Moushumi Bhowmik, singer, songwriter, collector and archivist of songs and sounds 'Bengal' and the diaspora, will return to MayDay Rooms to share with us her recent work, 'Rehearsals for Revolution', co-created with sound designer Dibakar Saha, which premiered at Serendipity Art Festival in Goa in December 2024. We will listen together to a stereo mix of this 40-minute composition in three parts, originally designed as an 8-channel sound installation.

'The truth is that mass demonstrations are rehearsals for revolution: not strategic or even tactical ones, but rehearsals of revolutionary awareness,' John Berger had written in 1963. 'Rehearsals for Revolution' was conceived as a tribute to the revolutionary process; a composition on our dreams for change which do not die, however bleak the circumstances. It was composed in three parts entitled 'Rise', 'Fall' and 'Rise Again', with song, reverie, slogans, beginning with field recordings from an old factory site along the Hooghly River in West Bengal, which once saw a massive workers' uprising, but is now lying in disuse and decay, waiting. Waiting for what? To the sounds of old protests we added sounds from newer ones, in our continued struggles for a just world, free from wars and oppression.

The collective listening session will be followed by songs by Moushumi, with Oliver Weeks and Ben Heartland, all old friends of Mayday Rooms, and conversation with the audience.