Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

Recently my social media has been abuzz with advertisements announcing classes for singing, age no bar, it adds. Whether you know music or not, you can sing, the ads announce. I am not sure which algorithm is the culprit here, because singing is the last thing I could have thought of. It simply is not my forte.

Now, let me assure you, I am not anti-music. It is just that I am an ignoramus when it comes to this wonderful art. If one were to say I am envious of those who can sing, it won’t be out of tune. My ignorance of music is democratic. It extends to classical as well as light music.

Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy my music. What I can never do, is understand it and can never ever get my vocal chords to string out a tune. I have never found the right note. In fact, if there were to be a competition exclusively for bathroom singers, I wouldn’t even clear the qualifying rounds. That’s how good I am!

The sad fact is that I cannot blame it on my genes either. My mother, and my sisters all sing and sing well too. My father was a connoisseur and would never fail to tune into the  AIR late at night when it aired the Carnatic and Hindustani sangeet. My sisters went through their regular music classes, which I enjoyed, only so that I could have fun disturbing them (I guess that karma is now hitting me back). 

It is music, just enjoy, you need not understand it, someone could say. Be that as it may, not being able to join  in does disturb the tempo. It is like playing tennis against a hard-hitting, hard-serving player with loose strings in your rackets. The dynamics change.

And were it not for the movies and its songs I would certainly have felt lost. Thanks to the wonderful music directors, the lyricists (here I will admit my lack of music sense makes up with my ability to connect to the lyrics) the singers, I have not been kept out of the music world. 

Letting your soul be led away by the melodies and the music, getting lost in its tempo, you lend an ear and then you involuntarily want to pitch in……and there, dear friends, is when things explode. Much like the depleting ozone layer hurting the earth, my inability to sing renders me exposed here.

And to think I have been exposed to the Golden years of Hindi film music, extending from the mid-50s to mid- 70s, I should have been able to very easily croon sa re ga… na, but no such luck. 

Haven’t I tried? Oh yes I have. In fact many aeons ago when Vividh Bharti aired a programme where the film songs based on various ragas were dissected, I listened in eagerly. I tried hard to make out all the meanings of the nishads, the madhaymas, and the shuds, but ended up waiting for the song to sit back and enjoy it. I could never tell a Raag Bhimpalasi from a Raag Bageshree. And, I also realised singing was never going to be my thing. Even today I  am all ears when various youtubers extoll their favourite musicians and their choices of strings or phrases and what it means in a particular song. But at the end of it I just wait and listen to the song, not in the least educated about it. I like it, as I had liked it then, no strings attached. And I still cannot sing it.

I have tried, just to conceal my inability to hit the right note, to deliberately go off-key, off-rhythm, off-beat and it did not take much effort either. But the assault on my own ears have kept me from trying out this particular torture in abeyance. And yet I aspire.

Now, thoroughly aware of my quality, I am planning to try out one of the free trials the course offers. Maybe I could change my tune and probably string in a few hits and then blow my own trumpet! 

Guess, friends, you haven’t heard the last of it.