Let the music play

Warning - Insanely long post. Heavily link littered for the benefit of those who could use some musical enlightenment ;)

A post about music on this blog should fall under 'knew this was coming' category, going by the numerous times I associate my post titles with song names and lyrics. So why now? Uhmm, why not I thought. Hence.

The early days

My oldest memories of music probably date back to the mid-80's. That was a time when tapes were the rage with a dual cassette player/recorder being the zenith of luxury. I don't know whether music was as easily accessible as it is today (legally or not) but there was quite a stack of cassette tapes in the house, courtesy mostly my uncles. Dad was never so much into music. Ghulam Ali, Pankaj Udhas, Anup Jalota, Mohd. Rafi, Sudhir Phadke, Arun Date, Asha Bhosle, popular filmi music and some english tapes thrown in for good measure, all jostled for space on that ever filled up rack of cassettes.

Moving on in to the 90's and cable TV spreading itself into everyday average households I was attracted further to music, latest filmi stuff mostly. I remember walking down the street to the music shop with either of my uncles. Here we used to sift through latest releases and pick a bunch of songs to be recorded onto a cassette. This saved the dough to buy an OST for a movie when only 2 out of 8 songs were worth listening to. Ofcourse, the recording was more expensive than buying an OST but it made economic sense to have only the good songs and spare your ears of the crap. My sense of rhythm was growing up on a steady diet of Bollywood fluff.

Inglish know you?

Somewhere down the years, I think 7th grade, I chanced upon English pop music. Like every kid my age then, I started off with MJ, Madonna and the likes. The list soon started to grow with more 90's music to include Bryan Adams, MLTR, Ace of Base and one off Canuc acts like Snow kept things interesting. This was also the time when our very own desi version of Vanilla Ice, Mr Baba 'Thanda Thanda Paani' Sehgal was churning out album after album with utmost sincerity. This was a time when rap was cool. Rap in Hindi, ubercool. Indipop was taking root and soon many artistes followed. Mehnaz with Ms India promised much but disappeared into oblivion too quickly. Her competitor in chief, Anaida, was a looker, but her looks only took her thus far. If only she had a voice to match her self-proclaimed patli kamariya things would have worked out much better. She too disappeared much like Mehnaz within the blink of an eye. Alisha Chinoy was the more consistent among the 3 female Indipop artistes of the early 90's. Acts like the Colonial Cousins came up and delivered a good song or two.

Moving away from Boyband litter

By the late 90's I was completely lopping up whatever crap was being dished out on TV, Channel [V] to be precise. Boyzone, Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, Ricky Martin, Savage Garden were regulars on the playlist. To add to the English crap was middle eastern spice in the form of Khaled, Alabina, Tarkan, Araba, Cheb Mami and others I don't recall. Yes, I listened to all that crap too. At the same time, MTV had one show on Sunday evenings which played the latest in house/techno/experimental electronica with artistes like Josh Wink, Daft Punk, Chicane, Paul van Dyk, ATB, Groove Armada, FSOL etc and I began to completely enjoy this form of music. Apparently, the only place to lay hands on such music on tapes at that time in Pune was Vibrations on good ole' Main Street. Soon Vibrations was my temple with weekly visits and near monthly dosages of new techno music.

For those about to rock

It was all going well and good in much the same vein until the third year of engineering school when I was introduced to Metallica. I was a late bloomer on the rock scene but got hooked and caught on really quickly. Again, like most people, I started off with the Black album and just couldn't get enough. Soon, I was listening to a whole lot of Pantera, Sepultura, Sabbath, Van Halen, Iron Maiden and I found a weird sense of peace within the music that sounded like cacophony just some time back. Within no time, I had transformed myself from a happy go lucky trigger hippie to a serious headbanger. My love affair with rock music continued during my Masters and I found great music from alternative/grunge bands like Oasis, Nirvana, AIC, STP, Radiohead, RHCP, GGD, etc etc etc Ofcourse classic rock could not be ignored and I was also frequently listening to music from the holy trinity - Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple.

Back to the roots

One fine evening in the US I realised how much I missed listening to the Marathi songs that were played on the radio early morning as mom went through her daily household routine, radio in tow. I think I snatched all available marathi songs off coolgoose that night =)) In the meantime, thanks to my roomies, I was also being brought back steadily on the Bollywood diet.

More styles

During my techno/trance tripping days I had found some music from Infected Mushroom and Astral Projection. As soon as I got my first laptop I was ready for more music and Soulseek obliged. I hunted down an insane amount of psy trance and once again started jumping the happy hippie way listening to IM, AP, Skazi, Talamasca, CPU, Hujaboy and their ilk. With psytrance on, it's pole opposite, ambientcouldnt be far behind. Artistes like Shpongle, Hallucinogen, Ishq, Adham Shaikh, Aphex Twin, Kraftwerk etc soon found their way on to my hard drive. Aphex Twin also led me to exploring some more IDM, but some listening to Venetian Snares and Squarepusher convinced me that IDM didn't have so much of an I in it. Ambient naturally progressed towards an eastern influence and I found an artiste by the name of Karunesh. Karunesh was the tip of the iceberg for the whole asian electronica scene that I then discovered.

I listened to Talvin Singh's Butterfly and I knew I wanted more of this kind of music. I had earlier listened to OK but wasn't impressed back then. More digging around and I was listening to Karsh Kale, Midival Punditz, TJ Rehmi, Badmarsh & Shri, Niraj Chag - the whole asian electronica scene. I was so impressed by the marriage of tabla with electronica that I knew I had to check out what Indian classical sounded like by itself. Then came Ustad Zakir Hussain, Ustad Sultan Khan, Hariprasad Chaurasiya, Anoushka Shankar etc but I found it a little too bland for my palate.

A trip to the pind

With so much Brit influence in the asian electronica scene, I slowly moved towards the old Brit favorite, DnB. Bally Sagoo has incorporated a lot of DnB influence in his albums and while listening to some of his songs I started enjoying Bhangra. Soon I was all hands in air to the tunes of Panjabi MC, Juggy D, Lehmber, Malkit Singh and all their punjabi brethren. I couldnt understand a word of what was being said, for all I knew, the music was really cool :)

Choose one?

With so many different genres of music, it is no surprise that I find myself being thrown in all directions wherever I find new music. No harm in sampling new music anyway, like it - find more of a similar style, don't - trash it. Keeping this simple mantra at the back of my mind I have been enjoying all my music so far. Nowadays I often find that my mood dictates my choice of music. If I'm in a reflective mood, I listen to some alternative rock, marathi or some old hindi songs which make sense. If I'm in a chaotic state I turn up the music to some hard rock. In happy carefree moods I usually dont care what I'm listening to as long as it is upbeat, could be bhangra, could be electronica, could be classic rock or it could even be some jhatang bollywood music.

Well, as long as the music keeps playing, I'm eager to soak it all in. Let the music play ...

Post Title: Shamur - Let the music play