Skip to main content

Music- part 1


What affects your emotions the most? Mine are affected by music. My feelings are like putty in its grasp.
After thinking about the reason for this for a while, this is the conclusion I came to:
The basic mood of a song doesn't really change , but unless the song has a very powerful personality of its own,  the emotions I associate with it are my frame of mind when I first listened to it or when I was crazy about it. Sometimes, the association may have absolutely no relation at all with what the song is about.For instance, 'Innocence' by Avril Lavigne reminds me of a morning in eighth grade when we stood on the balcony outside the art room drawing mango leaves while it was drizzling softly outside. The memory fills me with a peaceful and happy feeling, which is further strengthened by the fact that the artist is also singing about being 'happy'.
Coming to the more technical/scientific aspect of this, it it quite well known that certain combinations of notes
tend to intensify specific emotions in us. Experiments have clearly shown that minor scales create a sad atmosphere!
Those of you who are familiar with Indian classical music (Karnatic or Hindustani)- will know that some ragas are to be sung at specific times of the day. 'Bilahari' (Karnatic), for instance is a morning raga, because it has the overall effect of making one feel positve and happy.(Have you ever listened to 'Sri Chamundeshwari?')
 Raag Durga (Hindustani) however, is a late night raga. The amazing thing is that I didn't know that until today, but the raga has always reminded me of the late evening on which I first listened to it in semi darkness. (There was a power cut, you see. :)) And the memory never fails to thrill some part of me deep within.
So what am I trying to say? This article is an effort, however futile, to express the awe (yes, awe) that I feel when I think about the tremendous power that  combinations of frequencies have over us, and the awe that I feel  when I realize that we,if not scientifically, at least instinctively, understand the phenomenon! Music has managed to inspire in me an extraordinary range of emotions-joy, grief, excitement, desire,hope,empathy, nostalgia, piety- and sometimes, a strange mixture of these,which leaves me thinking, ''I wish the rest of the world could feel this way. I wish they could understand."
Because,in that moment, I feel that we could forget our differences, and become one simply through the strength of that unnamed feeling.












Labels:

Comments

  1. Anonymous13 January 2024 at 11:13

    Where is part 2???? The nation wants to know where is part 2 :(

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts from lonely days

Some nights before I started to write this in mid-2022, I dreamt that I was in an aircraft that was plummeting to the earth. I was not surprised by this dream - less than a week had passed since a tragic plane crash in China. What did surprise me was that I had continued to hope that the plane would right itself until the very end. So when I woke up, breathing hard, still alive, what upset me the most about my nightmare was not that the plane had crashed, but that I had not made peace with my death in those final moments.  I've spent a lot of time thinking about death in the last two years; many of us probably did as we anxiously watched counters on dashboards, each uptick marking the end of another human life. On nights when my overactive imagination conjured up terrible scenarios, I protected myself by taking a mental step back and reminding myself that death was inevitable. But creating distance made me feel guilty. Was it not wrong to feel anything less than all the sadness I...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hot Potato

 _ ____ is like a hot potato  I don't want to hold it  It's too big to throw away ____ is  like a hot potato  I hold on to it  So you don't have to  ____ is like a hot potato  Watching you hold it Still hurts somehow ____ is like a hot potato  I throw it at whoever's around When I can't hold it any longer ____ is like a hot potato  It will cool in time If ____ really is like a hot potato  Maybe we should pass it around  So when it cools,  Our hands are reddened,  but still whole  And we could make a salad  - Ananya  10th December 2024
Post a Comment
Read more

On Bangles and Car keys:

We remember and register the strangest things. Lots of  Indian women who drive wear bangles and own a set of car keys. When I was younger and anxiously awaiting my mother’s return from wherever she’d gone- the sound of those bangles and keys was what I would listen for.When I heard the sound of her fumbling for the keys, I would rush to the door to greet her ( as I grew older I would do the opposite- turn the TV off or shut the novel I was reading and run in). But whatever the response was to the keys and bangles, I would always know they were my mother’s.  I may hear other keys and bangles, but somehow, they always sound different. To this day, that sound means ‘mum’s home’ and thus, even today, I cherish it.
1 comment
Read more