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A Short
Discourse on Music
Music – everybody listens to
music these days. Is there anything surprising in that? If we look
backwards in time, we will see that it was not always so. Music then was
music – not the good music-bad music, rock music-classical music, this music
and that music. Music can only be music – neither good nor bad – whatever
else there is, is non-music. Music in the past was not merely a form of
entertainment but something more. Moreover, only the few used to listen
to music, as was the case with all art. There were few pretences in this
regard and it was not a means of achieving fame or success. It was life for
some, means of worship for some, and for some it was a means of great
expression, beyond words and images. The tones, the sounds employed, the
instruments were all a very personal medium for the musician to reach into
himself and go beyond it,” I said to my friend Jitendra, one day after
listening to Bach.
It had been a year since I started taking music seriously and found great
pleasure in doing so. Earlier, all I used to listen to was some Hindi film
music and some of the latest, most popular English and Hindi pop music. It
was always a means of entertainment for me, a means of passing time, a means
of having some activity in the background while doing something else so that
I didn’t get bored. I had never actually paid attention to it before.
Jitendra said, “Like all other
arts, music has declined in the last 30 or so years. Music has now become
associated with images, ideas and for entertainment, partying and all the
rest. Most so-called music these days is nothing but empty sounds, put
together by a lot of people, using all kinds of artificial means to
manipulate the sounds to achieve one end – popularity. That is what
popular music is. Moreover, a division has been created, probably on the
basis of outward form – between classical and popular music. But if one
listens, actually listens, what one hears is only music. If one simply
listens, without comparing what one hears to his or her idea of music, only
then one can see what music is.”
I was new to Mumbai and Jitendra
was my only friend here, so usually on weekends and whenever I had a day
off, I went to his place to stay over. He was an old friend of mine, from
the time when I was in Delhi. We used to stay together at a paying guest
hostel. Our rooms were close by and we often used to spend time together.
I said, “In India, only classical forms of music have survived,
probably because it has been not popular and most of its exponents have not
succumbed to the motives of personal ambition or fame. In the West, the same
is the case with classical music, though there the quality depends upon the
interpretation of the performer or the conductor. In popular music, several
good attempts were made, in rock, punk, and jazz in the years before the
80s. Since then, there has been a gradual decline in popular music. In
India, Bollywood music, except in a few cases, has been melodramatic,
sensational and mediocre. The decades of the 60s and 70s were especially
productive for music in many ways – there was a regeneration, a breaking
from the traditional forms, but soon afterwards, it collapsed again.”
I had been finding myself becoming more and more intimate with music lately.
I saw the beauty, the importance of music as a part of human existence. At
first, I used to resist anything new, since it was not already known to me.
I used to remain content with what was familiar since it gave me a certain
degree of comfort. Now I was realizing how small my world was and how vast
were the unexplored territories. Music was what helped me realize this more
than anything else. I started listening to it openly, afresh, with no
expectations whatsoever and found that by listening without an idea, I could
listen so well. Music was teaching me how to listen.
“One can’t define what music is – any attempt to define music physically
does not suffice. One has to hear, with clear senses, untainted by
expectation or comparison to see the beauty of music,” he said, as if
reading my thoughts. “Music is always out of time. If you are
actually, attentively listening, there will be no sense of time. It is this
quality of music that has made so many of the great composers exalt it as a
divine virtue. Music has an effect on the body and the mind – not as two
distinct effects but as one total effect. It affects the senses in various
ways, and when one is in harmony with the music, then it ceases to be
something separate, something outside of oneself – you become the music.
Music is harmony and music is beauty. Music has the quality of
expressing the inexpressible. One can’t approach music with one’s own
peculiar likes or dislikes and tastes, which are all a part of one’s own
conditioning. Music is something both extraordinarily complex and simple at
the same time. We are not used to listening to anything except our own
thoughts, therefore we can’t sense the beauty of music. Because we are
always trying to do things according to our own peculiar tastes and likes
and dislikes that we have built up, we become deaf to all other sounds. But
when we drop all that and simply listen, then sound becomes a most wonderful
thing – the complexity of it, the depth, the clearness, the penetration, the
opening of many doors it leads towards, is inexpressible and beyond words.”
How well he could put it all into words! The things that I had faintly
realized and which were not so clear to me became clear as light on hearing
him.
The above extract has been taken from the short story, Music and
Intelligence, featured in the book - To Think or Not to Think and Other
Stories, by Ashutosh Ghildiyal
Contributed by -
Ashutosh Ghildiyal is a salaried professional based in Mumbai,
India. He was born in Lucknow in 1984, where he completed his schooling. He
completed his graduate studies in New Delhi and his post-graduate education
in Mumbai. He is the author of To Think or Not to Think and Other
stories (Book), various blogs and short stories. Email:
ashutoshghildiyal@hotmail.com
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