A word that is quite unpronounceable, almost initially a tongue twister had been floating close to my radar since my college based years of academic induction into a different level. Today, I feel my relationship with it has come to full fruition as there had to be an appropriate time for it to find its ground in my written output. Why not? After all, the magical transfusion of ideas into words is something that has raised me and it is exactly the kind of enigmatic term to occupy my thoughts regarding music and the lyrical quality it bestows on our consciousness.
The word is ONOMATOPOEIA. Words that imitate sounds or mirror them as I believe. Can there be a better way to express our collective feelings and faith in music irrespective of the dark, paralyzed cast our world seems to be in? As long as we have artists fixing their creative powers at the peak of their form, the yearly forecast of our culture will be safe and sound.
For when a vocal master and a composer perform the miracle of conjuring a convincing song and present it to us, it is nothing but the flow of onomatopoeia. Words coming into the axis of soundscales and scapes that we recognize as our own and which utilize our felicitous reserves of the mind to initiate us with new discoveries in the field of creation. I had written about exactly the same point on the evolution of human behavior in steady conjunction with every rustle and trajectory of sound from earliest stages in an essay A SONG IS WORTH A HUM, A MELODY : MUSICAL GIFTS THAT HAVE SHAPED ME in this very collection. So I'm glad my original ideas are validated by the strata of experience and proof that have base in the catalogues of meaning.
The following articles will celebrate this tradition of sanjha ( union, togetherness ) between words and their conveyance through myriad sounds paralleling our emotional collectives. They go from one end of joy to the deep waters of contemplation and contemporary awakenings flex muscles along with offerings from past masters who have passed on to eternity as their vaunted vaults are reintroduced to us. In a nutshell, the literary usage of the word onomatopoeia has its equivalent in music. Or should we say Onomatopoeia is another way to describe the vast majority of musical gifts and let us be enlightened by them in this new year as it breathes in its individual mold. The songs that impacted me (and us) will be unveiled just like they did in the THESE ARE THE LEGACIES I HAVE ensemble to close last year here on A LETTERED SOUL.
We have grumbled and complained about the regrettable march of time and dread for the future, beginning from mid 2016 and honestly the obstinacy of anti social activities have made a steady influx this year itself. There goes another shot of an uncouth gun culture, here is blasted off news of another tortuous young mind ploughing vans at pedestrians and leaders breathing fire while comfortably overstaying their welcome in their secure bubbles. AVICII has given us the ultimatum to not wake him up, marking his premature mortal voyage at 28. All putting a stake at the roots of humanity as mediocrity as a thumb rule is what we attempt to rescue ourselves from. So the antidote has to be, must be, is music of the highest caliber from genuine products of the modern age.
So as I write this let our rigid firewalls break through with the fluid overflow of musical contributions that engage us beyond that initial hurrah of a first listen. For in music we retain our sanity galore and not just use it as escapist yarn for a good time, extending to maximum five minutes per song. In the world of severe reality as ours , it has to be an estimable shield against the breach of propaganda and pessimism and help us garner our wits for the months ahead. In music we thrive.
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I close this crucial article with a song that not only is one of my all time favorites and a tribute to its dear departed creator but an encapsulation of everything written in this article. WAKE ME UP by AVICII.
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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...
