LET THE MUSIC PLAY!
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
– Bob Marley
As I get down to finally tackle the subject of music, I can feel the joy rising in me with every score and tune that buoyant drops of rainwater are playing effortlessly in the background. Bliss, spirituality, catharsis and epiphany are just a few among a rainbow of the most powerful emotions that music sparks inside our hearts. You need not be a musician to feel the immense power and the magic of music! You need not even buy noise cancelling earphones and blaring stereos to appreciate music. As one of my favourite movie, August Rush, puts it “Music is all around us… all we have to do is, listen”
Music holds us in its captivity right since our childhood with those soothing lullabies and everlasting jingles! As we grow up, it becomes a part of our rebellious nature and also takes us on romantic highs, lending us our identity and moulding our personality and in later stages of life it becomes the most beautiful way to our nostalgia of ‘those good old days’. Indeed, whether we realize it or not, music forms an essential part of our life, it’s unique in the sense that it is luxury as well as a necessity!
If you have had the opportunity to see classical maestros synchronising impromptu performances with intense concentration while smiling with comfortable ease, you would know what spirit-lifting soulful music is all about. Sufi music with its repetitions and improvisations is another enriching journey into the soul, spirituality and meaning of life itself. Dear readers, if you still have doubts over the power of music, let me introduce you all to Elvis Presley. The man who played a major role in changing American culture and consequently that of the world forever by slowly deconstructing racial barriers, sexual inhibitions and extolling the energy of the youth. Yes, the same man who is credited with the movement that Rock n roll was and the revolution that it ushered!
But surely, Presley is just one example among the many that have, through their sheer musical genius, innovation and courage embodied revolutions and contributed to their causes through their music. While Mozart does seem to present shades of French revolution in his later works, Beethoven’s music characterises the struggle, turmoil and spirit of the French revolution. Even today, it is not uncommon to find powerful and socially relevant lyrics in music forms across the world, from hooded raps to jumping and hopping Bollywood song sequences!
From light, soothing, soporific and relaxing to engaging, energising, revolutionary and even patriotic, music is an intensely varied, diverse and rich art form. Like everything else in the world, the corporate world hasn’t spared music too. It has draped it dazzling colours and boxed it in neat little packages and has desperately tried to sell it based on marketing rather than content. Music has been glamorized, televised, commoditized and monetized in the ugliest of forms. Yet, the strength of music is such that the pure, pristine and original voice still touches our hearts and even today when the guitar strings vibrate, the chords in our hearts play along too. Music is immortal, incorruptible and indestructible. So go on, let the music play and keep on singing the song of life!
