Resonance: Reflections on Music, Memory, and the Ghazal
There are songs that don't merely play; they reverberate through your being, stirring something elemental inside. For years now, I’ve felt a persistent vibration within—an urge to write about certain songs, to document their impact on me, not just as a listener but as someone transformed in their presence. Music, for me, is not entertainment; it’s an invocation. A doorway to depth. A reminder that I am alive, and meaningfully so.
Recently, I returned to a song that’s haunted me in the best way: Kal Chaudhavin Ki Raat Thi, rendered with understated magic by Jagjit Singh. This ghazal evokes not just aesthetic pleasure but a bittersweet nostalgia—for the era it echoes, for the elegance of Delhi’s retro high society, and for a time when live concerts felt like gatherings of souls, not just audiences.
“Kal chaudhavin ki raat thi…”
When he sings this, it doesn’t feel like a performance. It feels like a friend—an old, poetic friend—sitting with me under a silver moon, narrating a scene with affection and wonder. It’s intimate. Almost confessional.
The best ghazals do this. They are more than songs; they are finely crafted speeches, delivered with the weight of personal memory and social grace. Like a piece by Pu La Deshpande or Gulzar, they create not just resonance but reverence. They offer emotional texture, like soft silk across the skin of the heart.
I’ve seen this effect firsthand. After my paternal grandmother passed away, I couldn't stop crying whenever I heard Chitthi Na Koi Sandes. I had spoken to her just hours before her sudden passing. That song became a vessel of grief—too powerful to bear. Eventually, I stopped listening to it. That is the potency of lyrics paired with perfect delivery: they can become too true.
Which leads to a hypothesis worth exploring: could certain types of ghazals enhance emotional intelligence or even social bonding in communal settings? Might some genres of music increase empathy, while others deepen introspection? These are not idle questions. They merit inquiry.
My own early encounters with live music came from an unusual yet beautiful source. My grandmother’s home was adjacent to a Lingayat math in our village—a center of cultural life. It was here I was exposed to mesmerizing mehfils, especially those led by my grandmother’s elder brother, Ramanna—affectionately known to all of us as Ram Mama. If alive today, he would be a hundred years old.
Ram Mama’s performances, held in open courtyards beside a Shiv Ling, were electrifying. Old men—his lifelong friends—would set up simple platforms and sit in quiet reverence as he delivered alaps, taans, and swaras. I didn’t understand much technically, but emotionally I was enraptured. The audience, too, was transformed—silent, wide-eyed, with an almost sacred peace on their faces. In those moments, music was not a performance—it was a collective awakening. And these memories remain etched in the social DNA of villages like Billur and Adhalli, where Ram Mama had fans in every household.
Those of us who grew up in temple towns or in the slow magic of the Doordarshan era will relate. The crackle of a tape recorder. The anticipation of a favorite song. The family falling silent as the music took over the room. Today, music is often a private, solitary experience—streamed in earbuds, consumed quickly, forgotten faster. But once upon a time, music was an event. A celebration. A mirror held to our collective soul.
This contrast between private and public listening is not trivial—it has changed how we experience music. The old way fostered social memory. The new way fosters emotional consumption. Perhaps what we need is not to choose, but to consciously blend both. Let the headphones deliver intimacy, but let concerts create communion.
Among other songs that have moved me recently are Yesudas’s Bangaradinda Bannana Tanda, the Marathi masterpiece Mala Sanga Sukh Mhanje Nakki Kay Asta, and the Tamil gem Aasa Kooda. Each of these songs, from different linguistic worlds, holds its own emotional charge—another essay for another day.
What binds these songs together is the era in which they were composed. The setting. The emotional climate of their time. Every truly great song is a time capsule. It reflects the heartbeat of the society it emerged from. This is why remixes so often fall flat—they miss the soil in which the original song was rooted.
I once read a book on Gulzar’s songs called "Jiya Jale", and what struck me was how each track was anchored in a story—rich with context, history, mood, and texture. We do ourselves a disservice when we strip songs from their original atmospheres. Listening to them in their purest form isn’t just an act of nostalgia—it’s a necessary cultural archaeology.
If we wish to feel the full power of a song, we must pay attention to its vital signs:
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The emotional setting: Is it a friend’s confession? A lover’s whisper?
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The nostalgia it triggers: Does it carry echoes of a bygone time or lost innocence?
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The rhetorical power: Does it speak with the gravity of a meaningful speech?
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The genre’s role: Ghazals for intimate gatherings, folk for community bonding.
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The era it reflects: What does it tell us about the social, emotional, or political climate of its birth?
Music, in its finest form, is more than an art. It is a psychological, social, and spiritual phenomenon. A good song does not just entertain—it shapes our perception, our memory, even our identity.
We need more music philosophers among us. People who can decode songs like one would decode dreams. People who can help us engage with music not as consumers, but as seekers.
If we can listen mindfully, music may yet become one of the deepest tools we have to reflect on the human condition—and to elevate it.
