SAADA Spotlight

"From Hooghly to Harlem" Framed Poster

$40.00
Tax included.
Color: Black
Size: 8″×10″

Kruttika Susarla’s artwork for “From Hooghly to Harlem” was inspired by the story of Bardu Ali—a jazz musician, promoter, and emcee credited for discovering Ella Fitzgerald—and his father’s journey “From Hooghly to Mississippi to Harlem,” as written in Vivek Bald’s essay for Our Stories.

What's the story?

In the 1880s and the 1910s, a small number of men from Hooghly and Calcutta settled in southern U.S. cities and married local African American and Afro-Creole women. This was the case with Bardu Ali’s father. Moksad Ali was one of the earliest Bengali traders to settle in New Orleans in the 1880s. There, he married a young woman named Ella Blackman. Ella Blackman Ali and her five children traveled northward along with thousands of African Americans from the southern states to New York City and eventually settled in Harlem.

In turn, Bardu Ali—one of the earliest second-generation South Asian Americans—spent a lifetime in Black show business. Bardu quickly made a name for himself in theatrical and musical circles as a suave and crowd-pleasing emcee, and in the 1930s was recruited by the swing jazz bandleader Chick Webb. -pp. 280-281 of Our Stories

Read more about Bardu Ali in the essay "From Hooghly to Mississippi to Harlem" in Our Stories.
What's it made of?

• Alder, semi-hardwood .75″ (1.9 cm) thick frame from renewable forests
• Paper thickness: 10.3 mil (0.26 mm)
• Paper weight: 5.57 oz/y² (189 g/m²)
• Lightweight
• Acrylite front protector
• Hanging hardware included
• Blank product components in the US sourced from Japan and the US
• Blank product components in the EU sourced from Japan and Latvia

KRUTTIKA SUSARLA X SAADA

From Hooghly to Harlem

“The Ali family’s story demonstrates just how entwined the lives of some early South Asian migrants became with those of members of the African diaspora.” -p. 280 of Our Stories

Kruttika Susarla’s artwork for “From Hooghly to Harlem” was inspired by the story of Bardu Ali—a jazz musician, promoter, and emcee credited for discovering Ella Fitzgerald. 

The artwork highlights the different places in his father’s journey from Hooghly to Harlem, including periods in New Orleans and Waveland, Mississippi.

About the Artwork