Deben Bhattacharya - Asian Voyages I

Curated by Arindam Sen

Deben Bhattacharya’s work as field recordist and musical archivist has few parallels in the 20th Century. Born in Varanasi in 1921, Bhattacharya moved to London in the 1940s. In 1955, he set out on an iconic, one year 12000 mile journey, traveling through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, all the way to Calcutta and back, tracing the living traditions of ethnic music.

Bhattacharya wasn’t a musician: his instrument was a 35 kg GB-Kalee spool tape recorder. He is globally known thanks to the numerous vinyl records found in “World Music” sections. Less is known about his filmmaking, which unlike his work with indigenous music and photography, is more accidental. Offered financial assistance by David Attenboroughwhile traveling to India in 1962, he brought back footage shot on a 16mm Bolex camera and musical recordings which were later edited into the documentary films Kathakali and Storytellers from Rajasthan. Buoyed by the success of this venture, Bhattacharya finished over twenty films, produced by the BBC, UNESCO, and other record and film producers for a largely western audienceHis cultural-anthropological and ethnomusicological pursuits resulted in a mode of filmmaking that lies between the Newsreels of British Pathé and the documentaries of Alan Lomax or John Cohen.

With two programs on consecutive evenings comprising a total of six films, Asian Voyages seeks to place Bhattacharya’s filmmaking into the spotlight for the first time. (AS)

With many thanks to Jharna Bose, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), and Sushrita Acharjee.

Arindam Sen is an independent film curator and critic  He co-founded the Brussels based platform for Experimental film programs, Cinema Parenthèse. His writings have appeared in Millennium Film Journal, Senses of Cinema, Lumière and Marg magazine among others.

Faces in the Forest
Deben Bhattacharya, UK, 1973, 27 min. English

A Gem called Sri Lanka
Deben Bhattacharya, UK, 1973, 27 min. English

Music and Dance in Nepal
Deben Bhattacharya, UK, 1972, 27 min. English

Followed by a talk with Paul Purgas

Shot in the rural hinterlands of the Belpahari village in West Bengal, Faces in the Forest documents the lives of the Santhal community living isolated on the margins of society. Their song and dance traditions, enmeshed in ritualism and veneration of the forest, remain at the core of the film. A gem called Sri Lanka is the first of three films that Bhattacharya made on the island nation in the 1970s. It depicts a people that draw their livelihood from agriculture and fishing, professions that are intimately tied to popular forms of music and performance. In Music and Dance in Nepal the interrelationship of religion and music for people living in the Himalayan monarchy are portrayed. Musical performances involving instruments such as the Sarangi, the flute, and different kinds of percussion take centre stage. (AS)

Paul Purgas is a London-based artist, musician and writer. His research projects include a series of BBC Radio 3 documentaries on the life and work of Deben Bhattacharya, the history of India’s first electronic music studio, and a study of radical pedagogy within South Asian spirituality.