Enrapturing Music

An atemporal joy wraps you as you listen to it. You feel enslaved by a certain force that takes over you, a force that results in unexplainable bodily manifestations while your mind lies on a different plane altogether dumbfounded, awestruck, flabbergasted, call it what you may.

I just made a desperate, yet futile attempt to really explain the bliss of listening to Drupad, a form of Hindustani classical music. Self was blessed the other day at Dharwad, when I was privileged to listen to Gundecha brothers, live. It is really, really sad though, that this form of music is marching towards extinction. I suppose, this is too traditional an art form, that fails to pervade through the masses, perhaps in commercial ways like other forms of music.

Music, hit my senses again, this time at Bangalore when I attended a Shakti concert, live. This was the first time that I got to listen to Zakir Hussein and U.Srinivas, unrivalled maestros in their own right. I was truly amazed by improvisations that Zakir could do on a Tabla. Equally flummoxing was the way V. Selva Ganesh played the Kanjira, where he made it sound like a
Mrudangam, an African drum of sorts and more.

Probably, this is too obscure a media to express the genii of these artists, or I am just running short of expression here. Experience it yourself, and you would understand exactly what I mean.