Music that put a smile on my face

Long time since I blogged about music.

An overwhelming feeling of sadness came over me as I read the papers about Naushad's passing away yesterday. As obituaries upon articles mentioned his songs, I relived all the memories of childhood when I had discovered Naushad's music. I also felt a sense of pride in having being able to discover and appreciate a composer whose music was not exactly 'in' within my generation.

There is a lot to Naushad beyond Mughal-e-Azam and Mother India and I think his best can only be appreciated by listeners who take some effort to find their music rather than music finding them through radio or TV.

I don't know what it is about songs like 'Uthaye jaa unke sitam' (from Andaz) or 'Do sitaron ka zameen par hai milan' (Kohinoor) that everytime I play them in my head I smile to myself. I can say the same thing about every song in Baiju Bawra, perhaps Naushad's best.

I cannot claim to identify with the lyrics of these songs because they speak about a different era but also because I am not that deep as a person. Yet, I can attach every time of the year, every turn of the weather and every place that is close to me to some or the other song by Naushad.

It is largely thanks to Naushad that I developed a taste for Hindustani Classical Music. I was probably 8 or 9 years old when Dad's huge collection of tapes and LPs of Kumar Gandharva, Jasraj, Bismillah Khan, Kishori Amonkar, Hariprasad Chaurasia et al caught my curiosity and attention. I still have images ingrained in memory when I began to neglect school homework and started listening to that music fulltime, flooding Dad with all sorts of questions the moment he returned from office about what differentiated Raag Kedar from Raag Bihag, or how one counted the Maatras in a Taal, and the works. Dad has a way of explaining things that you 'see' it immediately.

But it was in Naushad's songs that I found validation for my understanding of all these complex concepts of music. Thanks to Naushad, by the time I was 12, I understood enough about Classical Music to be able to sit through entire 4 hours of a Hariprasad Chaurasia concert fully knowing what was going on each second and fully enjoying it.

What I learned then has stayed with me till today and helped me play more than a dozen musical instruments without any formal training. I might have explored other forms of music over time, from the glass-shattering mayhem of Pantera to the deft piano runs of Chick Corea, the gruff vocals in Dire Straits to the ghazals of Jagjit Singh, but the music from those years remains closest to my heart.

Very little from the film music nowadays feels like home. I can clearly count songs that have really touched me in the recent years. Parineeta's music, especially 'Raat Hamari Toh', or 'Bawra Mann' from Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi or 'Luka Chhipi' from Rang De Basanti are the only ones that really make a mark.