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Illustration of Bengali folk instruments: ektara, dotara, and bamboo fluteA Stranger from Home

The story

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.”

I am an international student at Hendrix College from Chittagong. Over one summer I sat with twelve people who live away from Bangladesh and asked them about songs. We met where they already were: in restaurants between shifts, in the aisles of grocery stores, on benches in parks, in community centers, and in a university campus store.

One morning in a Michigan restaurant, this man heard where we were from and would not let us leave without help. Because he knew we were from Bangladesh, he introduced us to seven other Bengali people throughout the day. He offered us free lunch and gave me a tour around the city.

Hasnat bhai in a red shirt sits across from a researcher with a laptop in a decorated restaurant
Hasnat bhai was sitting across from me wearing a red shirt at Alif Restaurant, where he works as the manager. He introduced us to seven other Bengali people that day, bought us lunch, and showed me around the city.

Before anyone sang, we talked about children, food, weather, and home. Those conversations were not a warm-up for the recording. They were the reason a recording became possible at all.

This site holds what I could carry back: my writing, my photographs, and the audio of those conversations. The people in the recordings are named the way they asked to be named.

A place where an interview happened.