Listen to the rustling breeze
Sweep across the plains
The sound of hooves in the tall grass
Of swishing tails and flowing manes
Listen to the long lost songs
Of waiting earth and bounteous skies
And to the heartbeats that mingled
In smiles and tears and sighs.
Music is like meditation….
Sink into the eddies created by the seven notes and one is swirled away from the flotsam and jetsam on the surface of everyday routine to the breathtaking calm and peace and beauty of the ocean floor, where fishes big and small, swim in shoals amongst the coloured corals and spectacular sea-weeds sway in rhythm on rocks. .
Music is medication ….
A salve that anoints the muddled mind and heals the hubris in our sequestered souls.
Music is manna showered down upon us in the wilderness of our wants, that satiates our senses and our spirit .
Music is the bird that beckons from blossom-laden branches , the fragrance that floats in the spring air, the lightness and lure of a child’s laughter, the growth of green moss on a rock turned bare, the solitary shell on a stretch of sand, rain that runs in random ripples, the hush that hums to the mountains grand , the mellowed dusk on a meadow and the grass that tickles.
Music is magic to our mortal fears, that casts a spell on our ordinariness , the whisperings of the wise old seer who foretells of our freedom from madness.
Music is love for it is a rising swell that envelops the peaks and the dust in the dell.
Music is divine for it annihilates the shelf on which we stack our illusions of self.
Music is grace.
Okay all that as an introduction to my Sunday morning.
Usually , I’m not wont to synchronising my day with the rising sun and am better attuned to stretch in slumber in the early hours of the morning. But for the past couple of weeks, my Sunday mornings have been different and refreshingly so.
I’d convinced myself that there was no age –bar to being a student and a while ago, had spent a few hours surfing the internet to locate a teacher who taught Hindustani classical music in the vicinity of where I lived and had courageously enrolled myself in one such group.
It’s okay for you to smile or smirk at this stage.
I’d been given a slot that began at eight in the morning and that sort of dampened my spirits in the beginning.
But here I was waking up this morning at 6 : 00 A.M , feeling bright and beautiful by the time I had finished having tea and bath, had watered my plants , practising the sargam under my breath and was sitting in an auto, with a braid of jasmines in my hair that I had bought on the way.
My voice is not at it’s best ever and in the mornings it is at it’s worst. But I’m beyond the feelings of embarrassment. The others around me will just have to deal with it 🙂
I would like to share with you all a beautiful prayer from the Rig Veda to which I was introduced by my music teacher.
संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं
सं वो मनांसि जानताम्
देवा भागं यथा पूर्वे
सञ्जानाना उपासते ||
saṃgacchadhwaṃ saṃvadadhwaṃ
saṃ vo manāṃsi jānatām
devā bhāgaṃ yathā pūrve
sañjānānā upāsate ||
May you move in harmony, speak in one voice; let your minds be in agreement; just as the ancient gods shared their portion of sacrifice.
समानो मन्त्र: समिति: समानी
समानं मन: सहचित्तमेषाम्
समानं मन्त्रमभिमन्त्रये व:
समानेन वो हविषा जुहोमि ||
samāno mantraḥ samitih samānī
samānaṃ manaḥ sahacittameṣām
samānaṃ mantramabhimantraye vaḥ
samānena vo haviṣā juhomi ||
May our purpose be the same; may we all be of one mind. In order for such unity to form I offer a common prayer.
समानी व आकूति: समाना हृदयानि व😐
समानमस्तु वो मनो यथा व: सुसहासति ||
samanī va ākūtiḥ samānā hrdayāni vaḥ |
samānamastu vo mano yathā vaḥ susahāsati ||
May our intentions and aspirations be alike, so that a common objective unifies us all.
Nothing concrete has been established about the origin of music in our species. The earliest remains of musical instruments date back only 40000 years. But we may have been making sounds much before that as the voice box had started descending to a position lower in our neck region around 1.8 million years ago. So those ancient skulls reveal , they say. Some say, that as human babies had bigger heads than the older primates, they couldn’t cling to the mother and the mothers had to carry them around . The origin of the use of sounds may have been some form of “motherese” , says one hypothesis .
Darwin was of the view that music may have been used by our species much like bird songs, by the male to attract the female. Whatever may have been the origin, music may be one factor that helped bonding amongst the early homo-sapiens and given them the advantage over neanderthal man, so one theory goes and there are many.
It’s a remarkable ingredient of our lives. No two ways about it . Listening to one’s favourite music reportedly gives us a dopamine rush but the why is still a riddle as it does not have any intrinsic direct value in the evolutionary process like food or sex.
Why do we feel sad when listening to certain strains of music and why do we feel joyful while listening to others? Indian classical traditions even have particular ragas for the different times of the day and if you listen to them, they do evoke the moods that one would associate with the hours between the rising of the sun and it’s setting.
Here’s an early morning raga:
An afternoon raga:
An evening raga:
One for the night :
I’ve been reading up on all of this all day , all the time listening to the lilting melodies of Lata Mangeshkar, who turned 86 today. Her songs have matched all our moods and many , many of her melodies have a timeless quality .
Wishing Lataji a healthy , peaceful life .
Here’s a link to a nice collection of classical songs from the great singer.
This noon brought some showers
That rinsed the leaves
And bathed the flowers
And left them squeaky clean
Now the days will run its hours
Through the breezy sieve
Forcing tempers lower
Into the spreading green.
The earth will then build bowers
From climbers growing restive
So that they breathe slower
As against the twigs they lean
A lazy noon resting under the trees
It’s head in the shade and feet stretching
Towards the sun.
A cow’s tail flicking slowly at flees
As it listened to decibels decreasing
In the air that spun
The hour without a crease
For the evening that was waiting
To wear it when done.
nadirafromkannur 