Talking
through Songs
The decade of the sixties and seventies really
mattered! Or so I felt as I, an Indian, could subliminally sense
the waves of disillusionment of the West towards post-industrial
materialism, even as those waves were wetting our feet on the
shores of the subcontinent. The human shame of the Vietnam war,
the technological imperialism of the “moonwalk,” the
underground politics of Cold War, the nuclearisation of life and
the quest for a spiritual meaning to one’s life characterized
the era. Many of us in late school and college at that time knew
in our painful bones, that it was only a matter of time before
India would need its own Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan to sing about
the angst of urbanization and fragmentation in the country brought
about by “development.”
Thus I, as part the English educated, book-reading,
exposed, Indian brigade, was mesmerized by the poetry and song
of Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan whose lyrics and balladeer style
found echoes several thousand miles away in a land mass that was
yawning itself out of an old civilization into nationhood even
as it was taking its age old music into the heart of rockland
to break the mutual impasse forever. The energies were awesome
and so were the pitfalls. I began to feel the need to sing like
never before and I wanted to sing for India as she was slowly
and steadily girding her loins to join the rat race of modernity
and development. I decided to lend my skills to the global justice
movement.
And so, travels and many international gigs later,
I became a singer in modern India inspired by my icons of social
change in the West. I began to sing about peace, the ravages of
strife and war, and the demented chasing after the good life.
I have been walking the musical side-street now for thirty years,
sometimes making a living from my poetry and song. Thirty years
later, a new pain pierces my song everyday as I watch a neo-liberal
globalised contemporary India sprout gory horns of fascism and
communalism, displace its rural poor with massive development
projects, rape the land and its women, trivialize the commonsense
of traditional knowledge, nurture corruption into large-scale
plantations, delay justice for the common man, capsize her own
identity and self-respect, and systematically get rid of the good
and sensible in favour of “yapping cash.” Wither the
safety of a sane society? I must sing now for India as I sang
in my youth to just let my song out there, out of the cage.
The one overriding conviction that has settled
into my guitar-playing fingers is that culture is the best way
of sending a message about even the most complex issues. In my
over thirty years of using songs as a medium for advocacy, I am
convinced about the efficacy of music as an influence of change.
The pulse of the audience transmits itself again and again to
me – I have felt “men of conscience” emerging
from a rockstone of apathy, seen women cry, heard children clap
and sing the chorus and heard the sighs of men. In the middle
of all this, I offer thanks that in the last thirty years I haven’t
sold my soul to music without meaning. I have sung what I believed
in and believed in what I’ve sung.
And so I’ve come to be known as an “urban
folk” singer, a term I coined in order to define my style
of singing and songwriting as opposed to the traditional folk
music traditions, which are rural based and had its own themes
which were very different from a rapidly urbanizing India. On
the other hand, urban India, with all its contradictions was permeating
into the slumbering rural life of India. Finally, as a true denizen
of urban India with English being my main tongue, I chose to write
and sing in English also with the belief that it was the English
speaking sector that made all the policy changes in the country
and had the power to install, instill and change, unfortunate
though it is. Therefore, I have been commenting on urban life
and all the chameleon changes in a fast developing civil society
through my songs since 1971 in India.
While I was groping for a definition of my “urban folk”
genre, I had extensive discussions with sociologists, historians
and musicians whose academic analysis felt a little too intellectual
for me. However, when a stockbroker friend, simply defined it
as “public issue” I had my definition.
While I sing about the deep morass of the moral
and civic decay of modern India and the increasing decline of
the moral order, I also try to draw upon her perennial wisdom.
I have been fascinated by the living traditions of the Bauls of
Bengal, a group of wandering minstrels. I sing their songs and
have worked extensively with them.
MY MUSIC AND CIVIL SOCIETY
Ever since I chose to veer off the commercial
“enterprise” of making music for “industry,”
I have affiliated myself to various civil society organizations
who have understood the value of mixing art with advocacy and
used it to good effect. The subjects of my songs, namely, freedom,
anti war, peace, anti communalism, aids and drug abuse, child
labour, street children and women and violence, have resonated
with organizations working in these areas. |
