University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh hosted Jennifer Reid, a Manchester based balladeer, on May 14 at its Campus-A auditorium. Reid performed lively renditions of 19th century British industrial working class broadside ballads. By the time the performance ended, the whole auditorium was humming and clapping to her performance.

Presided over by Professor Imran Rahman, Dean of School of Business, and Professor Kaiser Haq, Dean of School of Arts and Humanities, Professor Shamsad Mortuza, Head of the Department of English and Humanities, presented the event.

The performance, titled “Forgotten Performances and Remembered Material,” delved into the plight of the British industrial working class of the 19th century and showed how their ordeals were similar in many respects to those of our workers working in the ready-made garment industry. She compared 19th century English ballad with Bangladeshi literature and showed how similar they were even though each evolved in isolation to one another.

Reid is an excellent performer and a very jovial person; she managed to keep an upbeat atmosphere to the sombre nature of the topic at hand. She discussed the evolution of the broadside ballad and how its competitor, the newspaper, had nearly wiped out this art form.

“Remembrance” was the key message of the performance. Reid stated that remembering these ballads and hardships of the working class was a form of protest against the greed and injustice the owners of the garment industry displayed across the century. She also stated that ballads helped when working with children or elderly patients suffering from dementia. Using the rhythm and flow of ballads she was able to help them with their learning and memory respectively.

Reid engaged the audience throughout her presentation and broke up her performance into singing and dancing whenever she needed to give example of the ballads she was describing. She compared 19th century English ballad with Bangladeshi literature and showed how similar they were even though each evolved in isolation to one another. It was charming watching her try to pronounce Bengali words and timidly waiting on the audiences’ approval or correction, to which the audience was happy to comply. She has a wonderful voice and true Lancaster accent to go with it. This was vital because the ballads needed that authenticity or else the material would come off too similar to contemporary works, but mind you it was really hard to follow at times since the audience was comprised of Bangladeshi students and to most of them English is a second language. However, it didn’t prevent the audience from joining in on the ballads she sang by clapping along the rhythm, and at one point she even asked everyone to join in on the chorus that went along the lines of
“We come a-cob-a-coalin’, cob-a-coalin’, cob-a-coalin’
We come a-cob-a-coalin’ for Bonfire Night”.

Kudos to ULAB for hosting such an amazing event especially in the month of May which reminds us of the rights of the working class.

–Piu Chowdhury