is that nobody sings for you right away. You have to earn it.”
A conversation over tea in a Michigan restaurant.
Places carried in song
Twelve conversations is a small number. What follows is what I noticed among the people I sat with, and nothing more than that.
Sylhet
Several participants from Sylhet brought me to spiritual songs first, music tied to pirs, to shrines, and to family memory of who used to sing them.
Cumilla
Some participants from Cumilla described songs that were absent from family life, or that were never passed down to them. The absence was part of the story they wanted to tell.
Chittagong
With participants from Chittagong I heard familiar folk songs about love, distance, and home, the ones I grew up near, sung back to me somewhere far from there.