Listening between the Lines: Mahishashuramardini and Early 20th-Century Radio Archives

Abstract

What might it mean to reconstruct the sounds that emanated from radio sets when the medium was first introduced in colonial Bengal in the early twentieth century? How do we conceptualise and circumscribe an archive of objects as intangible as sounds? In this presentation, I propose that we approach the Calcutta Radio Station’s (CRS) archive as part of a media ecosystem comprising extant audio recordings and their reverberations on the printed page in journals such as Betar Jagat. In particular, I look at the discourse surrounding a popular broadcast, Mahishashuramardini (Annihilator of the demon, Mahishashura), to examine how the archive was created by producers and consumers of this new technology as they sought to shape the sound of radio, even as the British colonial state attempted to sharply regulate broadcast material. On the one hand, we have at least four recorded versions of the programme affording us the opportunity to hear the texture of the sounds. On the other hand, the printed discourse reveals how the audio archive itself was a site of contestation as listeners, performers, and programme directors explored ways of creating sounds that would suit the technical requirements of the medium, while simultaneously subverting state regulations.