If music be the food of the soul, play on…or that’s what the saying goes somehow..maybe it was Shakespeare but I don't care. Nothing soothes the aching self better than a bit of music that’s specially played for you. What bit! At times you need dollops of it.
Yes, I have been away from music for a long time, more by default and self denial than by design. But when a young colleague of mine loaded my laptop with a variety of music ranging from old to new, from retro to techno to fusion it all came back to me and I decided to dust my system, set up the speakers and retrieve my cassettes and CDs from the dungeons of oblivion and treat myself to the joy which every music lover knows infuses life with incomparable vitality.
I really won’t know when was the first time I heard music. Maybe like everyone else I must have heard it in the lullabies my mother must have sung to me as a kid, maybe it was in the humming of the housemaid as she went about her chores or the chime of the cowbells as the bovines grazed around, well maybe. But definitely it was everywhere around me. It was on the radio when I sat waiting at the neighbourhood barber’s shack, it was blaring loud from the gramaphone-loudspeaker ensemble at the marriages in the old sleepy town where I grew up and it was definitely there as smart western themes when we marched to our classes after the morning assembly at the start of a school day.
I wasn’t musically inclined but did appreciate good music when it fell to the ears. It so naturally brings a lot of cheer and never fails to perk you up. And I am not mentioning the l mournful sad ones which are just not in the purview of this post. With every passing year and addition of acquaintances and friends, the taste in music widened and the ears knew that the world of music is too large to ever be confined to liking a particular genre or artist. So popular Hindi film music of the day found competition in old songs sung by Kishore Kumar, Mohammad Rafi, Mukesh and their contemporaries. The magic of Hemanta Kumar’s baritone rubbed shoulders with the silken voice of Talat Mehmood and Geeta Dutt was heard along with the hits of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhonsle.
Music of the western world which was limited to Jim Reeves, Cliff Richard, Boney M, Abba and their ilk soon had the company of Michael Jackson, Madonna, George Michael and the rest of the gang. Country music greats like Don Williams, Dan Seals,John Denver and Willie Nelson spiked up my life with their rich tenors and melody. Everybody around was humming ‘Like a Rhinestone cowboy…’ and ‘Mountain roads…’ when I joined the academy. Talents sprang up during the musical socials with guitars strumming out popular hits like ‘Sweet Caroline’..’Put on your dancing shoes..’ and ‘Number fiftyfour…’. Young hearts thought ‘Wonderful tonight’ and ‘Annie’s Song’ were just for them and many did try a pick at the plectrum but at the end of the day resorted to hearing the songs on their newly acquired Sony Walkmans. I discovered that there were guys like Perry Como, Engelbert Humperdinck, Lobo, Santana, Julio Iglesias, Johnny Cash and many more who gave you equal joy and one can hear Police and Eagles alongwith CCR and Foreigner without any prejudice. Along came Bruce Speingstien, Bryan Adams and the other rockers and life rocked with Scorpions, Def Leopard, Uzi Ozborne etc etc. When in retro mood we swung to Shakin Stevens and listened to Pink Floyd till late into the nights.
A dear friend introduced me to ghazals and for sometime I was hooked to Ghulam Ali, Mehdi Hasan and Jagjit Singh (his twin cassettes of Ghalib is a sure delight). The combination of Gulzar, RD Burman, Kishore and Asha have given some of the most wonderful music that Hindi films have to offer. They are just evergreen and can be heard anyday. And today Sonu Nigam and Shaan do surprise us with equally good numbers quite regularly. Another friend, a self styled jazz afficiando tried to make me interested in Herbie Hancock, Dizzie Gillespie and Miles Davis providing a lot of technical details but the music was definitely worth listening after developing the taste for it. He will probably disregard Kenny G for being a saxophonist playing popular tunes but I don't mind listening to his album 'Breathless' or 'Greensleaves' from one of his later albums.
I can go on and on and still won’t be able to do justice to the vast world of music all around us . I guess I have started my diary on a musical note and may try to follow it up with regular additions. Let’s see how much I succeed. By ending it abruptly and including only a sprinkling from the ocean of music I leave scope for comments enough to actually have a blog going. For now, it’s back to putting on my headphones and listen to Elvis croon in his eternally magical haunting voice ‘ Love me tender, love me true’ or will it be Engelbert’s ‘Take the ribbon from your hair…..’……………….I leave it to the shuffle of the Windows Media Player.
