The Magic of Music.

Music has lifted shades of hue, penetrated souls and sometimes provided an almost meditative experience. But sometimes one is overwhelmed by music and the profound image that it leaves in one's mind is but obvious; like it did an hour ago in me. The feeling arose not due to a spiritual prayer or a meditative chant; it came unexplained propelled by the familiar beats of pop and rock.
As I tuned in to the one of the few channels that I choose to watch in the hundred odd "channelled" idiot box, I came across the live 8 concert being aired live on VH1. Having nothing at hand, I decided to spend my late evening watching the concert....and boy that was one heck of a concert.
Dedicated to HIV+ poverty stricken people all over the world, but mainly in Africa; the concert began with Bob Geldhof giving a brief introduction into what the live 8 was and how it worked. As the concert kick started; images of dying african children flashed onto the screen. People, with hardly any flesh; people for whom the ability to live itself becomes a gift, people who have no food, no nutrition whatsoever; almost fated to be born just to die. The images carried stark messages; almost piercing one's heart, and then music flowed....
Music...I heard Coldplay in the background; and on any other normal day I would have probably joined in the vocals...But today I couldn't; probably because I was already choked. Yellow resonated in my ears as did a lot of other songs by artists as widely reputed as Linkin Park, Snopp Dogg, Robbie Williams, U2, Elton John and some less well known ones. But what really moved me was a performance of Bitter Sweet Symphony The song by itself withheld amazingly soulful orchestra; and today it reverberated with the vocals:
Cos it's a bitter sweet symphony that's life
The electronic rock beats combined with orchestra spun the magic, and seemed to melt my heart as images of the children floated by.
Another performance by Annie Lennox, a solo piano-accompanied track, echoed in the background as more images flashed...this time with numbers..statistics...that every 3 seconds a child does...showing stark contrasts in the ways of our life and that of a malnourished african. It almost felt as if it was sin just to have food when one is hungry..But the message was nailed into my head..Why the heck do we not do anything about it? And it may not be just some unknown poverty stricken tribe in Africa..What about us?.What about our environment? why is it that whatever is available is always taken for granted? And most importantly why the hell are we so selfish?
Madonna came on stage too..Her usually compulsive Music seemed to be providing hidden messages...When she sang Music makes the people come together , for the first time I realized how true that line was...People in Toronto, Philadelphia, Johannesberg, Berlin, London, Paris were all listening to the live concert right then...And then it was so true...that whatever be the background, we all are infact united by the language of music; in the face of common enemies; be it poverty or a deadly disease..Her Like aPrayer literally moved me to tears when the chorus joined in
Just like a prayer
I'll take you there
It's like a dream to me..
And I imagined that it was all after all just a prayer...we all seek resort in our prayers, and extending that resort to unhappy people was a dream come true for them.