How do you begin to define music?
The Oxford dictionary describes Music as “Vocal or instrumental sounds (or both) combined in such a way as to produce beauty of form, harmony, and expression of emotion..” and I already have a headache.
I am trying to unclench my fist at this atrocity while knowing very well I cannot ever better this definition. “Beauty of form” ! “Harmony” ! “and expression of emotion”!
Ok. I have a tough task at hand. History, genuine musicians, artist and singers can now shrivel up or sharpen their swords. Well Justin can shrivel up while Yanni can sharpen his magnificent instrument he calls a Piano. Here’s what I think on music.
It is silly to define it using alphabets and words. Else it would be called an article or a letter. Hell it could be a best man’s speech at a wedding but we still need music there. There is something in music that cannot be articulated, that cannot be comprehended, that cannot be summarized. A poem has words. A speech has ideas. A letter has emotions. An autobiography has a story. But a song ?
At this point, most of us will have recollected our favorite song in our head. It will have a tune, may or may not have words to go with it, but it more or less reminds you of a time or place. It reminds you of an emotion that you experienced, assessed or dreamed of. Music I feel is a dream full of emotions. It empowers you and it sets you free. It gives you belief and sometimes it gives you closure, it makes you want to run or visit places, or it makes you want to climb underneath the table and have a good cry.
Yes. That is how I define music. A dream; musical nodes that induce or entice a conscious dream full of emotions.
For comparisons sake, let us take an emotion into consideration. I remember the birth of my baby brother. He might already be underneath that table if he hears me call him a “baby bro” because frankly, he is 6′ 4″ and a zillion kg’s heavier than me now but he can man up and deal with this in the gym.
I was in my first year of school and my mom seemed to float around the house with her massive belly. I was always artistic and loved drawing. Not the kind I would go nuts on the bedroom wall with a crayon but good enough to live with what I put on paper. Ok I was rubbish at drawing, but I loved listening, gazing out of the window, out onto the street looking at people walking up and down, imagining their lives. I was demented enough to act like a few of them when we used to play with my friends. I am hoping at this point people reading this are able to associate such things with something in their childhood else I know I am running the risk of being the blessed child. Anyway…
Patankar Nursing Home, in Pune. The first of October, my brother entered the world, and I remember my baby sitting aunt taking me to the hospital to meet him and mom. It was so weird to know that you have a new member in your family, right there in front of you in that crib, that came out of your mom’s body, that looks butt ugly. But he was family. Then I remember that night when mom and baby bro were discharged from the hospital. We did not have a car then and dad had hired a rickshaw. With me, mom and bro in the rick, we left the hospital. Dad was on his Bajaj Scooter something similar to this leading the rick to our house.
Mom was acting extremely fussy trying to ensure baby bro kept sleeping in her arms while I was watching, with half my head out, at my dad driving ahead, amused at how he managed to keep our rick in his rear view mirror all the time. Then it started raining. I have never seen rain like that ever in my subsequent life. It rained like the end of world. The new creature woke up and started crying due to the thunders. His wail was perfectly annoying and extremely shrill. Mom had no answer to it. The rick’s wipers were ridiculously pathetic at trying to keep up with the down pour. I watched my dad get drenched and drive extremely slowly on the leftmost side of the road. Me and mom were drenched despite being in a rick seated in the corner of both ends. Baby bro was safely dry in our midst and the rick driver slowly got us home. Dad fully drenched, parked his scooter outside our bungalow and went inside the house and got an umbrella. He then walked me inside followed by baby bro and mom. I remember the smell of our garden mud and our wet clothes. I remember the shrill wailing of my brother. I remember watching my mom and dad zoom around the house trying their best to make him comfortable while I saw all of this with judgmental eyes full of envy and anger at the the missing attention on wet me.
How do I put all of what I felt in words? How does a 6 year old articulate what he feels? He doesn’t. He can’t. Not because he doesn’t know enough words. Its because he only knows school poems and Anu Malik at this point.
