ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I share the songs of the sailors and stokers and oilmen, from Sylhet and Noakhali and Comilla that the Dutch scholar of music and Sanskrit, Arnold Bake (1899–1963) had recorded in 1934, placing them alongside other songs from the region, recorded after Bake’s time, especially songs which have made other journeys in the bodies of other ‘sailors’, some willingly travelling to other lands, some displaced from home and hence forced into journeys in search of home. This chapter talks about how the body of the singer/performer acts as the vessel which makes possible this crossing of the song, across borders of time and space.
