Songs and the neural connect

V.Viswanathan

Of music, ancient Greek philosopher Plato is believed to have said, ‘Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything’.  And who can deny that enthralling songs embellished with inspiring music can be powerful anchors? 

It may be very difficult for us to detach certain happenings in our life from the songs that played out in the background when the incidents happened. Whenever we hear these songs, irrespective of where and in what state of mind we are, our brain transports us down memory lane and lands us in those incidents, with the same old settings and atmosphere. It’s because we’ve anchored the incidents in the songs consciously or unconsciously.  

Last year I attended a music concert featuring golden oldies from Hindi movies. As the singers of the troupe delivered the track ‘Chura Liya Hai’ originally sung by the legendary singers Mohammed Rafi and Asha Bhosle from the movie ‘Yaadon Ki Baaraat’, tears welled up in my eyes.

The song took me to my childhood days in the seventies when my father, one fine evening, brought home a brand new, flat bed model National Panasonic tape recorder with a couple of cassettes, containing raging hits topping the charts then. For a large family with a limited income, the gizmo was a clear luxury. But unable to resist his temptation, dad bought it from his squirreled away savings.  As children, we were thrilled and glued to the cassette player listening to the songs.   

Whenever I hear the Osibissa song, ‘Dance the body music’, a sense of anxiety grips me though it was one of my favourite numbers.  The simple reason is that this would invariably be the first song played out in my college mess 38 years ago when I had joined the institution. The song would spill over the loud speakers every slot of the day the mess opened and that would mean it was time for us to have our food. 

As freshers, we would all go in one flock to the mess to avoid getting ragged. As a hungry lion picks its prey from a herd of animals, there was every possibility that a senior waiting near the mess could pull out a new joinee and take him out for a heavy dose of ragging.  Elsewhere in another college, my school mate committed suicide unable to face violent ragging. Tough rules and laws enacted have since vastly reduced the menace of ragging. But to me, ‘Dance the body music’ is a grim reminder of the trauma I underwent fearing ragging.

Of course, there are songs which, when I hear catapult me to an orbit of unalloyed joy and intoxicating memories and those are the ones I plump for to shrug away dull moments.