Thursday, December 25, 2008

A pointless post

A few days back, much to my surprise, a couple of readers of this blog(whose readership hasn't made much headway since the days of single digit readership and has stayed in single digits despite such avant-garde, path-breaking, historical, thought provoking, laughter-riot-inducing, heart-wrenching writing), asked me why I am not updating my other blog. The one about music which I started in my typical I-know-about-everything style and stopped after 3 brief posts with one of them being an introduction. (Quite laughable indeed.) Despite being pretentious sometimes, I am also honest. So I said, 'En bareebeku gottaaglilla, adakke barililla' (For the English-knowing-Kannada-gottilla readership of this esteemed blog, here goes the translation. 'I didn't know what to write. So I didn't write').
Truer words have been spoken, but this too was quite true. I assumed myself to be connoisseur of music and started that blog. A connoisseur who took twenty four years of his life to discover Beatles and consequently realize their greatness. This was such a laughable discovery that I almost wanted to write a post, 'A random-passerby Harish declares that Beatles were great - a good 38 years after they shut down as a group'. This being the case, what shall I write in a music blog(although I read almost everything that's there in the wikipedia about Beatles)? Ok, to write about music, knowledge about Beatles isn't mandatory, especially for a person like me who really couldn't differentiate between jazz, rock and pop for a long time. Ok, what do I know about Indian music apart from my failed attempts to learn violin.
I started learning violin when I was a nine year old much like musicians of yore. Instantly made, Chowdiah as my inspiration - a person whose performance I had never heard. Took less than a couple of years to move on to varNaas before I discontinued. This I attributed to creative differences with the teacher. No, I actually I didn't like they way it was taught in Vijaya College Of Music and I didn't know where else to go to learn Violin. Then, 2 or 3 years later, I suddenly remembered my pledge to become Chowdiah whose violin rendition I had still not heard. Consequently I decided to resume learning violin. And where did I go? To the same teacher at the same school. It continued for less than a year or so and again creative differences arose and I left with my pledge not yet redeemed. Status - 2 or 3 varNaas. 2 or 3 years later, I had forgotten my pledge as also the fact that I had still not listened to Chowdiah. Being a man who can be very easily swayed sometimes by propaganda, I went back, at the start of my engineering, to my learn-violin adventure after I heard so many people say that, 'Harisha, jeevandalli hooby anta iTTkobeku. Adralloo sangeeta. Manassige santasa koDutte. Nee kacheri koDbekaagilla. Maneli nuDiskobahudu. Ningidu eega gottaagalla, munde gottaagutte'(Here goes the translation - 'Harisha, in life, you should have a hobby. That too music. It gives you happiness. You need not give concerts. You can play violin at home itself. You won't realise it now, you will realise later'). This time I found a pretty good teacher who taught really well and I made dramatic progress and in 2-3 years completed most of the syllabus for the junior exam. Lost interest suddenly. Left
learning. And became a software engineer.

Despite such a lengthy learning, I really didn't know much about Carnatic music that you could really write about in a serious blog on music which I wanted my other blog to be. And what about Indian film music? Well pretty much the same case when you consider that I came to know of one of India's best composers Ilayaraja only 3 or 4 years back. I should thank Arjun though for introducing me to Ilayaraja's music. (That Ilayaraja worked in G K Venkatesh's music troupe made me proud as a Kannadaiga). Instantly became so impressed by Raja sir's music that I wanted to download all the songs he has composed in all the languages and I did download few songs in Telugu and one in Malayalam apart from many in Kannada and Tamil(this despite me not understanding any of these languages apart from Kananda). What wonderful music!
And I proclaim that I am a big fan of A R Rehman's music, a fan who stumbled upon one of Rehman's best compositions - 1947 Earth - only earlier this year.
Even if we assume there's no need for any knowledge to write about music you should atleast know how to write about music. Whenever you ask me to write about a song I like, it shall usually contain two or three words/phrases like, 'melodious', 'superb orchestration', 'excellent background instruments'. If I am the most creative I might use mellifluous. In that way I might destroy songs by writing about it and making people go away from those songs. So I didn't write. Instead concentrated on writing extremely opinionated posts on significant political events apart from humour. Yes, I wrote this entire post to essentially say what the previous sentence said. Thank You.