And in the background was playing..

Movies have enriched all our lives in many ways, I can safely declare. They have brought life and laughter to many a gloomy evening, they have sparked off many romances and they have created innumerable memories both not only by themselves, but by association. The many many times my family and I have spent watching the same movie and deriving more enjoyment every time cannot be replaced. However, if there was one invaluable gift which I had to pick among all the ways cinema has impacted people,it would be the background music.

The clash of drums is the most reliable way of knowing that something momentous is about to happen in an Indian movie. The lilting music on a shehnai has almost become associated with sadness and grieving. The typical rising tempo on a sitar or veena is one with optimism. All of us, if we search our minds can come up with the music we associate with rain, with romance, with loneliness, with flowers, with comic happenings, and pretty much every situation we are in. The "Taan-ta-daan!" and the "ta-dah!" we each utter when we show off something, is reinforcement of this fact.I had not realized it before,as I had taken it for granted, but any event, especially in a movie seems almost incomplete without a background score to drive it home.

The most talented music directors have perfected the art of making us almost unconscious of its presence, making us feel the situation through the music rather than listening to the music alone. I remember the excitement induced by the background score during the chase in the movie 'Cellular',but afterward, when I sought out that song by itself, it seemed commonplace enough. It is the marriage between the action on screen and the music that gives them both that added power. People who have watched the Tamil movie 'Mozhi' and remember the scene where they show the process of the music being added to the scene, will be able to relate to this.

What is it about the background that makes it so influential? I don't know but I suspect that it is the fact that each of us are born with an innate sense of music and we are happy to recognize the same faculty in the rest of the world. It is also a form of wordless communication. All of us are strangely made happy by that, it seems. We all even associate each product with the music in its ad. Who does not know the Airtel music and the Titan watches music in India? Similarly, everyone in the US seems to recall the Burger King music and many such.

Extending this to everyday life, it really makes a chore such as cleaning the kitchen seem pleasant when you are doing it with hindustani music in the background. The same applies to a dink-chik score during exercise or the latest bollywood number while folding clothes. Association of radio city with coffee, of Upendra numbers with autos makes all these things doubly enjoyable somehow. Simple pleasures and true ones.I am sure all our lives will bring varied problems and many tricky ones, but thanks to our friends in the cinematic world, we can at least face them with a song in our heads!