Music medley

This write up on our music collection was published in the Hindu's Open Page on May 28th and the link is here.

I had enjoyed cleaning up our bookshelves, so I decided to sort out the music cassettes. Thanks to YouTube and multiple Internet links, we haven’t been buying music CDs or cassettes for a while now, but the collection we do have is a treasured one. And we are one of the few families that still own a working cassette player.

Sorting out the cassettes was like a trip down Nostalgia Lane. ‘The Call of the Valley’ was the first cassette my husband bought to play on the tiny tape recorder purchased with his first salary. It rested right next to a wonderful jugalbandi between Balamuralikrishna and Bhimsen Joshi, flanked by the glorious Chandraghanta by Pandit Jasraj at one end and Ustad Amjad Ali Khan’s album for young children at the other. Both our sons had grown up listening to that album so many times. Another favourite I found nestling next to Chandraghanta was the album of duets by Bhimsen Joshi and Lata Mangeshkar – what a hit Baaje Muraliya used to be with the family. Pandit Ajoy Chakraborty and M.S. Subbulakshmi were next to each other, and judging by their photographs on the cassette covers, Sudha Raghunathan, Ashwini Bhide and Veena Sahasrabudhe were really young when their music engulfed our home.Jazzmine by Ravi Shankar had been bought with so much pleasure after Asiad 1982 in Delhi. The all-time favourite has always been of Pandit Jasraj and Kavita Krishnamurthy singing Sumiran Kar Le , with L. Subramanian accompanying them on the violin. What a veritable storehouse of music some of our taped 90-minute cassettes were — Kishori Amonkar singing with Balamuralikrishna, Kumar Gandharva’s nirgun bhajans, Chitti Babu, Shobha Gurtu...

Shubha Mudgal was set between the classical and the light music section, as were the Colonial Cousins. The Beatles were in the ‘light’ section, followed by Pink Floyd. The album Thriller with its attractive cover was bought at the height of Michael Jackson fever, and Apache Indian was an addition that was made with trepidation. Led Zeppelin and the Abba, Dire Straits and Boney M — our shelf was a horror story for purists, but we had listened to it all, with pleasure.

Tamil line-up

Thanks to the advent of A.R. Rahman, our collection of Tamil film songs which had initially only boasted of Thiruvilaiyadal and Thillana Mohanambal grew by leaps and bounds. Bombay, Roja, Nayagan, Thiruda Thiruda, Hey Ram …. the list grew. The Hindi versions of so many of these albums joined Swades and Lagaan. Indira, Thalapati, Kannathil Muthamittal and Mudhal Mariyadhai joined the ranks, providing us so many hours of listening pleasure.

The last few were the best — recordings of stories and nursery rhymes by our sons, nephews and nieces. At a time when Skype, Facetime and Google Chat didn’t exist, these cassettes were treasured as personalised messages exchanged within the family — a record of some beautiful holidays spent together.