Appreciating music

If music be the food of love, play on - Shakespeare

Music is such a pervasive element in our lives that one cannot imagine life without it.

The question is how does one appreciate music. Is there a yardstick for appreciating music? Definitely not. There are some persons who admire songs for the beauty of the lyrics. There are a lot of elements in a song to be admired. The vocals, the percussion, the orchestral brilliance, the usage of new sounds and the originality in the song. Then there are background scores. Sometimes, the use of silence, even for few fleeting seconds, adds to the beauty of a song or a BGM.

There is an oft repeated cliché – old and new music. It is almost fashionable to say, particularly in India, that “the songs of those days were.....”. Frankly, this statement amuses me. Firstly, there is no such thing as an “old song”. Every old song was new at some point of time, isn’t it? Music evolves with time and it is but natural that the sounds of one period do not emulate the other. In fact, they should not. Else, there would be monotony. There is good music at every point of time. Of course, what is “good” is certainly relative.

There is no shelf life for music. In those days, there were not many means to listen to music. Even if there were, not everyone could afford. Hence, it appeared that a song had more shelf life than that of today’s songs. But, thankfully, today, there are many avenues through which one can listen to music. Plus, we are exposed to a lot of music, unlike those days. Hence the so called shelf life appears to be less. Saying so would be myopic.

Sometimes when people listen to music, they immediately start imagining the “source” of the song, thus premeditatedly discrediting the music composer. This stunts the appreciating sense in the listener. One should dissect a song, to see the beauty in it. Of course, originality matters.  

Lastly, one should “listen” to music and not “hear” music. The right way to appreciate music is that one should not have leanings onwards one period or one person’s brand of music.  Well, one can be patronising towards one genre of music, say blues, rock etc. Some of the popular, “easy on the ears” music and one that generally appeals to all ages is “bubblegum” pop. One of the many example of bubblegum pop would be the song “Ho Gayee hai Mohabbat” by Mohammed Aslam. It is soft on the years, has a catchy hook and is addictive.

Film music is a blend of everything - which is why it is so popular, especially in India. There has been some fantastic magic created in Indian film music by way of songs and background scores. The great composer Ilayaraja was a pioneer as regards BGMs in Indian film music. Is scores in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam have elevated the drama portrayed in the movies to greater heights. See the Telugu film “Rudraveena” directed by K Balachander, for which Raja won a national award, to see how fantastic BGMs can elevate films to great heights. In Hindi film music, one of my all time favourite background scores has been in the Hindi film “Lagaan”. A R Rahman just transformed the viewer to the 1850s with pure magic. He created a music bit for almost every character in the film. All of us have seen the serial “Mahabharat” by B R Chopra. I am sure all can remember the music bit that accompanies the character “Shikhandi” whenever he appears on the screen! Such is the impact a BGM can create. Recently, Amit Trivedi has been able to create good scores in Hindi.

Hard rock, hitherto a genre not very much present in Indian film music, has slowly started to make a mark. The song “Bhaag D K Bose” by Ram Sampat in the Hindi film “Delhi Belly” and “Sadda Haq” by A R Rahman from the Hindi film “Rockstar” are recent ones that come to mind. There are rock bands in India but they are not very popular. One of the reasons hard rock is not very prevalent in Indian music has to do with our ethos.

One of the advantages of listening to music today is there is a mind numbing variety available at a very cheap price. In most cases one can just download for free. But to be a connoisseur, one should have ears for all types of music. Language should not be a barrier to listen to music. The more variety of music one hears, one can be exposed to the mind boggling talent in music that lies across the world.

The band Enigma used just African chants and beats to great effect in their albums. Country music, anyone?