The noise of music

In another century when I was a boy Sundays were special. A thing called a transistor used to prek up 12 noon with modern Bengali songs and then from 1 there was a Bengali play. Our school bis was timned with "Khobor podchi Debdulal Bandopadhyay" (The newas is being read by Debdulal Bandopadhyay). The rich baritone voice conjured up an image of a TDH (Tall Dark Handsome Mills & Boons Hero) and that childhood association was lost when doordarshan added a face to that voice. In those days , listening to music was really an activity. I grew up on a HMV Fiesta model that played those LPS and the small discs. Every Durga Puja would bring a latest vinyl disc. It was an occassion when father used to set up the contraption and we watched fascinated as a pin danced on the grooves and a voice said "Amar Naam Kishor Kumar Ganguly". The next generation of sound was not that bad. It was a tape deck - spools that would wind up in a Grundig machine. Then came the cassettes  - a novelty , reserved for Sundays only, when listening to song was a serious method of time pass. So serious was the situation that the lyrics wiuld mean something, the voice modulations would touch you and sometimes the soft pathos of "AAye Khuku aaye" would leave the tears in the eyes. But then somebody decided that everything is either zero or one or nothing. So an analog signal turned bit the bytes. A sampling rate superimposed on a siosoidal curve, a massive chopping of end frequuencies, an averaging of frequency distribution and a LP squeezed itself to a pendrive. The delcate lethargy of enjoying music metamorphosed into an activity that just filled in the background. The delicate reciatl of Fur Elise is just an excuse to insulate oneself from the world as you concentrate on the caloreis to be burnt. The poetic magic of "Chingadi bhadke" was just a mellifluous din to be added to a trafuc snarl. Add a DJ's nonsense to the crescendo of Yanni's Aria and you have obscenity highlighted by the sheer commercial cheapness. In a way, I think we deserve innane lyrics for they are just sounds as bizarre and ineffectual as the way we made them and we listen to. It's pathetic when someone tries to put music to a poem. It is not the death of the poem, rather, it's degrading the dream of a poet - something that was not of this earth.