Event Details

  • Date
  • Tue 08th Oct 2019
  • Venue
  • Idea Store Whitechapel
  • Address

  • 321 Whitechapel Road, London, E1 1BU View Map

  • Time

  • 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm

How did Muslim Bengali poets experience life in colonial Rangoon (Yangon)? – By Dr Richard David Williams

Free Entry

About this Event
How did Muslim Bengali poets experience life in colonial Rangoon (Yangon)? Reading through several cheaply printed books from the very end of the nineteenth century, Richard argues that Bengali migrant workers and poets discussed the city in terms of sound. They documented the new disquieting noises of colonial industries, the alluring voices of dancing girls, and the theatre companies touring from overseas, which collectively capture an echo of the colonial urban soundscape.

These poems and songs gesture to a local Bengali history of Burmese cities, underpinned by larger Indian Ocean networks between Calcutta, Chittagong, and Rangoon.

This talk considers how these authors positioned themselves in Rangoon, and how their sense of an oceanic network influenced the way they heard the music and sounds of colonial Burma and shaped the ways in which they responded through song, lyric, and print.

BENGAL HISTORY WEEK 2019
This event is part of a Special Tenth Anniversary celebrating the Annual Bengal History Week
4-19 October 2019
By Brick Lane Circle

BANGLADESHIBENGALBENGALI