Music in the Witness Stand
Spotify wrapped, musical geography, and that one song that does Kintsugi to your heart
Last week, fresh out of a therapy session, I received a message from my friend Abhijit. He had shared his Spotify Wrapped stories, and said, “Send yours, soon!”
Heading home in an auto-rickshaw, I was all set to watch the audio-visual representation of my year in music. I remembered checking it out last year and for the first time, I was glad that my data is being taken. And reflected back to me as an insight into myself. So I knew I would enjoy my Spotify Wrapped.
But I didn’t know I would start sobbing in the rickshaw. Maybe it was post-therapy tenderness or the way the breeze thrusts itself on you in a rickshaw, forcing you to feel more of what you’re feeling. I let the tears flow for as long as they wanted.
Through each song, I saw this year, all its triumphs and wounds so clearly. And I revisited the song that did kintsugi to my heart with its gold.
I thanked Abhijit for his message. Abhijit is an ardent music lover, someone who can listen to old Hindi songs with a loving ear, excited as if they just dropped yesterday. He sends long and enthusiastic messages, unearthing forgotten melodies and highlighting notes and sweet spots inaudible to the naked ear.
Over the next few days, I allowed myself to indulge in writing long messages to him, one for every SW slide. Since music is such a witness to our evolution and self-acceptance, I thought I will share them here as well, in the hope that some of you will tell me what you’ve been listening to this year in the comments.
My Spotify Wrapped
1. Genres
I love my focus on Asian African music. Yay! How passionately I feel about Asian and African societies, the healing, decolonizing spaces.. and their music… it’s home. I like that music helps me belong to a geography outside the borders of language, state, country.
Today I was thinking of Rahman when he was younger and ended up singing ‘Ma Tujhe Salaam’ out of nowhere. I flinched when caught myself in sudden patriotism but then I was like who cares. The song is passionate.. and I would any day prefer a patriotism where I feel proud of singers of all religions, over the patriotism of banning Pakistani singers. I also fell in love with a Chinese musician this year! And a Ukrainian band. Also, African pop is the signature sound of communal joy. I’m so grateful to Spotify for showing me who I am, it's like a mirror not to understand how I look but what I listen to.
2. Minutes
So much and so little at the same time! I loved that I had 9477 minutes of pleasure, flow, and connection with humanity which music provides. I did chores while listening to music, packing in Bangalore and unpacking in Pune, bathing early morning to go teach at a school. Music helped me start a class/workshop, sometimes I'll play it for myself, and sometimes for my students too. I danced to it, I wrote to it, I hummed it on the streets.
Music is essential because it helps us accept a part of us which otherwise we are scared to embrace. The sadness, the gloomy feelings we get, the hopelessness and the dangerous hopefulness, the vulnerability. By listening to songs in solitude, we give ourselves time to be with ourselves without overthinking and planning. We can tap into those feelings at any time with our different playlists. Oh, that reminds me, I need to curate new playlists more often. It's an act of love. And so is listening to music daily without any official reason.
3. Top Song
At the start of the year, I lived in an area where finding cabs or autos was really hard every morning. Often the drivers would cancel three or four times before finally agreeing. I would be under so much stress, panicking about who will finally take me to school (where I taught) and will I reach on time. There was no space for music, as I’d constantly shuttle between Ola and Uber or GPay and PayTM afterwards.
One day, I found a kind auto rickshaw driver who agreed to drop me off every day. In his auto, I started listening to music. I don’t know when this song became a daily ritual. I was going through a lot of grief and uncertainty. The breaking of a long friendship, the loneliness in yet another city, the hard-won acceptance that I don't like traditional teaching and that it’s okay, the committed choice to retain the creative person within me...so much was happening. Mornings were especially difficult because I desperately wanted to read or write a little. Not rush to school the way I used to as a child.
This song was such a support. It relaxed my pained self and energised it. Nusrat is a genius who reaches your psyche with Sufi love and activates your body with the beats of Qawwali. I'm an atheist 95% of the time. 5% of the time I'm listening to Sufi songs and totally feeling one with the world and the higher powers. I felt so attached to the singer, who is caressing so many souls despite being dead physically, truly immortal some musicians are. I don't know if this too much of woo woo for my friends, but I love how music helps us access less logical parts of ourselves.
4. Top Artists
There are musicians who shove you into a good mood. Force you to feel the beats in your skull and the bass on your skin. Party songs that convert the most frozen person to a mover and a shaker. And then there are musicians who meet you where you are before taking you to a lovely place. They first show compassion. Yes, life is strange, they seem to affirm. And yet it is magical too, they demonstrate. When Ali Sethi sings the lines
Bohot dino ki baat nahi hai, aasuon ki raat nahi hai, karte ho kaahe takraar
I feel utterly hugged. Ritviz's Barso is a great shower song, and even the most obvious lyrics induce wonder with his languorous singing -
ped ke upar barsa pani, aayi pattiyaan hari hari
Rahman's Hindi is the most adorable one and my heart becomes a shy bird when he says
Dil toh aakhir dil hai na, mithi si mushkil hai na
Ali Farka Touré insists on playfulness with Diaraby and Ai Du, even though I don't get the words. These voices are velvet & wine. They are blanket & rain. And they can live in my ears for many more years.
5. Listening Personality
I'm scared of trying new songs. I know I must, for how else will I store the memories of the present to be retrieved in the future? Songs turn the keys into many doorways of the past and remind us, how sad the break up was, how tough it was to do a particular job, but mostly, how resilient you were. How you managed those days, how you soothed yourself. I need new songs to record my current feelings over them.
Here are a few directions: rekindle hope in Hindi film music with Amit Trivedi's album Qala, listen to jazz women - Nina Simone and Ella Fitzgerald, taste the music of the middle east, try Coke studio Bangla, return to Thaikuddam bridge, explore Tamil and Hindi rap. Listen to more instruments. Words are overrated. Listen to the songs sent by friends right away. And when my ears feel full, I want to listen to the silence too.
Let me know which songs and artists poured love and joy into your ears this year.
Have you read ‘Kintsugi’ by Anukrti Upadhyay? It’s a lovely anthology of short stories
Wow! Spotify wrapped is obviously in the stars. Brandon Taylor recently wrote about it on his Substack Sweater Weather too. Thanks for inspiring me to check out my own!