A Music Tradition Worth Saving

Mayer Tori is the name of the local organisation in Bangladesh.

Our ongoing aim is to preserve a kind of singing and playing, and the tunes and texts played and sung, in a northern region of Bangladesh. The effort aims in part at creating an archive. But the main purpose is to pass the knowledge of the elders to young people.

We have established a collective of singers and musicians devoted to teaching children whom they know by name, and whose life situations they know. The children know that they are known by other adults than their own family members.

For teaching to take place, the extended family and the village must participate. The very process of teaching and being taught is collective in more ways than one.