Sing What I Can't Say

Okay, we know him, and the type. The male who will own you because he'sinsecure, control you because he's possessive. Forever afraid you'll go tosomeone else, and if rejection he must take, then, at least, ensure you diesingle, never go to another man; the dog-in-the-manger every woman knows. Meansentiments, sure, and what but a song could have made them beautiful…'tum agar mujh ko naa chaaho to koi baatnahin, tum kissi aur ko chaahogii to mushqil hogii'

The song has offered us if nothing then a three-minute float of indulgence ofthat not so nice self, and we need many more of those minutes than we ever havethe courage to admit. 

Who would want to grudge this man -- and there's some, even much, of him inall of us -- at the very least a three-minute suspension of judgment? And whoadmits how much we secretly identify with songs, and the sentiment a songcarries for us? The truth is that no one ever listens to a song; it is the songthat listens to us, when no one else will. 

Mukesh never did sing to us. We quietly know he sang for us to give voice toour feelings, chained in inability and embarrassed by expected judgment. Thissong and that, heard or recalled through a day, is really doing far more than weusually acknowledge. For a start, just the sound of one offers instant, iffleeting, rescue from the business of living. But more, identificationbrings needed illusion. It can be the sole supplier of a new, improved self, andthis too is business that needs to get done through a day. 

It says for us what we are afraid to, even if it's to a notional other. Itteases a dream with an edge of actuality. The visions may be the stuff ofdreams, but the feelings are actual, here and now. A song is intimacy without aperson necessarily attached to it. And in those moments when we are with thesong, we are our feeling, not our conduct -- that will never be good enough, andcertainly never seen to be good enough. What other see is conduct, what we knowis feeling. A song is the only alibi too often of a felt truth that is differentfrom judgment. A song indulges felt truth, it forgives, as it did the antics ofa Raj Kapoor when Sahir redeemed them by song with only the gentlest hint ofself-mockery, to music arranged by Roshan, that master of the teasing pause thatis and isn't. What you hear in those near pauses, as much as in the words, isthe voice of entreaty. 

The kind of voice is now drowned in entertainment. Most composers seem unableany more to tell the difference between an arrangement of notes and acombination of sound effects. This probably started with that glutton BappiLahiri who was once allowed accidentally near a harmonium, to our collectivemisfortune through the eighties. Our cinema has always been a fairly backwardsort of excuse to make great music possible, but both cinema and music sank withBappi. After that it could only have got better, and it has. But the bettermentcomes too much by way of 'numbers', not songs.  

The idea now more and more is not to create a song that moves you, but toproduce 'numbers' that get you moving, on this floor and the next. The one whoproduces these 'numbers' needs to be helped, the one who prefers a 'number' to asong deserves to be pitied, and the one who doesn't know the difference ought tobe educated. If there was ever only one thing to be said about songs, it wouldhave to be that line from Shelley - "Our sweetest songs are those that tellof saddest thought" -  almost improved in translation by Shailendra: Hainsab se madhur vo geet jinhe hum dard ke sur mein gaatey hain. . Today analarming number of the population finds in a song only an excuse to exhibit bodygyration. 

A true song is one that you will always remember and often recall. Most songsof today are forgotten as you hear them. The availability of easily manipulatedsound effects has almost smothered the song that could have emerged throughthem. The minute something begins to sound vaguely impressive, it is released far too early in the creative process. At least nine in ten songs today arepremature ejaculation. The song can never stand alone, the notes rarelyharmonise with words to invite identification with sentiment. The music directormust generate accompaniment to spectacle, make an 'item' possible. 

Someone, please hear this groan. No, you can't go back in time, but you cango forward in the knowledge of what has worked before, and always will. A songis nothing but an arrangement of words and notes to a rhythm. That can always bepossible, whatever the times. And there is great power in the way some notes canhang around one another. Political power is nothing compared to the power ofthis arrangement: it only governs details of the day. 

If we recall a song, then it's not only about the world of music; it's aboutus, our own world. Its privacy touches us, its commonness connects, itsrepetition reassures. It's okay for music to make us move a bit, but we do also need to switch on refuge for the hurtable part of the self, to hug ourhelplessness, to dress our sadness in borrowed beauty, make futility exquisite. 

Our music directors can make all this possible, and we need them to. Only asong indulges what we feel in isolation, and only a song can end solitaryisolation. You and I know one another because we listen to the same songs, andwhat we know of one another in that song may be the best in one another thatwe'll ever know. Conversation will fail us, we know, because we'll never be ableto say what our song knows. Our music directors need to say again for us what wecan only feel, never say. Please, our emotions are getting orphaned. 

Sanjay Suri is the author of BridelessIn Wembley