My friend Razib was playing a song in his car one night last year, and asked me what I thought about the song. It sounded like rap music, except with Bangla lyrics. I found it bizarre and without any redeeming qualities, and I told him that. His response was: well, you're too old for this, which I didn't take very well. I thought I understood and recognized good music, and could tell crap from diamond in the rough.Now fast forward 10 months. I'm in Kabul, and listening to songs Pappu bhai copied me when i was visiting them in North Carolina. And I played the same song over and over and over again for last 6-7 nights.
The song is called Junglee (Wildman) by Fuad Al Muqtadir, a new Bangla singer who looks like Bob Marley crossed with Chris Farley, and sounds like a cat scratching its eyes out with a blunt can opener. But as I listen to the whole album, I must give him credit for introducing something new to Bangla music. The title of this entry is from his song, and translates as Ducks dance on canals and lakes, which indicates the obvious intellectual pursuits of the song.
This led me to thinking about how my music taste changed over time. For example, when I think about Opera, I think of Bianca Castafiore, a caricature of Maria Callas drawn by Herge, who apparently shared my hate for the pretentiousness of the form. But after watching Rent, which is based on La Boheme by Puccini, I had to give the form a second look.
Same goes for classical, jazz and rap. I started to like them when distilled through movie soundtracks (Immortal Beloved, English Patient, 8 Miles) and now that they are part of my collection, I don't need them to be watered down anymore.
Once the unfamiliar becomes familiar, I guess we learn to appreciate things for what they are, rather than dwell on what they are not. Even if it's a cat scratching it's eye out. We learn to look at the cat and appreciate it for tenacity.
