COIMBATORE: The Hindu November Fest 2015 is underway in Coimbatore. The show has brought fabulous artistes to the city. I remember my friend weeping, completely moved, as we watched the sublime Aruna Sairam sing abhangs. Or my embarrassed father trying hard to disown his family and friends as we shouted on top of our voices to Osibisa. Or the absolute excitement that Thaikuddam Bridge brought with them.
When I explain poetry to my students, I start with music. I tell them how my poetry is printed on paper and theirs is perhaps, set to music, but that, essentially, we are all looking at and enjoying the same thing - the power of words, expression, and emotion. I have made no secret of my love for rap and hip-hop and the honesty in the words. I recently discovered the craft of Kendrick Lamar, the 28-year-old hip-hop recording artist. Sample this – “They wanna say there's a war outside and a bomb in the street/And a gun in the hood and a mob of police/And a rock on the corner and a line full of fiends/And a bottle full of lean and a model on a scheme…” ( i )
The song is self-effacing: “We got a young brother to stand for something! We got a young brother that believe in the all of us! Brother Kendrick Lamar! He's not a rapper, he's a writer, he's an author! And if you read between the lines, we'll learn how to love one another! But you can't do that/Right on/I said, you can't do that - without loving yourself first” Wise words to live by. If we have self-worth, we feel worthy of love- to give and receive.
Not too many people write poetry like Pink Floyd does. “So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze? Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? How I wish, how I wish you were here. We're just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year/Running over the same old ground. What have we found? The same old fears. Wish you were here” ( Wish you were here ). No wonder then that so many songs we listen to today, create disbelief and revulsion . Where's the soul?
Poet Sanjeev Sethi affirms, “In your lyrics I can tap/the tentativeness/taste and torment/of early love”( Shower ). Almost all of us understand the poetry of love and its unique, often heart-breaking music. And when they go together, it looks like Flyod Skloot’s Silent Music . The poet watches his wife play “Chopin etudes in the winter light.” She has her headphones on and she’s singing. “The keys she presses make a soft/clack, the bench creaks when her weight shifts/golden cotton fabric ripples across/her shoulders, and thesustain pedal clicks. This is the hidden melody I know/so well, her body finding harmony in/the give and take of motion, her lyric/grace of gesture measured against a slow/fall of darkness.” Does he see the music? Do we sense love?
For Minoo Vania, the song has a different source. In Nature’s Song he writes, “Come sing with me/ On the Mountains/ Or in the plains/ Sing in sunshine/And when it rains/Sing till the sun/Gives no more light/Sing till the stars/Come out at night.”
In Call it Music , Philip Levine explains why music is important: “a silent note/going out forever on the breath of genius/which now I hear soaring above my own breath/as this bright morning fades into afternoon. Music, I'll call it music. It's what we need/ as the sun staggers behind the low gray clouds/blowing relentlessly in from that nameless ocean/the calm and endless one I've still to cross.”
Music connects, words unite. And when they come together? Miracles, magic, magnificence.
