Twenty Libraries: Review

In a recent issue of Sagar: A South Asia Research Journal, Daniel Majchrowicz, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, offered short reviews of 20 libraries in Delhi. Who knew? I've only been to one of them.

Archive of Indian Music

Good news for musicologists and historians of sound comes to us via Abhijit Bhattacharya at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. The Archive of Indian Music (AIM) is now online. Curated by Vikram Sampath and colleagues, the online collection includes 600+ samples (taken largely from 78 RPM gramaphone shellacs) representing the work of about 180 artists. As I type this, I am listening (again) to Gandhiji read aloud his article "On God." Judging by the number of hits for that particular page, I am not the only one who went directly to that file. I selected Bina Chaudury's "Ek jhalak dekha kidkhi se" and now I might have a new favorite song and artist.

A caveat: the list of artists is alphabetized by first name, so if you are looking for a clip based on the last name, you may have difficulty finding it by browsing only. The ctrl-F search is your friend.