Ears of music...

I wish I had the gift of musical ears. Now, I am very thankful for all the gifts I have been blessed with in life and even consider my quirks to be things that make me stand apart in this world. But everyone wants to have powers that one notices they do not have, while others flaunt it with disdain. Of course I have wished I could be Superman, one of the nephew ducks (Huey-Dewey or Louie), be in the shoes of the star of most of the movies I saw as a kid and so on, ad nauseam. But these wishes have invariably been fleeting, lasting till I encountered the next ‘blessed’ guy.

Not so for music. For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated with music, songs and musical instruments. My earliest memories regarding this are from my early childhood when one of my neighbours brought a Banjo along on the annual family picnic we used to have. I was thrilled and fascinated. But despite my best wishes, I could never acquire the skill. My singing is best constrained to the arena of my bathroom – a place that I truly unleash and hone my skills. I like the way my voice sounds to me in my head. But the few times I have recorded it, I have always wondered if my head is playing tricks with me or the recorder is. I guess it is the same as when someone tries to chorus a song with headphones on at full volume.

Bhaiya got me a Hero Diatonic Harmonica from his school trip to the North East sometime when I must have been in class 4 or 5. That is when my love for the instrument began. I could not play it but was fascinated by the effortlessness that I could get some sound out of it, unlike the Banjos and the Harmoniums that I had tried before that. I used to talk and sing into it and the funny sound it made was all the music that I could make. Any song that had a mouth-organ piece in it had my instant attention. And the one at the top amongst them was the anthem “Hai apna dil to aawara…”. The trivia that the piece was played by none other than RD Burman, endeared it even more. With time I was able to play the Harmonica piece of the song on my Diatonic. I played it over and over since that was the only recognizable piece I could play. To this day, the few friends who have heard me play it feel that it comes out very nice.

But the next leap happened only during my MSc, even though the ‘Hero’, reeds bent and badly out of tune (as I realize now), accompanied me to Ranchi for my plus two and back home all through BSc. Over time, I’ve developed a temperament that I can attempt anything: like learning a new language, painting or some such skill by breaking it into very small, easily workable parts. And I take delight in sharing whatever I am good at, by breaking it into similar easily digestible chunks. It makes me sad to see when the gifted people seem to think that their gift is something that comes just by birth and should not even be attempted by lesser mortals. It was some trivial incident in which a good singer friend said something to the effect that learning music was not everyone’s cup of tea. I took it as a challenge and joined Harmonica lessons. I really must thank my teacher for introducing me very gently to the theory of music and the right way to handling the mouth organ. Though the classes were never very successful due to frequent new inductions and poor attendance, I got what I wanted… a platform from where I could do my experiments and learn at my own pace- a journey that I know will continue for the rest of my life.

But that is not all that I wanted to post today. Over years, I kept thinking I could never ever understand the intricacies of music. But out of the blue, some recent incidents have had me by surprize. That many of our songs are based on classic Raagas is no secret. Many websites abound in categorizing the famous songs according to their Raagaa. Vividh Bharati has an evening program (once a week I guess) that plays 3 songs one after the other belonging to the same Raaga. Anyway, on a car trip a couple of months ago, we had enqueued a long list of oldies and were enjoying the scenes passing by the window when the song changed and the introductory music of the song “Hum tere pyar mein saara aalam, kho baithe hain…” played in sitar began. From some corner of my mind the tune of “Baje sargam…”, the nostalgic Doordarshan song, leaped forth. I wondered if there was some connection. I looked online after I returned and sure enough, the two belonged to the same Raaga: Des. I was stunned. Next, a few weeks ago I was listening to the songs from the old Raj Kapoor, Dilip Kumar starrer Andaaz when I came across the song “Uthaye ja unke sitam…” and was suddenly reminded of the song “Bekas pe karam kijiye, sarkar-e-Madina…”. Again the song came from the same root, Raaga Kedar, thus spake Wikipedia. Then, last month I had the fortune to attend the live performance of the Bangesh brothers Amaan and Ayaan Ali at the Town Hall, Jodhpur. At the very end of their performance, they played a piece based on Raaga Pahadi, a favorite of their father Ustaad Amjad Ali Khan. The tune stayed in my head and last night as I was listening to “Neela aasman so gaya…” from the Amitabh starrer ‘Silsila’ (the movie for whose music the great maestros Hari Prasad Chaurasia and Shiv Kumar Sharma came together for the first time as Shiv-Hari), the interlude reminded me of tune that emanated from the Sarod many nights ago. My conviction was right again. That it made me glad ought to be clear from the fact that it pushed me to write this post… something that I had begun to procrastinate again.