I recently had my grandmother over. She had met my wife for the first time a year ago, had a lovely lunch. I met her again a couple of days ago, and she did not recognize me. After proving who I was, she asked me where I stay and if I was married. She could not remember her visit to my house. She could not remember meeting my wife. She will be 90 years old in a few years. That makes me feel a lot of things; and induces a lot of emotions. How do I assess them and how do I enlist them? How do I reflect on them?
I feel there are two ways one can try to make sense of what one’s feeling at any given point of time. It is either by trying to share or communicate with another human being; or it is by stumbling across music that helps you recall, assess the memory, remind you of how you felt then and what you really should have said then if you failed with a reply. So in the context of music, does that safely eliminate all the girls? This is the first “tiny” flaw in my definition which basically erases half of the target population which raises “tiny” questions about its potential for generalization. Press Ctrl+Alt+Del twice if you don’t get sarcasm.
Safely assuming there are women who are introverts, this leads to a premise which suggests that it is music that links our past, present and future. We can associate specific, certain points in our life, or presume achievable events in future which we long to feel; all courtesy to music. That has to be the case, because I feel a lot many things when I listen to music. I sometimes feel hatred when I am in substandard cinema’s who have a disgusting print of our national anthem that is played before the start of each movie. It glitches, it is pathetic movie direction and pathetic singing despite the beautiful original composition and rendition. With better cinema’s I feel genuinely patriotic and hopeful of the corrupt and rapeful nation, if we can call India that.
It therefore has to be music. I have seen people cry at movies despite what I consider as atrocious acting by some of our Bollywood superstars. My best friend had a daughter recently. We dream to make her a Fifa Goddess in future. To make her comfortable with football and FIFA, we are currently playing all the FIFA 14 soundtracks around her. The fact that we keep the joystick in her crib is another thing which can be safely disregarded as delusional parenting on the advice of a close friend (me), but it WILL work. Hell, science has proved music helps plants grow faster !
Now that we have reached a stage where we safely assume, music cannot be summarized, analysed but has to be felt, we reach a stage where we must gauge the importance of words in it.
I can’t help but blurt out beforehand that I am not a big fan of words in music. I feel it limits the potential of sound and the emotions it can evoke on its own. When Adele sings, I feel as if I can quantify my feelings. I feel as if I can actually assign a number or a percentage of how much I loved or hated the person I was evoked about during the song. Then at other times I absolutely feel nothing despite the lyrics in such songs. On other occasions I love the fact that I can feel the words and emotions in such songs because they are honest and unelaborate. Now that is not a word but it needs to be. A certain amount of infiniteness in the context of words leads to music. Ok, that too is not a word. Do you see my point. Words limit us. Music doesn’t.
I like trance. There I said it. There is no remorse. All you purists and electronic music haters can post your comments by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del twice. It has the ability to help me remember, assess and dream. It helps me paint a picture of the world I want to live in and it helps me recall the events in my life. I remember driving insanely fast on my Yamaha to be with my crush during my college days, the wife now. I dream of sprinting insanely fast on a moonlit beach full of aliens, disregarding my 36″ waistline. It helps me believe in fat free days.
However, there are times when I spend 15 minutes trying to adjust the equalizer for my sound system so that my favourite trance track sounds perfect for my wife and she has this emotionless face when listening to it. It is also sincerely disheartening when, while lying on bed at night, you remove your headphones from your ears and put them in her ears to make her listen to your beloved track, and then she instantly falls asleep. Yes my wife falls asleep to trance. I have heard people cannot sleep with trance. You go to see this. She needs words in music, WHAT!
So what is music then? Is it something that helps connect your emotions with your surroundings? Is it something that helps you identify people with similar interests in life? Or is it something that sets you free?
It sure sets me free.
– An Above & Beyond fan
mrtanmay.com 