The Power of Words

Today, while driving to work, I happened to listen to one of the FM stations in Mumbai, AIR FM Rainbow, which still believes in playing back to back pure music (without Jock speak), and sometimes interspersed with knowledgeable, mature and informative RJ sound bytes. The station is devoid of advertising, contests and calls. This makes it a complete listening pleasure, esp. during Mumbai morning traffic jams..!

What I want to talk about though, is completely different.

This morning there was a 3 hour tribute to the great musicals from the Hollywood studio factory...Songs from classics like Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, The King and I were played, and I happened to listen some honey dripping voices of Julie Andrews, Audrey Hepburn, Frank Sinatra and even the King himself, Elvis. But what was quite noticeable was the quality of the lyrics, and the words in each and every song. The words and the lyrics were evocative, conjured up images of a not-so distant past and most importantly were simple. Suddenly it seemed to me that the difference in arts (especially in Popular Songs, Films and even popular literature) between todays, and the ones that were created, even, 30-40years ago, was the magic of spoken and written words. Today's popular music seems to dwell on the inane and pedantic meaning of words. Films today lack the powerful dialogues and the long monologue speeches (made famous by Al Pacino...!). Don't get me wrong, iam the biggest fan of modern day music. I would love to hear Black Eyed Peas, James Blunt, Robbie Williams, at any time of the day. But today what I am forced to listen is,the music and not the words.
The techno beats, and not the subtle meaning of the lyrics.
The high clapping digital drums and not the introspective sound of the words, (like powerfully used by Pink Floyd in The Wall and Dark Side of the Moon).
We are slowly losing the power to conjure up the power of the spoken words, the magic of great lyrics. I am not blaming any kind of musical styles, but Rap to a large extent started the trend of laying great emphasis on cluttered sound and menace, quite forgetting that the words can tell a story much better. Steven Spielberg, while accepting a lifetime contribution to the World of Cinema in 2001(or was it 2000?)said that "...while we have achieved mastery of the visual format of story telling, we need to stand up and re-discover the magic of written and spoken words"...This coming from the most famous peddler of pure visual magic, is possibly one of the greatest nod to the power of words.

As for me, today's traffic jam was the most enjoyable that I experienced, after a long time.

Have Faith; Rewards will follow...