I was speaking to my music instruments’ dealer recently as I was finalising a Swarmandal piece (an Indian harp). I asked him to send me a video clip of the instrument being played, in order to check for its sound quality.
As the instrument was strummed, it created not only the beautiful scale of Raag Madhuvanti but also an intangible bubble. A bubble that drew me into the tapestry of moods that Raag Madhuvanti makes a person experience. Longing, beauty and serenity. I was instantly transformed physically and emotionally by just that 30 second clip. From feeling all wound up from the activities of the day, I felt myself drifting into an oasis of calm and serenity almost instantly! My body felt light and happy, and my mind was quiet and relaxed. It was a powerfully transformative moment.
This got me thinking about moods and the powerful ability of music to have an impact on something as tangible as our bodies. I will digress deliberately now to my rather rudimentary understanding of physics. From what I loosely put together, the building block of life, the atom, can be viewed as a bundle of energies or charges. Subatomic particles, like protons and electrons, are charges which move around. The hard matter we see around us, like chairs, tables, animals, people and buildings are, therefore, at their root, manifestations of these formless energies at work. This is both inconceivable and true at the same time. In my opinion, this paradox is also a stamp of the divine. An example of God’s mysterious creation at work.
Coming back to my experience with the Swarmandal now, it does not seem so difficult to understand anymore. In a spiritual sense, the energies that lie at our essence manifest as gross bodies in the world. It is no surprise that light, sound and other energies can profoundly impact our gross bodies.
The way this happens with music, in my opinion, is through the moods that music creates. Especially Indian classical music. When a mood is created with the heady concoction of flat and sharp notes of the twelve-note Indian scale, we experience a change in our emotional state. This change happens through our moods and emotions responding to the music we are hearing. When this meeting happens, our neurology and therefore our physiology, undergoes a profound change. This can explain the numerous instances of healing that have happened spontaneously after engaging in music.
Mood creation is one of the most glorious features of Indian Classical Raagas. When one enters a concert setting, the listener is not just entering a setting. He or she is entering an intangible mood space. An aura if you may, of powerful sound energies. An aura that binds everyone within its influence through a collective transformative experience. In a concert setting, the music is the star. The hero. The artist and audience are participants in that experience. The artist facilitates while participating, and the audience is fully engaged and engrossed in the experience created by the music. Together in that one hour, the people within the aura undergo a magical experience that moves them, mind, body and soul.
My experience with music as an artist, as an educator and as an audience has gifted me with the knowledge of how seamless we are as living entities of energy and form, one indistinguishable from the other. It has also opened my eyes to the powerful possibilities for overall happiness and wellness that music offers. This realisation is a profound one. I hope that one day we can tap into this potential to move towards a healthier, happier and peaceful human race.
The writer is a vocalist of both Hindustani and Carnatic Classical music, with over three decades’ experience. She is also the founder of Music Vruksh, a venture to make classical accessible for its aesthetic and wellness benefits.