“Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.”.wrote Maya Angelou.
Music is the easiest way to start believing in the existence of magic.
“Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything,” said Plato.
The music in nature is ethereal.It is like the lord’s ‘raag’-beyond any worldly composer’s imagination.
The honey-sweet warble and chirrup of birds, the hushed, secretive whoosh of a summer breeze at daybreak, the plaintive call of the wind whistling in the pines and deodars after nightfall. The babble of streams as they flirt with the pebbles on their downhill journey is like the music of the heartbeat -rhythmic and life-giving. The drone of buzzing bees and insects humming away as they go about their daily business is like an aria of the opera of our universe. An astounding study claims that flowers can hear the sound of bees and it makes their nectar sweeter! A poet would have us believe that God’s favorite music must be the sound of thunder.
The relentless knocking on red tin roofs
Tap tap tap tap, tap tap tap
As the raindrops dance in dervish abandon
Clouds assemble in moronic greys
Wrenching out hearts from pining maidens
Each hail stone grinding itself into pain
Every thunder clap mocked her yearning pulse.
When Julie Andrews lip-synced
“Doe a deer, a female deer …” with a bunch of children, the audience wanted to sing along. The popularity of karaoke is ample proof of how instinctively natural music is in human lives. Yes, plants grow better , cows give more milk, the ailing heal faster, and babies sleep to the sound of lullabies and white noise machines which create a comfortable, womb-like environment that soothes infants, encouraging them to stop crying and fall into a calm and long sleep.
The Sound of Music
It tinkled in her anklets
As she crossed the gurgling rivulet
Her shalwar hitched high over porcelain ankles
The sound of mystical music
In rhythm with the ancient windmill
Beyond yonder meditating hills
Ivy vines embraced silver oaks
With the notes of an ecstatic Jal- Tarang
As the busy bee buzzed in beat
To the startled, scarlet hued butterfly
A soaring bald eagle swooped with
A peal call of seven high pitched rapid notes
Kwit-kwit-kwit -kee-kee-kee-kee-ker
Her snickering laugh highlighted nature’s vast repertoire
Then you whispered my name
And the Ghazal was complete.
Our souls uncoil, leap and whirl like the dervishes of yore when we hear a note strummed on a ‘sarangi’.The restless streams of Habba Khatoon’s poetry, sing the song of waiting. A solitary life is miraculously peopled when a jal- tarang smiles its tinkling sound. The saffron fields blossom in ecstasy when the rabab unwinds its strings. Coy Ms.Dawn comes hiding her flame orange gashes with the divine call of the Azaan, the pealing of temple bells, and the kirtan from the gurdwara. The dulcet strains of the sarod, sitar, santoor, and veena benumb you into an inebriated trance.
Ah! when a maestro blows his heart out into a shehnai or a flute (bansuri ), the hills reverberate with the desolate call of a hungering lover. A surge of blood swishes drunkenly in one’s veins as a ”dholi”( drummer )strikes up a jubilant , foot-tapping, Bhangra beat. Bodies sway like voluptuous temple sculptures to the throb of the dholki, tabla, and pakhawaj.
Music is capable of miraculously communicating the uncommunicable.It conveys emotions and feelings like nothing else can. Beethoven felt that music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music begins where words leave off.
Watch the look on human faces as they hear a thhumri mesmerise the senses ….” Hamri Atariya pe Aao Saanvariya, Dekha dekhi balam hoyi jaaye .
Not only do we humans sing happy songs of jubilation at births and weddings,we also remember to sing hymns and lament in dirges for the dead. Shiv Batalvi ,complained.,”eh mera geet kisse na gaana , eh mera geet main aape gaa ke ,palke hi mar Jaana “” or “maye ni maye mere geetaan de naina vich birhon di radak pave…”
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