Music: Linguistically challenged..!!

It was perhaps when I was a four year old boy and Doordarshan, probably the only channel on TV. Coming back from the Sunday morning mass at church, I stood in front on the scooter as dad drove through the congested roads of the early ninety’s with mom sitting at the back. Feeling the cool morning breeze on my face, I believe the only thing that I thought about was ‘Jungle Book’, ‘Bible ki Kahaaniya’ and ‘Mahabharat'. With no offense to my Hindu friends, I never did like the latter of the three much. I found it confusing with so many characters, chariots and strange looking arrows that blew up in mid air. But, more than anything else, more than Mongli, Noah’s ark or Sri Ram, what I remember the most was a string of contemporary musicians and vocalists... Lata Mangeshkar, Shiv Kumar Sharma, Bhim Sen Joshi, Bala Murali Krishna, you name it, all singing or playing what one would call the essence of diversified unity, “mile sur mera tumhara, to sur bane hamara”. It was then, when I first happened to hear the phrase... “Music has no language”, from a person I blindly believed, my father.

For these many years, I have been an admirer of music. And when I say music, it ranges from the droning of a bumble bee to the rhythmic clattering of the railways; from the khyaals and the taanpura to the opera and the cellos. The mysticism of Indian classical music has no rivals, nor do the enigmatic overtures of the Western classics. Be it Tansen, Bhatkhande, Beethoven or Byrd, they all have been proofs enough for me to believe what my father had said. As the years rolled by, with maths, science, social studies and language...the one thing that grew along with my age was the frequency of a few words... why, what, where and the like. Looking back, it is no surprise to me now. After all, the whole world follows the same path to greater knowledge. Nevertheless, the latest in the list was a question that came to me a week or two before, that does music really have no language..!!

It suddenly popped into my mind after I was taunted by someone about my choice of music. For those who do not know my choice, here is a crash course and it’s a crash course because its one line long. “I like anything that is melodious”. I believe it was Pt. Jasraj singing Raag Bhairav. He was a lean fair dude, pale would be a more appropriate word, hair grown out and wore a black Nirvana T-Shirt with Kurt Cobain written on it. He said, “Dude, what the f*** is that madcap singin? And by the way, how the f*** can you listen to this nonsense?” An argument broke out, more out of insult and anguish than anger. The argument may have had no outcome but surly it gave me something to think about.

So, while we know exactly that Mike Shinoda was the one who put Linkin Park together, very few of us know the difference between a sarod and a saarangi. When I type Elvis with a small ‘e’... MS Word tells me its “Elvis” and not “elvis” with that irritating red line beneath it. But when I type Jasraj, I need to right click and “add to dictionary”; even Microsoft does not know who Pt. Jasraj is. Its not that I have something against western music, its that I cannot comprehend as to why it should be hailed so high that we treat our own tradition “unclool” and if I may take the liberty to say it ... even uncouth. We love and revere Jim Reeves, how many Texas guys would know about Kishore or Rafi. Too much for “Music has no language”.

I may be right, I may be wrong, but for the time being, that’s my stand. Music has a language; which one, I know not but surely as an Indian I can see clearly, it is none of the tongues we are born with. To some extend I presume even we need to do some introspection. After all, for me it goes beyond just music, its national respect at stake, not just a language.