"N֜ada Brahma" in ancient India meant God in sound. Brahma is God and Nada is sound in all forms. Environment, as has been defined by the United Nations, is a set of beliefs, practices, customs and behaviours that are found to be common to everyone that is living within a certain population.

According to Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winning Economist, “Bengal’s Intangible Cultural Heritage is a Legacy…” An alternative methodology for evaluating development progress by Amartya Sen has been accepted by the World Bank. This says the ability to contribute to and consume cultural goods are just as important as the existence of a free market. Based on this theory, the cultural environment is considered to be the most relevant while discussing and evaluating heritage preservation activities by the World Bank.

"One form of cultural capability exists when each individual regardless of age, gender, or race is able to contribute to discourses of heritage, tradition and history." Amartya Sen says "...culture could both be a means and an end to development... How many of us know our own folk dance or folk-song is a question I feel embarrassed to answer myself."

Bengal is home to many traditional music and folk performing art forms including music and dance. Much of this heritage has been passed down from generation to generation through 'shruti’ (hearing) and ‘guru-shishya parampara’ (guru to disciple tradition). However, many of the traditional art forms and are fast disappearing and/or are being mutated into new forms, often some unkind modifications without even acknowledging the sources. There was an urgent need to archive these forms of) vanishing heritage - Bengal’s intangible folk performing arts & cultural heritage.

This virtual museum of traditional folk art & cultural forms is an effort of the Kolkata Sukriti Foundation to document and archive the vanishing heritage before it is lost forever. We tried to include many but we are sure there are a lot more hidden in our roots. We shall thank you for pointing those missing forms to us. In 2023 through the German Consulate General Kolkata, the German Federal Foreign Office financed this project of documenting and digitalization of Bengal’s intangible traditional folk performing arts & cultural heritage under its Cultural Preservation Program. We would like to particularly mention the contribution of Susmita Mandal for her relentless guidance. The accompanying texts are what the research team gathered and not of the Production team, Director, and the exhibitor.

Besides future generations, musicologists, researchers, music directors, composers among others will here get an opportunity to see, hear and appreciate the traditional folk arts forms & the cultural heritage of Bengal.

In case any comment, query one can send an email at: culturalheritage.bengal@gmail.com

• Villagers & Participants of Folk Groups
• Forest Dept. Govt of West Bengal
• Shibabrata Karmakar (Bhromora)

PRODUCTION TEAM (DIRECTION)
Abhijit Dasgupta

CAMERA
Rajani Kanta Bera, Sanjit Dutta, Chandan Majumder, Dilip Kumar Biswas, Satanjib Gupta

SOUND
Shantajit Chatterjee, Pradipta Saha, Joy Das

EDITING
Chandan Bhuin, Anjan Paul, Nicholas Fernandez

COLOR CORRECTION
Md. Amir Mondal, Avik Maity

STILL PHOTOGRAPHY
Chandan Bhuin, Abhishek Sinha Roy, Abhijit Dasgupta

DRONE
Pranab Sarkar

VIRTUAL MUSEUM DESIGNING
Subhabrata Nandi

EQUIPMENT
Manas Mitra (Global Broadcast)

TRANSPORT
Yadbinder Singh Bajwa

ELECTRICIAN
Chittaranjan Sana

PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS
Shubhodip Das, Subhojeet Das, Jiban Dolui

RESEARCH
Swapan Das, Soumagni Das, Debashish Raychaudhuri (Sanskrit), LSSI Pradipta Ghoshal

TEXT

• ENGLISH- Nils Wandelt, Annapurna Basu
• BENGALI- Abhijit Sarkar, Partha Chattopadhyay

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Bengal is home to many traditional music and folk performing art forms including music and dance. Much of this heritage has been passed down from generation to generation through 'shruti’ (hearing) and ‘guru-shishya parampara’ (guru to disciple tradition). However, many of the traditional art forms and are fast disappearing and/or are being mutated into new forms, often some unkind modifications without even acknowledging the sources.

This virtual museum of traditional folk art & cultural forms is an effort of the Kolkata Sukriti Foundation to document and archive the vanishing heritage before it is lost forever. Through the German Consulate General Kolkata, the German Federal Foreign Office financed this project of documenting and digitalization of Bengal’s intangible traditional folk performing arts & cultural heritage under its Cultural Preservation Program.

Besides future generations, musicologists, researchers, music directors, composers among others will here get an opportunity to see, hear and appreciate the traditional folk arts forms & the cultural heritage of Bengal.

In case any comment, query one can send an email at:
culturalheritage.bengal@gmail.com