February 3, 2015 – My Favourite Things

Do you ever have a song, an idea, a storyline, or an image stuck in your head? And it just refuses to go away? For some time at least? I have this with music — it could be a song, an instrumental piece, a jingle, etc. That particular piece of music becomes my “now’” song, and the “nowness” (pardon my English here) could be for any length of time.

That day, I was bored and trawling YouTube for some interesting music to listen to, when a suggestion popped up. It was a Coke Studio India session featuring A.R. Rahman and Ustad Ghulam Mustafa. Now, I had not been particularly impressed with Coke Studio India till then. Sure there had been one or two good sessions, but nothing really spectacular like Coke Studio Pakistan has been (some of which I have shared in this series).

I clicked on the link and the music began to the familiar strains of Raga Yaman and then a young boy started to sing, followed by three other men before the chorus joined in to sing Aao, Aao Aao Balma… Three generations of Ghulam Mustafa family singing together. So far so good, I told myself. Nice, but nothing spectacular.

And then at exactly 1.52 minutes something happened. The guitar or rather Prasanna’s guitar came in and the magic began.