Music is not just any sequence of words, but the symphony of life itself; it brings all the distinct strings of one’s journey together and grants them a character of their own – it is the orchestra that unites us all, as a human race. Standing as a solitary man, with the backdrop of the excruciating 21st century, all we have at the end of the day to fall back to sleep is music; the tunes that have travelled through the niches of our hearts, the only solace that stands tall when everything else fails, the home that furnishes us with a comforting shelter while the world around is falling apart, music, inevitably touches the soul of man. It seems like we were placed into the delightful womb of music right after we were born – from being soothed by the tunes of the lullaby as infants to being told to pay respect to our country by singing the national anthem with our heads high, from dancing like there’s no tomorrow to the beats of High School Musical and Hannah Montana to reading in between the lines of “In the end it doesn’t even matter” and trying to identify the deep-rooted pain of this fragmented life, we have all learned, grown and evolved with music and its accompanying sentiments that no number of words could ever describe.
Life without music would be like the earth without her periodic showers, the ocean without her waves and a lover without passion, meaning, an existence ripped of its essence. Music has been in existence roughly since the time man first evolved as an independent species and knew that they would have to depend on sound and its nuances as the only means of communication. Think of the very first time when one realized that humming a tune that replicated the natural form of sound emitted by the natural bodies felt calming to the ears; the imaginary sketch in itself is enough to make way for goosebumps. That was the inception of what today we call the revolution- a revolution that alone is capable of altering and deliberating the most influential and powerful ways of the world.
Here, we cannot help but get reminded of a quote by Victor Hugo where he says, “Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent”; through this he related out the very identity of music, which is, it is both the calm and storm encapsulated into one. Had the sweet strings of music not been there, a lover couldn’t have expressed the deafening thunders waged in his soul to his/her beloved, a mother couldn’t have taught her child his/her first words, a lonely soul couldn’t have found a company even in the untraversed. Similarly, if the world did not come up with the strapping tunes of rock, hip-hop, EDM and rap music, it wouldn’t have rebelled so confidently against all the norms that man has been compelled to follow, the odds that can be easily taken off from his path to success and the courage that is forcefully scooped out of an individual by the society to stamp it with a label of plagued togetherness.
Take into consideration every essential that makes us what we are today; our sentiments and emotions, social responsibilities and professional obligations and try to find out a constituent that unites them all – it will invariably be music. As soon as we wake up in the morning, our mind quickly takes us through all the distinct roles that we have been assigned to play for the day, starting from a caring and responsible son/daughter to a corporate asset and everything between. Amidst all of these changing advances and the response of our subconscious and unconscious to the same depending upon the need of the hour, they only resort to one basic component and that is music – even though the preferences can change based upon the fluctuating moods and ambiance, the core would remain the same. Like we have already mentioned above, it is like the soul of the person; even when everything around undergoes modifications, it remains constant and supplies the will to breed endurance that will guide through the good days, bad days and tumultuous mad days.
Music, above all, is a form of art that depends on words and distinct pitches to convey the most intricate thoughts of the mind and heart; this is the same medium that points out that we human beings have been delineated with our own quirks that separate us from the rest and must be put forward with unadulterated pride and also unites us with our fellow beings whenever a hint of joy pops up in this monotonous and melancholic truth of life. Whenever there arose a need to bring all men together in harmony and educate them with the indispensable principles of survival, the authorities time and again turned back to music, for instance, the ancient Catholic Church and whenever the regular man thought that is about time to rip off his stereotyped identity and take shelter in something rebellious and hard-hitting at the same time, he took to music to reflect his views.
In a word, life without music would be dull, you would have to go back to following the same routine every day when you are asked to be the best version of yourself even when your body and mind are craving to be at peace and just the way it is. Music purges the self, the self that goes through experiences that circumscribe the gleeful and disheartening spectrum of matters and wants to crawl back into its shell as an escape from the atrocities, and this shell is nothing other than the very music we are talking about. How would we learn to be happy, to celebrate, to repeat the same words at the same time, to curl back in our pillows and drench the pillow with sadness if not for music and music alone?
