Have you ever noticed how a single instrument can tell us an entire story? It's one of the unique things about classical music, how you can touch souls with just one instrument and no words. The way I see it, different instruments have different characters, hence each prefers to tell a different type of story, but all the stories that a single instrument tells have a similar theme or feel to them. Now I'm going to try and explain that run-on sentence a little better.
I'll begin with the violin; for me the violin is all about passion and tragedy. Sort of what the story of two ill-fated lovers would sound like. Sometimes it's with an underlying sense of hope, other times the swells can be terrifying, talking about unspeakable devastation and sorrow, thrilling you to your core. I always seem to feel the violin in my chest, making my heart beat erratically.
Then there's the piano; Now there's an amazingly versatile instrument. A piano solo can tell almost any story you need it to tell, but all it's stories, again just in my completely non-musical opinion, are essentially soft and sweet. It's stories speak of love, of romance, sometimes of sadness, sometimes of something a little darker, but in my mind it's stories always feel like spring, like the relationship between two birds; their courtship, building a nest together, feeding chicks, weathering storms, that's the kind of story that the piano tells me.
Next there's the sitar; now to be honest the sitar is something that I've discovered only recently. It' also an instrument that I have never quite heard entirely on it's own, in fact I don't think I've ever really heard a subcontinental instrument quite alone. But the sitar is an instrument with a magnetic personality, when it does begin to tell it's story, it always takes centre stage, and all the other instruments always seem to melt away into the background. It's stories always seems to be about the past, about days gone by, about fairytales and magic, about colours and dust and myth.
Then we have the bansuri or bamboo flute; another eastern classical instrument, but one that tugs the heartstrings better than any other. The bansuri's stories are all about heartbreak, about loss, about belief and about beauty. There isn't an instrument more sincere or more moving than the bansuri.
These are just four of my favourite instruments that I've used for examples' sake. I guess my main point would be that all music, no matter what instrument makes it, what genre it belongs to, is about hope and humanity, about simply being human and all the emotions that come with it. Which is why I find people who tell me that music is wrong, or ungodly or haraam, to be so tragic and pitiable and a tad bit irrational. As if they're trying to tell me to rip the rods and cones out of my eyes, or paint over the sky and plants because God never really meant me to see in colour, because it's too distracting. Little do they know that I never remember God more than when I hear music or see art, that that is when I'm most thankful for the life that He's given me; for every human's ability to hear, see, think, feel and create... for making me ashraf-ul-makhluqaat.
