It used to mean Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopaddhyay, Shyamal Mitra, Debabrata Biswas in those years. That old tape-recorder and those cassettes which had become collectable classics then only. Could never learn more than a line or two of those 10 songs (side A and B), but the tunes were etched deep.
Growing up without a sibling has its own charm I guess. You have those afternoons all to yourself and a vast world of imagination spawning in between the pencil/pen chewing breaks during the "studies". Thanks to the electronic media, visuals of people singing/dancing (running/fighting/crying/saving others/reuniting with loved ones etc etc) to a song had not remained very rare. And when you have parents with some appreciation for music, every muscle in your body gradually learns to move with the rhythm - May it be a bird in the morning continuously cooing in that eucalyptus tree in front of your balcony, or the sound of the train's wheels between two stations far apart, or just a loud speaker vomiting Hindi gaan.
Then comes the age when you notice the lyrics of a song. Suddenly, all those love songs start sounding for that one person and one not-so-fine day, all the sad songs start getting dedicated to that person. The love song sad song cycle continues. This is the time when people come up with answers to slam book sections of "favorite song". You move on from the incidents, but you barely move away from the memories the songs create for you - may it be sad, may it be happy. The first time you feel the trance of music - something that is probably going to stay with you life long. An unusually dark 5 pm with a greenish tint in the setting sun (a thing before a devious storm), to see that person cry for someone else and not for you, the first petrichor and all the ones following it, the picnic by that shallow hilly river - music starts defining these all.
It is not before you leave your friends, the realization dawns how strong exactly is your attachment to them. A phase where the countless metaphorical "Love vs Friendship" quotes start to make sense. And to top these all, a young new film maker makes a movie on friendship only to sweep the entire nation off its feet. Yes, a never-felt-before joy surfaces with every beats when you are with friends now. Even if you are not formally trained as a singer, you start singing with all the emotions from the song. You learn to play the guitar coz its cool and start to look at the songs as your own random outlet of feelings. In the hostel, with all sort of legal and illegal smokes, imported and locally brewed liquor, you start to firmly believe that music is something that takes you higher than anything else - capabilities especially retained by artists stating immortal quotes and sporting fashion statements which have define an entire generation, regional bands of your own city with courageous lyrics, crowd-hypnotizing melodies of international singers, crazy guitar solos of bare torso guitarists and numerous like them. By this time, you have quite a pile of memories - from home, from neighborhood, from school, from short trips, and even from college if you are in the college long enough by now. You know that your care-free youth has more or less been defined. You are never going to forget how the sound of a certain tune in a certain voice, accompanied by a certain beat, played in a certain rhythm made you feel. You are now ready to move on to the "matured" phase of life, but you are now carrying your entire youth compressed in a set of some of the most prominent pieces of music.
The money making phase spells chaos all over again. Away from home, making rent, learning to arrange food, a cosmopolitan place to live, living with people having a different lifestyle... The adjustment takes time. For the first time, you look at the future for more than just six months (or four months, depending on the semester/trimester system of the college which now seems like a pre-historic chapter). Fridays now seem to the most favorite day of the week and people start to bond more over a bus ride or over a helping hand while cooking than ever before. You party all night with the new friends (and "close acquaintances") and nothing seems very imperfect. New sounds make new memories filled with visuals of a new city. Participation in others life teach you new life lessons. But that age old nostalgia sometimes fill your empty afternoons. You lay back on your bed and stare at whatever is visible of that coconut tree behind that next compound wall and wonder "how is the view outside my own window back home right now." This is when you hear that worn out cassette tape of Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopaddhyay, Shyamal Mitra, Debabrata Biswas inside your head, again. No song in particular, but the sound of very familiar tunes. It sounds worn out against the new digital sound effects. You feel like having completed a circle. You feel like you are at home the most, when you are at a place far far away from it. And there is always a piece of music to attest that.
And this is probably where you stop inducing in new music. You listen and enjoy the new music - all the new soulful and foot thumping ones out there but nothing from here on becomes as memorable as that old tape, those pain ridden lyrics, the joyful friendship songs, those guitar solos, those old tapes again. As a conclusive proof I have seen people from my father's generation. They seem to have a clear demarcation of "good music" and "not-so-good music". Whatever is "good" for them seems to be nothing newer than when they were new at their first jobs. They are carrying their youth with them in form of music. They have kept those sounds as a reminder of the time when their energy was bordering recklessness - in other words, when it was at its highest.
After looking at it more like a work of art, music gradually becomes a section of your knowledge bank - genre, artists, release, originals, covers, music videos, era and tens of such classification. Then happens the exploding diversification of this knowledge - world music (which is sometime only pretentious). Irrespective of language, you listen to some of them. This part probably has less soul and more brains. By the age when you have become sure of your own personality, you create your own playlist carefully selecting from all the, ALL THE, songs that exist in your own world. And you listen to them while you are in a crowded bus, in the middle of a PNPC discussion at work, while you are driving, cooking alone in the apartment, while taking a walk, while taking a walk to the laundry, while taking a walk in a drizzle with a hoodie on. Personally speaking, it is my purest form of detachment from all that is disturbing, depressing, saddening, painful, ugly and transportation into something beautiful, rejuvenating, hopeful and magical. Every song is a strong memory of a time, a person, an incident when life was more... well, musical.
