One of the mortal world's biggest unresolved ironies is towards the gift of music. The profound march of mankind has run parallel to manifestations in verbal evolution and trajectory of mannerisms-- the spoken word, monosyllabic enunciation in the primary stages of language development when words hardly warbled off from the human tongue to make sense to the time when each clinking item or article with legible sound quality was a substitute for communicative experimentation. Then as the founding imprints of language discovered breakthroughs, a new sensibility was forged and the natural world stretched itself to personal attention spans; records of both made their way to musical history. Every rustle of trees, leaves, whiffs of nature in flowers and chimes of birds registered a new panorama in the human mind and very soon the VOICE exercised its full vibrant variation. A whistle and an ululation meant so much more. The voice hence became an instrumental passage for furthering worldly expression. As humanity progressed, folk tales, legends and myths wove their carpet of demystification around musical vowels and consonants and the fearless embodiment of life in song had an enterprising upsurge in social awakening, including its many mental ruins, flourishing changes, highest pinnacles and lowest nosedives. As such, music became the permanent symbol of our place on earth as creatures of self expression, worthy of assembling our faculties and bringing them in tandem with our immediate positioning in the larger world out there. Our very natural urge to put music at the forefront has remained intact and in the twenty first century, it has amassed the most potent filter to reflect, revive, redress and reignite the mandate of humanity and pass mantles of our inner statements towards longevity. The metamorphosis of the spoken word, monosyllabic enunciation of yore today becomes the poetry of rap, hip hop and plainspoken interludes while instrumentation and background scores have extended the earliest whispers of using items in alignment with sounds to greenlight the intimacy of our people and places. A profoundly varied march, indeed. Whatever can and cannot be said forms the very nucleus of the medium.
However as ubiquitous and unparalleled it is, the very irony lies in the complex innards of the human world that created its shapeless, genre - less rhythms. Pursuit of happiness in the musical field, as a permanent professional avenue, is still frowned upon for its 'supposed instability' and the risk of being run to the ground in view of mangled opportunities.
I would say that in the ever-widening pool of opportunities, we should let our youth dive and swim in myriad symphonies of creation. The development of a true personality should be fused with musical endeavours and this should be our priority from the root levels of education up to our career goals. We should have the same freedom to create music as the freedom it allows us to experience.
So with this wide spectrum in view, I give you a series of songs and musical representations that have shaped up my worldviews. So I allot this chapter for the exposition and in the next I will cover a few songs of my choice which have greatly influenced me. The inclusion of these songs will be a recurring feature in this essay collection and my opinions will be distributed freely. So let's begin this journey with a hum and a melody.
YOU ARE READING
A LETTERED SOUL: REFLECTIONS ON LITERATURE, CINEMA AND CULTURE .
Non-FictionI have often wondered about the very curdled natures of our opinions so much so that the perch of imagination simply becomes a bystanding abstraction and real thoughts of genuine merit slip between the fingers. That is a human tendency, to beat arou...
