Tapes, texts and soundtracks: Between cassette cultures, music videos, digital media and intersecting media maps

In 2011, a music video, ‘O Tunir maa’ (Hey, Tuni’s mom), performed by Promit Kumar, produced in Bangladesh, circulated in West Bengal, India, and generated sonic imprints across mediascapes. The audio track and, subsequently, the video, produced in tandem with local music and video industries, accentuated the fluidities of media material across borders. Following many variations, the ‘Tunir maa’ song resurfaced in 2020 as ‘Tumpa, sona’ (dear, Tumpa), a digitally ‘upgraded’ version, made in West Bengal, India. I suggest that such traffic of media content and material underscores the densities of media forms and technologies, and accentuates how popular texts are revitalized in different formats, at different times. For instance, a study of the melody illustrates how ‘Tuni-Tumpa’ was a recreation of the 1989 Hindi film song ‘Hawa, hawa’ (Oh wind), which was a Pakistani hit, sung by the ever-popular Hasan Jahangir. There are, however, many versions of ‘Hawa-hawa’, for instance, the ones aired on (pre-revolution) Iranian TV. Therefore, by invoking the framework of ‘media archaeology’, I track the history of a song and its contemporary avatars, as well as media forms. I specifically trace the movement of media content across Pakistan, India, Bangladesh – via celluloid films, analog/VHS tapes, audio cassettes/tapes, and by means of TV signals and digital files. I examine how intersecting media maps complicate histories of media, studies of ‘national’ media and circumscribed analyses of mediums. I, thereby, reflect on how media files make borders porous and periods conjoined and generate a newer understanding of media geographies.