Jatra poster inspires inspection into origin of musical culture.

I just love this poster on BBC. It is for a theater production, discussing the prominent issues of the London Bomb Blasts and the Asian Tsunami. The colors and dramatization. . .the cultural synthesis. So at home stuck on the walls of public places in India, yet so caricaturable from this distance. (The rest of this post isn't about the poster at all).

It's the same way when we look back on the 70's, we can caricature it. A time of bell bottoms, Abba, and bad hair. From today's perspective. We can caricature something in retrospect, standing somewhere else. But if you are living and breathing within the times. . . say right now. . . we won't really know what makes us distinctive. If our band writes a song now (and we have been writing several. . .check out Amrit's site.) it sounds normal/neutral to us. We have explored all the possibilities to make a sound that. . .just sounds right. Someone else listening to us from another country, planet, or time would say, "this sounds like so and so". Maybe we will be grouped in with Rock musicians in the 90's. It is astonishing how all the bands breaking the rules, exploring sonic space with the then available technology, can today just be grouped as bands from the 70's. . .and how we can make out a 70's sound. . .a very specific feel of 70's music. What then is our real capacity for innovation?

I admire bands who have found their own sound. I find the process somewhat mystical. And while we lose biodiversity on this planet, we appear to be losing cultural diversity too. Because it is very hard to hold on and continue thinking like a different culture, when all these other influences are available to you. This is not really a problem. . .in fact it is what makes modern society rich. But as I sit around at my keyboard and try to compose stuff, I realize that the lines between "Indian" and "Western" music. . .between hollywood and bollywood are blurring. And a pure form of one or the other doesn't really. . .come out of me.

Which leads me to believe that the creative process is really dependent on limitations. Something has to constrain you e.g. the piano can't sound like an elephant. But by trying to play the piano as if it sounds like an elephant (really stupid example). . .you get at a tonal character that can be new. And in the process of breaking free of limitations, new stuff gets created. Furthermore, I believe certain genres of music get created because of the inherent limitations of certain instruments. . . pianists really discovered the piano with some intricate sonatas, and spanish guitars did their gypsy songs with guitars. . .and it almost seems as if sonatas and gypsy songs as genres wouldn't be created were it not for people trying to see where their instruments take them.

Of course, while writing this I am also aware of the antithesis of this point. . .of how new technologies give us so many more options to create and express the sounds we want. Choices. Where would modern music be without samplers, sequencers, soft-synths, and unlimited sonic capabilities?

Anyway. I am glad that music as an art form still hasn't gone into the levels of meaninglesness as modern art. Pleasing your listening audience (as opposed to making a rich person feel good and cultured about himself by selling him esoteric art that his less cultured friends will not understand) is a way to ground oneself into reality. Provided, musicians as artists want to be grounded that way. Perhaps that is a limitation in itself, that can be explored for creative wealth.

In other news, I have lost my wallet. I can't drive, and have cancelled my credit cards. Anyesha writes about my anguish here.