The Idea of Music: Making Time Beautiful?

Pandit Ravi Shankar’s face tells us the story of music. It is a face creased with bliss; the bliss of music has imprinted itself into his visage, and every line in it is in fact a connection to something infinite and sublime. His face is in some ways a map of the universe with every wrinkle a longitude of rapture. His face speaks for the power of music, something all of us experience in our own ways but are rarely able to explain or even fully comprehend.

 The same can be said of so many musicians, even those not as gifted as Ravi Shankar. When they play or sing or even hum, they lose themselves only to find something much vaster. Music flows out of them, it burrows its way out, it gets drawn out into the world so that it can rhyme with something deep and vital and yet something that we have very little understanding of.

 It is as if music defies all attempts at definition. We recognise music when we hear it but it is otherwise very difficult to describe. Music has rhythm, but not all rhythmic sounds are music; it has melody but a bird’s call, however melodious is not music. Music is a language that cannot be translated; it can be expressed only in terms of itself. It speaks to a part of us that language does not reach; it is experienced at a level deeper than the intellect. We feel music rather than grasp it. We respond to music, rather than understand it.

 And this is not true only of the ‘high’ classical form practised by Pt Ravi Shankar, but of all music. Our fingers tap, our feet move, our eyes close as if by themselves when we listen to music. Music transports us to a place beyond our individual selves. We are connected to a larger universal force, we feel immersed in something powerful and inviting. We are ‘lost’ to ourselves as we shut our eyes to exclude ourselves from this world for a temporary citizenship of the universe. In a world crowded with noise, in the din of opinion and cacophony of individuals jostling for recognition, music affords a rare pleasure- that of self-forgetfulness. The ability to melt the demands of a perpetually incomplete self into the liquid fullness of music is one that allows us not only to shut out the world, but the insistent needs of our own individuality. Through music the universe seems to be speaking directly to something deep inside us; nature appears to be reclaiming itself from within us.

 In some ways, music is a device that makes time beautiful. It is nothing sound draped over time; it serves to make time voluptuous. Music gives shape and form to time; time is rendered liquid in the hands of music. We experience time emotionally when we listen to music. Music steals meaning from time; it snatches beauty from its bland emptiness.

 Music is perhaps a tangible representation of the life force that runs inside us. Starting from the rhythm of the heart beat which forms the most basic musical structure, melody lends a sense of fluid continuity to the idea of life. We dance to music in acknowledgement of the power of this new language to speak to our bodies and make it do things that our mind may not always understand or even approve of. Cultures that can dance are those that are connected to nature and ooze primal power.

 Music intensifies our emotions and makes us feel things more keenly. It speaks to grief in the language of sorrow and to joy in the language of bliss. Words in songs serve to raise the emotional payload delivered by the music. Words work best when they express the intent of the music in terms we can retain. By articulating the meaning of the music, words help songs occupy a place in our lives. They give music a name and identity; songs socialise music by giving it a context.

 With time, the enjoyment of music becomes a more self-conscous endeavour. We start consuming the meaning around music be it in terms of the image of the musician, the label that we attach to it, the manner of its creation, the backstory that resonates with us, the cerebral layers we add on to it and so on. Like any other text or form, music becomes an excuse to celebrate and admire our own selves in the name of enjoying something outside of us. It is pleasure of a kind, but it serves to takes us away from the purity of feelings that music produces all by itself.

 For music at its heart is all about fluidity, continuity and immersive universality. It tells us that bliss of the kind that Pt Ravi Shankar experiences comes from losing ourselves in the vastness of music and not in the singularity of our individual existences. It argues against breaking down things into its component parts and for experiencing them in their fluid entirety. It is a compelling advertisement for the fact that as human beings we respond from deep within ourselves to universal themes in a universal way. But perhaps because music does not speak in the fragmented language of the individual, because it hums its songs in its own language to itself, we enjoy music without grasping the idea behind it. The musically gifted are almost always deeply spiritual; for the others the message of music is lost in translation.

(This is a modified versions of a piece that has appeared previously in the Times of India)