This grant under IFA’s Bengali Language Initiative supports researcher Indrani Majumdar to collect, digitise, annotate and archive 78 rpm gramophone records of Bengali plays performed from 1900 to 1930. The project will cover plays performed on the stage as well as those produced exclusively for gramophone recordings. The gramophone companies launched their business in India by recording theatre pieces from Calcutta. Their association with the Bengali proscenium stage actors continued for many years, resulting in a significant body of theatre-related recordings. These recordings comprised theatre songs, excerpts from plays, humorous songs and sketches and short plays specifically written for the gramophone. Unfortunately, a large number of records containing early theatre pieces were not preserved properly and, as a result, many of the discs manufactured prior to the 1930s are difficult to locate today. Indrani says, “The overwhelming fear is that many of these early discs are probably lost forever.”

Relatively small and specialised collections, however, are available with a handful of private collectors and theatre enthusiasts. Indrani is one such collector, who inherited a small collection of gramophone discs from her father and soon realised that these shellac discs are fragile and decay fast. In addition, early shellac discs develop scratches when played on a conventional 78 rpm player. Moreover, most private collectors have very little knowledge about disc preservation. Some of the gramophone discs in her possession capture the voices of thespians like Surendranath Ghosh, son of pioneering theatre actor, Girish Chandra Ghosh, Nati Binodini, Sisir Kumar Bhaduri and Naresh Mitra.

Indrani will locate other collectors and classify the collected discs in the following manner: a) Songs from plays, b) Dialogue and excerpts from plays, c) Humorous sketches and songs written specially for gramophone companies, d) Short plays, e) Full length plays, and f) Background music for theatre productions that were orchestrated by famous bands such as the Classic Theatre Orchestra. Indrani estimates that she will be able to collect around 100 tracks under these various categories. Indrani will digitise these tracks with the assistance of the School of Cultural Texts & Records (SCTR) at Jadavpur University. The SCTR is a well equipped audio and text archive, headed by Prof. Amlan Dasgupta. Prof. Dasgupta will function as Indrani’s mentor for this project as the process of digitising fragile vintage discs involves complex technical manoeuvres.

The usability of the collection will be enhanced by the detailed annotation that Indrani will provide. This will include biographical information of the artists and recording details. Indrani will transcribe the full texts of humorous skits and songs, as these were exclusively written for the gramophone companies and were not usually published. These texts will be of value to theatre practitioners, scholars, historians and students today. The digitised discs accompanied by the relevant metadata, copies of the transcribed scripts, other ephemera like record labels, reviews of plays and analysis of the acting style of the time, will be deposited at SCTR in digital form.

SCTR is the appropriate institution not only to oversee this project but also to house the resulting collection for the following two reasons: a) SCTR is experienced in handling 78 rpm discs and have successfully completed the digitisation of early Hindustani classical music records, and b) Given its location in a respected University, the digitised collection is likely to be accessed by regular users of the archive—students, academics, researchers and musicians. This project is expected to provide a fillip to theatre historiography, not just in Bengal but nationally.

 

This description is part of the institutional records created by IFA at the onset of the grant. The project may have changed in due course as reflected in the deliverables from the Grantee.