Music and Me

When I was a kid I grew up listening to my dad playing the Tabla. It is an Indian drum played with your fingers. I remember him playing the Tabla for hours at a stretch. And he would sing in his deep melodious voice and I would listen. That I could not learn the Tabla or Indian classical music is one of the things I rue the most to this day. But I did develop an discerning ear for music. I love to sing now and then and I do it well enough for someone not trained in music. Music has not deserted me at any point of time in my life. I find a sort of solace in music that I have not found in anything, anywhere or anyone else. My introduction to music started with Indian classical and Kishore Da, Mohammad Rafi, Lata Ji, Asha Ji, Hemanta Mukhopadhyay, Manna De etc. And except for a brief adolescent phase I have never found new Bollywood music very attractive. With the progression of years I started to inculcate a taste in Rock music and other alternative sounds. It might have been the hormones and the society that sparked my interest but once I got into it there was no turning back. I found myself in good rock music. I started mild with 80's U2 graduated into GnR, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin then came college, I had briefly heard Pink Floyd previously but soon it became a life line. Psychedelic was around me day and night. In the background I started listening to metal, punk, trance, lounge, alternative, progressive, grunge, indie, industrial and so on. Towards the end of college I started listening to death metal but I will accept the fact that except for a few bands I am not a big death metal fan. I would rather have old school metal music any day. In the fall of 2009 I came to the United States. In a year or so I feel like I have matured more than in the entire 22 years of my life that I spent in small town Durgapur, India. And I have gone back to listening to Indian classical music, not that I do not listen to good rock music anymore. Music has kept me running through out this time. Every day for some time I still close my eyes crank up the volume and go back to my "safe place". Somewhere where there is only me and music and my ethereal love and nothing can harm me and I listen to my favorite songs. The thoughts that they trigger in my head I cannot explain because they are as complex as they are fleeting. Music makes me happy, it makes me sad, it excites me, it calms me down, it soothes my soul. I wish I can always have this refuge to fall back upon whenever I need it.