Today, June 27, is the World Music Day and many of us did not know that for the simple reason that music has vanished from our lives. However, before musing over the value, import and gain of being a music-lover, let’s get to the bottom of it. The idea of a World Music Day was first conceptualised in France in 1976, strangely by an American musician, Joel Cohen, who proposed an all-night music celebration to mark the beginning of the Summer Solstice. I just said “strangely”, for America and music seem to be poles apart, though there have been some great music composers and orchestra maestros there, most of them being originally from other continents. People like Ravi Shankar and Zubin Mehta have enriched our lives, as they have done in the Americans’.
Music, long ago, has vanished from the lives of Americans because since their Independence in 1776, the race for and pursuit of money in the form of scientific and industrial advancements assuring the rest of the world of better living and social upliftment has taken its toll. Towns and cities mushroomed, industries flourished, more and more films were produced as American culture spread its wings.
But music in life became a casualty, though there were thousands of players of various musical instruments from different parts of the world working tirelessly for various purposes – films, videos, parties, games, night clubs, even porno films, leave aside hundreds of hotels and restaurants. Slowly, noise replaced music, and the music-loving generations gave way to noise-loving youngsters, from among whom were born the neo-composers. ‘Beatles’ gave way to Michael Jackson. Aha, Such transgression from the original subject is indicative of a sort of ‘music less-ness’ in all our writings, save only a few.
So, an American Joel Cohen is the father of the concept. This must have hurt the ego of the French, who have been announcing to the rest of the world about their superiority and supremacy in the fields art and culture, dance and music, literature and theatre, filmmaking and, of course, lovemaking! So, Maurice Fleuret, a renowned French music and dance director, in 1981 took up the idea and the next year in 1982, the first celebration of World Music Day was organised in Paris. French pride was restored in the holy thought that it is they who could at last infuse music in our otherwise mundane lives. The idea picked up; the celebration gradually became an international phenomenon, celebrated throughout the globe, in most major cities and capitals.
The French, of course, were fortunate in not being able to make India one of their colonies. The British did. Now, the British ‘faced’ the music, or rather, listened to the music of a man singing the tune of nonviolence, composed solely by him and orchestrated by hundreds of leaders and sung by millions! The French were spared and thereby became poorer in experiencing the real music. A handful of them in Pondicherry and the Portuguese in Goa (liberated much later in the 1960s) could not only know Indian music but also were amazed at its origin, variety, complexity and, above all, serenity. The French in Pondicherry were enamoured by Sri Aurobindo’s music through ‘Savitri’ that endeared one and all who aspired to transcend the seven stages of consciousness; and the Portuguese, as they were much nearer to Bombay, could learn a host of interesting as well as uninteresting things about the trade of filmmaking and music. The French, of course, amended their ways and the flow of ‘legion de Honor’ for Indian masters, Guru Dutt and Satyajit Ray being the most known names, are testimony to that.
Music, Indians believed, came from lord Shiva, one of the three prime forces; and thereafter, Devi Saraswati took care of it through her Veena. Although all leading Hindu gods and goddesses pride themselves with some kinds of musical instruments: Vishnu has the conch, Krishna flute, Shiva has Dambaru, Devi Saraswati has Veena, Devarshi Narada has also Veena, etc. Our Vedas, Upanishads, Ramayana and Mahabharata vividly describe scenes where dance and music have merged. Music has magical powers, so much so that Bhakta Salabega says in one of his many immortal Bhajans that “listening to the flute played by Sri Krishna, the waters of river Yamuna got bewildered”. Science has shown through some complex experiments that animals and trees too listen to music.
Recent developments suggest that quality music has the power to bring solace to the suffering, especially those critically ill. A cancer hospital in the USA has ensured that its patients listen to quality music everyday! Of course, Md. Rafi’s rendition of “O duniya ke rakhwale –“ in Baiju Bawra, set to music by Naushad and filmed on Bharat Bhusan, might have transported people into a different era where music could light the lamps (Raga Deepak) , bring rains (Megha Malhar), Basant Bahar (to bring spring early) and so on.
Music, in the past, got the patronage of kings and emperors, many of whom were not only fond of music but could actually play some instruments. The king’s court was full of persons who were poets, musicians and singers. Of course, real quality always got mixed up with mediocrity, as it is nowadays, but there was no dearth of patronage. Many tyrants, autocrats and dictators were also music lovers, but they ultimately had to face the music of their angry subjects.
Then, there are the curious cases of great writers like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Vladimir Nabokov, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, our own Bankim Chandra, Premchand, Rabindranath and, more recently, Gopinath Mohanty, Surendra Mohanty and Manoj Das, whose prose is in fact poetry, and while reading them, one’s heart sings the tunes of joy, sorrow, ecstasy, despair, love, betrayal and what not!
Music, the saying goes, knows no boundaries. Indeed so; or how else one would explain the music unleashed by a Stan McCabe or a Don Bradman against the English bowlers on the pitch, or a Dhyan Chand setting to tune seventy minutes of unadulterated music by a hockey stick! Such musicians are aplenty in modern times. You have Frank Worell, Gary Sobers, Greg Chappel, Denis lillie, BS Bedi, Gundappa Viswanath, Alvin Kalicharan, VVS laxman in cricket; Pele, Baba, Garincha, Socrates, Romario and, most recently, Ronaldo and Neymar Jr in football and Michael Jordan in basketball. All were great musicians; they were neither orchestra maestros nor instrumentalists. There should be no mistaking that Worell and Sobers were musicians where as Clive llyod, Viv Richands and Greenidge were instrumentalists. Now, do not drag me into the debate as to who was what among Tendulkar, Dravid, Ganguly and laxman! Sports are replete with such magicians, maestros and musicians. And if you really force me into categorising the fabled four, I’d say: Tendulkar is Pandit Ravi Shankar, Dravid is Ustad Bismillah Khan, Ganguly is Ustad Allahrakha and laxman is Pandit Omkar Nath Thakur and SD Burman melted into one!
Finally of course, husbands face the wife-music and wives face husband-music in homes! On a bigger stage, the JD(U) is facing the NaMo-music! On a still larger stage, Obama is facing the Karzai-music. Music, as some great philosopher once mused, is everywhere. From chirping of birds to sea waves, from water falling from a mountain to a python slithering away on dry leaves, from primitive tribal music to RD Burman’s or Akshaya Mohanty’s tunes! We need to have ears to recognise, or rather, identify music. look, this musing on music is going out of proportions, and unless I put a stop now, I’ll face the music from my editor, who otherwise is a sincere music-lover.
(The author is a short story writer in Odia language and currently works as Public Relations Officer to the Governor, Odisha.)