What is it about music that grips you by the soul, far deeper than anything else ever can?
The written word does occassionally stir you emotionally and sometimes even catch you unawares, exposing something tender and raw.
Think of the breathless beauty of the closing pages of the House of God; the helpless, yet nonchalant statement of irrevocable facts of life in English Passengers; the sadness of growing up in the final lines of The Lord of the Flies; the desperation of poverty in American Gods and the searing anger refusing to Go Gently into that Good Night.
However, nothing comes close to music, whether it is classical, traditional or mainstream, in it's ability to transport you, sometimes rudely dragging you by the arm, to a place of pain and beauty, nimbly leaping over barriers of race, language and culture.
So I thought I will compile a tiny list of music to hear at least once before you die:
The written word does occassionally stir you emotionally and sometimes even catch you unawares, exposing something tender and raw.
Think of the breathless beauty of the closing pages of the House of God; the helpless, yet nonchalant statement of irrevocable facts of life in English Passengers; the sadness of growing up in the final lines of The Lord of the Flies; the desperation of poverty in American Gods and the searing anger refusing to Go Gently into that Good Night.
However, nothing comes close to music, whether it is classical, traditional or mainstream, in it's ability to transport you, sometimes rudely dragging you by the arm, to a place of pain and beauty, nimbly leaping over barriers of race, language and culture.
So I thought I will compile a tiny list of music to hear at least once before you die:
- Barber's Adagio for strings - which adds leadweights to your soul in unrelenting increments, making you sink ever lower into beauty till it envelopes you completely and amniotically.
- Tracy Chapman singing Fast car - the sheer hope of unfulfilled destiny rising from the dying embers of desperate nonexistence.
- Don Henley coming of age in End of Innocence.
- Third Eye Blind's definitive song for dying relationships, Motorcycle driveby.
- Pinneyum, honed to lyrical perfection by Girish Puthenchery.
- A R Rahman's Jage Hain in full orchestral glory.
- Fall of a leaf gently traced on a willing cello by Imogen Holst.
- Piano man, Billy Joel's enduring tribute to shattered dreams.
- And today, after I dried my eyes, I added one more to my list - the blind native Australian singer Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu singing 'Bapa', mourning the loss of his father. I cannot understand a word he says, except for 'Bapa' which is surprisingly similar to the colloquial Malayalam word for father (proving that plate tectonics really happened, I guess).
Here is the youtube link for interested souls:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvJPXAV0eB4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvJPXAV0eB4
