A taste for Recorded Music…..

I am one of those person who was born into recorded music. In 1960’s onwards recorded music completely took over human society, worldwide, making millionaires out of artists.  My first introduction to music was through recorded LP’s of Lata Mangeshkar  and Hemant Kumar , popular  singers in those years and probably greatest ever.  Over the years I have listened to many types of music from all over the world , from tunes of Indonesia to pipes of Inca’s , US rock and roll to Indian classical music . You name it, but they were always recorded. At first during my childhood it was the record player’s with LP’s having beautifully designed covers and woody tonal quality of the emanated sound , then the tape recorders with cassettes and now crystal clear ethereal sounding CD’s and digital music.  I don’t remember ever listening to live music, I mean music straight from the instruments or voice to my ears.

Recorded music is always perfect, designed with deliberation and carry across the message as it is intended by the artist. It is not a living thing, no loose structure, improvisation of the moment or errors exposing human fragility. It is always impeccable with predefined sound vibrations and tonal patterns that always reliably affected my consciousness.  So when I close my eyes, sometimes, my head fill-up with the tunes that I have listened to over and over again either by choice or forcibly. India , in particular Kolkta where I grew up , on every conceivable occasion be it local club soccer tournament or Pujo it was always a necessity to broadcast music over a contraption popularly called ‘mike’ . In the process you were forced to listen to the latest popular numbers. I liked them. I liked them all and absorbed them into my soul without any apprehension. Not only that, I wanted more and went on to collect tunes, different tunes, varied tunes which I gathered, listened and soaked in them. It was the love.

My love for music, a love which was always transmitted and consumed through a machine. As the songs and tunes soared through my heart lifting me, taking me across in long flights of pure imagination and emotion, I never once thought of wanting to meet the singer or musician. Is it that I did not want to include the producer of the music in my very personal precious experience, which itself I wanted to memorize in my mind forever? So now, after many years, when I listen to certain tunes I hark back to those lonely teen days where sitting on rooftop, under afternoon shade, I would lie back, listening to music, shutting my eyes and feel the warm breeze of summer holidays under my nose.

I know it is just that. Is it just that? Yes it is personal very personal. Like the process of rumination over words before writing them down on pieces of paper as poems.

Growing up in lower middleclass of Kolkata , live music that I could ever afford was also not direct. Singers propped up on makeshift stages or stadiums singing through big speakers,  that was the music, performed in front of us. It was not just music but the people, the surroundings, the atmosphere, the musicians response to his audience, everything. We listened to the whole lot including the sound of the space in which all these was happening. An experience, different one, but not music. I abhorred those concerts.

I always thought, how it will feel to sit in front of Ghulam Ali and listen to him singing the gazals directly to me or have Sandhya Mukhopadhyay lift me up with her lilting voice. I wanted to listen to their songs directly, in full form, three dimensional sounds, surrounding my head and ears and extend my fingers to touch their soul. Merge my soul in their taste, smell, feelings, tunes. That would have been true love transmitted between us and without the machine.

That I could not afford. Till then recorded music stays, intermingled with my life’s small things as the very personal fragrance of my soul. So more realistic and warm the recordings are, better it is.