Mutilating Music

The two-days college festival has raised the noise pollution in the vicinity to manifold, and the heap of dust which generally gathers on the furniture had doubled, due to the over-enthusiastic students, who were on the ad hoc noise competition, though no prize was given for this item. As one nears the college, it was obvious that one can listen to the numbers without getting close to the stage; one can easily make out the singer and the song from about 300 meters. But about 2000 odd students who had gathered at the grounds did not bother about the noise; they could still speak to their boy/girl friends over the mobile phones!

Who bothers about the noise and pollution? We all delight in making promises, declarations about how we would save the planet, but when it comes to annual functions, we let the students have what they want. I wish the college administration had the courage to tell the students that there is a decorum that needs to be observed in organizing college annual festivals. Western bands are the craze in all city colleges, though not too many of the students are used to listening English numbers, and there would be just about one third of the students who might enjoy such crazy-sounding, out-of-pitch, high sounding numbers.

In communication theories, noise is defined as unwanted, unpleasant sound, and that is what most of the modern singing turn out to be. It is the death of music in the name of voice modulation. Any abnormal and unusual noise is branded as creative expression, and higher the decibel of the noise created, the better it is esteemed. Maybe the so-called fusion artistes of the western tradition may have to listen for a second time some of the Indian classical music pieces, where one will observe that higher the pitch, the softer is the tonal quality, and even at the peak of one’s voice, the artiste would blend his voice with the instrument in such a way that there is perfect unison. That is the music which can reach directly into our hearts and arouse manifold feelings.

Kolkata has seen an alarming mushrooming of ‘bands’, Chandra Bindu, Lokhichara, Dheu, and the faster they appear, the quicker they disappear. Some of them survive because of one or two popular albums, and they imagine they have the artistic licence to do whatever they way, just because people had paid a price to purchase their albums, and they had done fairly well in the competitive market. But time will tell us that the people who know how to distinguish genuine soul-renting music from cheap, popular music, will one day throw these bands into oblivion, and bring back the traditional music forms. Then we shall hear again Tagore, Kazi Nazrul Islam, Atul Prasad, Ram Prasad, and we shall be elated to an altogether different realm.

Any attempt to bring dishonor to music is a dangerous attempt; the very people who may jump to the tune of some uncanny creative artist, may condemn the same music as noise. Human creativity can find different expressions to delve deep into the heart of all reality, and music can provide one familiar medium. If common people are deprived of this privilege to enter into another plane of reality through music, then music itself may transform its mode and reach the very people it is created for. Music can never be murdered, nor can it be mutilated. For no one can deny the music of one’s heart beat, one’s breathing, one’s flash of eyelids; for there is music in every being, both animate and inanimate, and those who can hear this music are truly heavenly beings!