Music and Harmony

In evening during pranayam I listen to the song Vaishnava Jana to Tene Kahiye Jo Pid Parai Jane Re (roughly translated, the person is divine who feels pain of others and helps relieve the pain), the devotional song. My purpose here is something different. I am not focusing on this particular song or pranayam or the subject of devotion, but something different – music and its impacts. I am here using the term music not in a particular sense but in a wider sense. As I was listening to the song Vaishnava, I noticed that the tabla (a membranophone percussion instrument) starts from the beginning of the song in a particular rhythm and continues in the same fashion till the end of the song. It is difficult for me to explain or describe the rhythm as I have no expertise on music, but I could trace a pattern throughout. There was no break in the rhythm in between till the end of the song. I could find consistency and harmony throughout the song.

As I was pondering over this subject, I discover that music follows a particular pattern. I can stretch this logic and argue that music implies harmony. Whether it is devotional song, or romantic song, or sad song, or any genre of music, whether it is rock and roll or classical music, all follow a particular pattern. When we listen to music of a particular song even without any words in it, we can identify from which movie or genre it belongs to. In schools and colleges there are such competitions when students listen to music and tell the title of song or name of the album or movie. 

Going a little further, a study of musical instruments too provides wonderful revelations about creation of harmonious sounds these instruments make. Tabla is a kind of cylindrical drum covered with animal skin and guitar is the string instrument with a wooden body. The musical instruments do not have significance without the sounds they produce. In old India, or even now in rural India, people make wonderful musical instruments from simple things and with trifle investment. For instance, daskathia music in Odisha is played with two pieces of polished wood. There are many such, what I call, improvisations which are on a diminishing gear nowadays as people turn their face from villages to cities as they believe cities are providers of riches, not villages. This is another subject of discourse. 

My purpose of narrating these musical instruments is to link these instruments and their purpose of delivering harmonious sounds. This leads me to question, why do we like the sounds made by these instruments in a certain fashion, but not in all manners. We do not like if a tabla player play his tabla abruptly without any pattern. We do not like if the harmonium player plays only one note such as Sa or Re or Ga. So, the discovery here is harmony does not imply monotony or singular sound. It implies plurality and change. Hence, harmony embodies in its core diversity, plurality and change. The musician knows it, and gives these directions to the instrument. When these instruments are clustered in a particular harmonious fashion, we identify this particular music with a particular song. Even if the song is absent, we identify this music with that particular song. 

This leads me to another question. Why do we like music? I reasonably believe all human beings like music, though the type varies from person to person. I like romantic music; I like the music more than the song itself. Another person may like ghazal or kawali. Our personalities may not match our song preferences. But the commonality is that we like songs. I am sure almost all people of the world like music. The question is why? Why do we like music? Is it that we are wired in such a way that we are condemned or induced to listen to music? Or, is it a matter of habit, culture or cultivation? 

I do not have any clear answer on this question. I suspect the answer is: both. We have a tendency to listen to or to like something harmonious, pleasant, which the music provides to us. Our habit, culture and cultivation mold our taste of music we prefer. While parents born and brought up in India may prefer to listen to carnatic music of India, their children born and brought up in the US may prefer to listen to rock or hip hop or salsa. But, in both case they like to listen to music. I do not intend here to make any generalization.

This brings me to think that human being has a tendency to like harmonious things, whether it is music or something else. One can argue that human being too has the tendency to get idle or incline towards destructive things. It is a matter of big debate, and here I can say human being may have tendency for both, and it is the equilibrium or balance between the two, or tilt towards harmony that brings the best in human beings. My focus here is on harmony and music. When we listen to a song we like, the harmony in that song echoes or awakes the harmony in us, and there is a connection between the two, or a kind of symbiosis. Our internal harmony responds to the external harmony of that song. We find ourselves without notice that our heads start moving from side to side, our hands start waving, our toes or feet making moves, or we start lisping the song – all these movements in our body respond to the harmony of the song in a harmonious way.

These are some of my non-expert thoughts on music. It is such a profound subject and, to a large extent, such a technical subject it is difficult to analyze the subject without deep knowledge on it. But mine is a layman’s approach on the subject. I believe there is a musician in all of us. We sometimes sing songs without knowing, whistling beautiful sounds. I also believe that harmonious music can awake harmony in individual and help build a harmonious society, in which pluralism and diversity can be the order. I too have a belief that music can elevate the human spirit to higher echelons of consciousness and make the individual free from narrow thinking. Music can lift our spirit from a stinking pond of rigidity and dogmatism to a wide ocean of pluralism and harmony. Music too can evoke good things in nature and surroundings. I read somewhere that harmonious music can help healthy growth of plants. From history, I draw a beautiful example. It is said that Tansen, the court musician of the 16th century Mughal Emperor, Akbar, had the wonderful capacity to mould forces of nature by his songs. His songs Meghmallhar could cause rain and Deepakraag could cause lamps to get lightened. Some scientists may dispute this story, but the essence of my argument is that the harmony in music can play powerful role not only in transformation of the individual but also her surroundings.