On Music

Music, as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary — “the arrangement of sounds of one or more voices or instruments” — is, I think, the only thing in the world that (yet) can't be defined based on religion, caste or color.

I am more biased toward the Indian style of music, since I have been listening to it all these years. I'm especially into traditional music and ghazals. A ghazal is the ancient art of poetry where each ghazal is similar to a song, but composed of a set of two-liners called shers. The beauty of this kind of poetry is that although a ghazal may be made of many shers, each individual sher can cover a different topic, usually unrelated to the others in the same ghazal.

My favorite singers are (not necessarily in order): Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Jagjit Singh, Pankaj Udhas, and Ghulam Ali.

I recently had some experiences which led me to think of music as a universal bonding agent. I'd like to share a few of them.

Three moments

1. When I was at Oklahoma State University, I had a friend who played the synthesizer beautifully. Being South Indian, he didn't understand a lot of Hindi — but when he heard Ghulam Ali for the first time, the musician in him was so happy that I could read the joy on his face, even though he didn't understand a word of the Urdu. What bonded him with the Pakistani singer was the melody — beyond the barrier of language, religion, and nation.

2. I'm big into MP3 music and once had about 2 GB of it on my work server (which I fondly called “gross misuse of power :)”). I kept all of mine in a folder called “Desi songs.” My co-workers had their own (Nine Inch Nails, Korn, Rage Against the Machine — in other words, eXXtremely loud bands), and we all shared a network drive. One day a colleague asked if I was Indian and if the songs in “Desi songs” were mine. When I said yes, he told me he had once, out of curiosity, listened to one — and had become addicted to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. This American guy couldn't even say Nusrat's name correctly, but he was enjoying the music of the great Qawwal!

3. I once had the chance to hear Jagjit Singh live. It was an awesome experience — he was at his best (I even got a few good pictures, his autograph, and a handshake!). The show ran four hours flat. He had promised Punjabi songs at the end, and so he did — extremely rhythmic tunes that had people standing up and dancing in the aisles. Then, as his last song, he sang “Chitthi na koi sandesh” — and everyone, including those dancing, went into pin-drop silence. He changed the entire mood of the audience in an instant. Such is the power of this phenomenon called music.

Salaam to this great phenomenon, hard to believe it's built on just seven notes:

sa re ga ma pa dha ni sa