How truly it was said by Albus Dumbledore "Ah, music. A magic far beyond all we do here!"
Well,
keep sounding good! :)
Growing up without a sibling has its own charm I guess. You have those afternoons all to yourself and a vast world of imagination spawning in between the pencil/pen chewing breaks during the "studies". Thanks to the electronic media, visuals of people singing/dancing (running/fighting/crying/saving others/reuniting with loved ones etc etc) to a song had not remained very rare. And when you have parents with some appreciation for music, every muscle in your body gradually learns to move with the rhythm - May it be a bird in the morning continuously cooing in that eucalyptus tree in front of your balcony, or the sound of the train's wheels between two stations far apart, or just a loud speaker vomiting Hindi gaan.
Then comes the age when you notice the lyrics of a song. Suddenly, all those love songs start sounding for that one person and one not-so-fine day, all the sad songs start getting dedicated to that person. The love song sad song cycle continues. This is the time when people come up with answers to slam book sections of "favorite song". You move on from the incidents, but you barely move away from the memories the songs create for you - may it be sad, may it be happy. The first time you feel the trance of music - something that is probably going to stay with you life long. An unusually dark 5 pm with a greenish tint in the setting sun (a thing before a devious storm), to see that person cry for someone else and not for you, the first petrichor and all the ones following it, the picnic by that shallow hilly river - music starts defining these all.  |
| photo and guitar and "how to hold a chord" courtesy: Agniswar Sen |
The money making phase spells chaos all over again. Away from home, making rent, learning to arrange food, a cosmopolitan place to live, living with people having a different lifestyle... The adjustment takes time. For the first time, you look at the future for more than just six months (or four months, depending on the semester/trimester system of the college which now seems like a pre-historic chapter). Fridays now seem to the most favorite day of the week and people start to bond more over a bus ride or over a helping hand while cooking than ever before. You party all night with the new friends (and "close acquaintances") and nothing seems very imperfect. New sounds make new memories filled with visuals of a new city. Participation in others life teach you new life lessons. But that age old nostalgia sometimes fill your empty afternoons. You lay back on your bed and stare at whatever is visible of that coconut tree behind that next compound wall and wonder "how is the view outside my own window back home right now." This is when you hear that worn out cassette tape of Manna Dey, Sandhya Mukhopaddhyay, Shyamal Mitra, Debabrata Biswas inside your head, again. No song in particular, but the sound of very familiar tunes. It sounds worn out against the new digital sound effects. You feel like having completed a circle. You feel like you are at home the most, when you are at a place far far away from it. And there is always a piece of music to attest that. And this is probably where you stop inducing in new music. You listen and enjoy the new music - all the new soulful and foot thumping ones out there but nothing from here on becomes as memorable as that old tape, those pain ridden lyrics, the joyful friendship songs, those guitar solos, those old tapes again. As a conclusive proof I have seen people from my father's generation. They seem to have a clear demarcation of "good music" and "not-so-good music". Whatever is "good" for them seems to be nothing newer than when they were new at their first jobs. They are carrying their youth with them in form of music. They have kept those sounds as a reminder of the time when their energy was bordering recklessness - in other words, when it was at its highest.
After looking at it more like a work of art, music gradually becomes a section of your knowledge bank - genre, artists, release, originals, covers, music videos, era and tens of such classification. Then happens the exploding diversification of this knowledge - world music (which is sometime only pretentious). Irrespective of language, you listen to some of them. This part probably has less soul and more brains. By the age when you have become sure of your own personality, you create your own playlist carefully selecting from all the, ALL THE, songs that exist in your own world. And you listen to them while you are in a crowded bus, in the middle of a PNPC discussion at work, while you are driving, cooking alone in the apartment, while taking a walk, while taking a walk to the laundry, while taking a walk in a drizzle with a hoodie on. Personally speaking, it is my purest form of detachment from all that is disturbing, depressing, saddening, painful, ugly and transportation into something beautiful, rejuvenating, hopeful and magical. Every song is a strong memory of a time, a person, an incident when life was more... well, musical.How truly it was said by Albus Dumbledore "Ah, music. A magic far beyond all we do here!"
Well,
keep sounding good! :)
3 comments:
I liked your post
The post is too good. I had always thought of music being a tool to bring out your emotions just like poetry or painting...in this world of complexities and technicalities the softest and sweetest of tunes touches the heart and rejuvenates one's soul.
Too good. What clarity of thought. I love the way you have explained what makes the older generation demarcate "good song". Loved it.
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