MU’SI(C)NGS’!
I was trembling. It was an opportunity I could easily jinx. There were more than 200 people in the hall, eager to see what I was going to perform. There were casual listeners of music, there were critics, there were the judges, and there were parents of the other participants, and many other categories of people. It was left to my keyboard and I to mesmerize them or make them go bonkers. Yes, I was about to play one of my most favorite songs of all time. Caveat: I had not played one full song until the previous day. I had been trying for more than a month to learn at least a couple of A R Rahman and Ilaiyaraaja numbers, but either the fingering or the chords or the rhythms (or all of them) kept dodging me. I had decided to give up my fanciful dream of playing keyboard, my dear Yamaha PSR E313, when this song changed everything. The song was simple. Scale — A major. Slow pace. Melody. Easy-to-follow chord patterns. Most importantly, there was a preset rhythm in the keyboard that sounded like a doppelganger of the one that accompanied the original number. I could learn the full song in an evening. And that is exactly what I had done. Now, it was my turn to reproduce one of the last couple of attempts during practice the previous evening. I had to do justice to that one song that had transformed my nightmare into a pleasant dream. Of wanting to continue playing keyboard.
My fingers wriggled meekly to the control panel of the five-octave instrument that lay like a pet in front of me. I felt an eerie silence and decided to keep my head focused on nothing but the keyboard. Notwithstanding that, I could subconsciously sense nearly 400 eyes looking at me, some of them scornful because I had almost remained dumb and numb for what seemed like an eternity, some others sarcastic probably because they could sense a noob on the stage. There were certain others which viewed this lanky boy with a sense of enigma. And there were many emotions of eyes in between and beyond the extremes of positivity and negativity. I closed my eyes, inhaled and exhaled twice, and continued setting up the tone and rhythm preferences. Tone: 084. Flute. Rhythm: 013. Guitar Pop. Tempo: 090. Accompaniment: On. Intro->A: Start.
As the preset intro for the 4/4 rhythm started playing, I added the chords for A Major. I could hear the stereo speakers of the highly sophisticated auditorium. They were adequately spaced, the equalizer was pretty perfect, and there was no jarring or the usual beep sound that screeches every instrumental performance (and the vocal ones, too) to a shocking halt. The four bars of intro rhythm were about to be over, and I was ready. The first two lines were breezy, and I felt I could lift my head just a wee bit, now that I had gained some confidence. The tempo was alright, this was a speed at which I could play without looking at the keys, even as an amateur. I had some doubts about choosing #084 aka Flute as the tone for the song, but hearing it in a great surround system was just majestic. As I slowly tilted my head, my now glistening eyes — the ones that still did not have the courage to face the audience, but could at least muster up enough to view the wall at the far end of the auditorium — stopped at the mic. I quickly took cognizance of the fact that it was switched on. This was a facility that the highly talented musicians who could sing while playing made full use of. Guitarists and violinists especially used it to the fullest, sending the crowd to some mystic world of indescribable bliss, as they sang after the first minute of playing the instrument.
Millions of thoughts started clobbering my mind, and for a moment, I sensed drops of sweat dripping through my forehead and drifting through the bridge of the eyebrows over the nostrils. Of course, there was an option. I could sing. Or play. Or do both. Or do nothing, and fail miserably, which by now was impossible. I was very sure I would not jinx it anymore. Nillaamal Veesidum Paeralai, came my voice as I continued playing. There was a bit of coarseness in the voice. Damn, I should have been more cautious. The sync between the left hand — playing chords — and the right — playing the notes — was coming along seamlessly well. The slow rhythm gave me ample room to move my face away from the mic, take a slow cough and return back at the start of the next bar. Nenjukkul Neendhidum Thaaragai, I sang on, and now, the voice was clear without a tinge of doubt. I was playing-singing Nenjukkul Peidhidum Maamazhai from Vaaranam Aayiram, in case you did not guess it by now. When I reached O Shanthi Shanthi O Shanthi, I was on song, literally and metaphorically. In fact, I could not distinguish the voice from the keys, which meant the pitch was perfect. Good sign. I was still fighting demons inside my head that kept telling me my voice could go one semitone higher or lower than intended, and mess things up. Nevertheless, I continued.
I skipped the interludes, which is normally a sign of an amateur playing an instrument. Purists believe preludes and interludes are portions that exhibit the mastery of a musician, and that is exactly why I did not veer into that danger zone. However, that was not a major cause for worry now. I was one of those elite performers, who could sing while playing. Just in a span of a minute, or maybe a minute and a half, I had transcended from a deemed-to-fail performer to wow-this-is-an-interesting-performance performer. And hence, these things would not be noticed with the same criticality as that if I had chosen to just play and not sing.
I did not realize I had kept my eyes closed; the image of the walls of auditorium and those of the eyes meeting mine were just figments that kept playing within the purple circles that my eyes could feel as the lids kept pressed against each other. I continued singing. My face was now facing the audience, with eyes closed. I would still dare not face them in the eyes. So many pairs of eyes — blue, black, brown, big, small, critical, appreciative, attractive, and many other variants. The subsequent stanzas — or charanams, as they call it in classical terms — were a cakewalk. I had blended with the song, and it was engulfing me with every passing second.
As I completed the song and tried to bask in the moment of glory, taking it all for a brief period of time, I could hear two pairs of hands clapping. “Super macheyyy!” Just then, I opened my eyes and came back to reality. Rather, I was forced back into it. I stood in my room in my house. There was no stereo, no auditorium, and no two hundred pairs of eyes with emotional variants staring at me. Not two hundred, but two. Two of my closest friends were listening to me play and sing. “That was bloody brilliant”, said one, as the other kept patting my back. “We can’t believe this is the first song you have learnt to play. It’s amazing, man. And, what was that? Singing and all? Never saw that coming.”
Every wannabe instrumentalist would have had the dream-shattering moment when (s)he was not able to play the song (s)he loved the most. These are people who do not want to be professional musicians, but love music nonetheless. I am one of them. I have two keyboards — a Casio MA-150 and a Yamaha PSR E313. The latter is the mini-protagonist of the story, with the intermediate protagonists being Hariharan and Thamarai. The main protagonist, the hero who rekindled my inclination of playing keyboard, is Harris Jayaraj. There have been millions of trolls on how he copies; that his tunes are repetitive; how he has lost his sheen; that he has to take a break; that his days of glory are behind him now.
Maybe, it is true. Maybe, the once waxing moon called Harris Jayaraj has started waning now (or has waned already). Maybe, he copies from the tunes of the church choir like Alexander Babu says. Maybe, he just plays the same tune for different lyrics, and learning one song composed by him equals learning a hundred songs, like Jagan Krishnan says. But, only a depressed, dejected wannabe instrumentalist can understand the significance of Harris Jayaraj. He was my ray of hope, when musical instrument did not seem like an object that I could grapple with. Despite the music he faces today for the music he composes, he still remains my idol. And so shall he remain. Forever. Heil Harris!
P.S.: Nenjukkul Peidhidum did fetch me a prize in another competition, where I just played it (and did not sing along).
P.P.S.: My first ever laurel for singing also arrived later, thanks to a Harris song, Oh Manamey from Ullam Ketkumey.
First published in Pens Turf on March 18, 2020
