6 minutes reading time
Man, I am loving Sushin Shyam.
And SaNa. The whole album tells a story, like a full experience. You can't just pull singles out and expect to feel it. It's the same thing with Relapse. Not Eminem's biggest commercial run, but the coherence of the thing, the way it hangs together, that's the point. SaNa is like that too.
I didn't grow up with a lot of music. Mostly just whatever MSV songs my dad played.
We had a TV. My dad bought one around 1990, probably on impulse. People from the whole neighborhood used to crowd into my mom's place just to watch it. Not where I mostly grew up, my mom's place was a different area. Anyway, that TV was a big deal for a while.
Then my dad stopped the cable. The TV stayed but cable was gone. He thought it was a bad influence on us. So what we had after that was just my dad putting on old movies occasionally. Mostly MSV was in those. Sometimes Viswanathan-Ramamoorthy, sometimes KV Mahadevan.
Around 2000 we got a radio. AIR Coimbatore, 999 kHz. Then FM Rainbow on 103 MHz. I remember program names like Thenkinnam, Mayil Iragu, but I might even be misremembering those. There were so many names I'd hear: A.M. Rajah, T.K. Ramamoorthy, Vedha, Shankar-Ganesh, Ghantasala. Melody was the only thing. That's all we knew.
Around 2006, I had just finished 10th std. My dad had a Motorola C168, one of those phones with FM. Whenever it was at home, I used it. That's when Ilayaraja and ARR started coming in properly.
I loved Ilayaraja. I genuinely couldn't stand ARR back then. That high-pitched, metallic sharpness. It was like jingle bells but worse. Something about that brightness, that crystalline quality, physically irritated me. I'm very sensitive to bright treble. So I stuck with Raja, with Gangai Amaran, Chandrabose, Shankar-Ganesh. I didn't even care for Deva back then, which is funny because I love Deva now. This was 2006 to 2009 roughly.
Then Raavanan came in 2010 and broke me.
That soundtrack with Vairamuthu's lyrics. I still can't stop talking about it. One of the best soundtracks of that decade. After that, I wanted to go back and hear everything ARR had done.
I had a laptop by then. A Dell Inspiron N5010, 35k INR. It was supposed to support SRS Premium Sound. But I was running Debian, so that was useless. Internet was a USB dongle because my college, RVS College of Engineering and Technology in Dindigul, collected 5,000 rupees a year from every student as an "internet charge." Then they told me I couldn't use the computer lab because I was in Aerospace, not Computer Science. If I wanted access, I had to write a formal letter, get it signed by my Aero HOD, carry that to the CS HOD, get another signature there, and then physically go to the CS lab. Which was closed most of the time anyway. Around 2011 they let us use a few machines in the library. The connection rarely worked and the library was only open during college hours.
So anyway. USB dongle.
I distro-hopped like an idiot from around 2011 to 2015, mostly Fedora. Lost all my data multiple times. Kept re-downloading music. Still couldn't like the older ARR records people kept pushing. Roja, Uyire. I didn't like Vinnaithaandi Varuvaayaa. I liked some Telugu stuff like Komaram Puli. I appreciated that ARR's music was great, technically. I just didn't enjoy most of it personally.
Then SaNa happened. And now he's my all-time favourite.
Around 2016 I started trying to get into jazz. You keep reading about how it's this conversation between musicians, how you need to let it breathe, how it opens up after a few listens. I couldn't hear it. Still can't. I try again every few years and the wall stays. I recently heard Justin Gray's Immersed, Grammy-winning, Dolby Atmos, the whole critical apparatus behind it, and I couldn't understand what I was supposed to feel. It might be a spatial audio thing I'm missing since I don't have Atmos setup. Or maybe it's just jazz and I'm just not built for it.
Except Kind of Blue. Miles Davis. That one anyone can sit with.
I can do the 3Bs of classical. I love Wagner, which is probably the most excessive possible taste to have. But jazz, the real jazz people talk about when they want to sound serious. No.
And then Sushin. Recently. I have no words. I'm just completely wrecked by his music. He's so fucking good I don't know how to explain it.
The people who know music, they ask how clever the harmony is, how difficult the solo is, how many layers there are. I don't know any of that. I can't sing. I can't drum a coherent beat on my own desk. I'm a complete simpleton about music.
But these people, SaNa, Sushin, they make a simpleton actually notice. Not analyze. Not appreciate technically. Just notice and feel something real.
I'm not someone who goes to kutcheris or Keerthanai recitals and nods along. I just listen to what reaches me.
One of my all-time favourites is Othaiyila from Iraivi. Anthony Daasan singing. SaNa composing. I wish something like that was under Creative Commons so it could spread without friction, reach more people who don't have Spotify or whatever. I cry every time I hear it and I genuinely don't know why.
My life is already a mess. I don't know what I'm doing for work. I have a family. I have a daughter now. I shouldn't have had a family. I'm not capable of this. But I do have them, and I have to do right by them, and I keep failing at that too.
I can't even drink anymore. Alcohol used to be the thing that slowed my brain down. But I have a kid. I'm already too dumb to raise a kid, and adding alcohol would make it catastrophic. So these songs are the only drug left.
I know I'm inconsistent. I hate bright treble but I love Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan's violin. I can't enjoy jazz but Kind of Blue is fine. I don't understand the rules of my own taste.
I'm just glad there are people out there making music for simpletons like me.
Image Credit: Groove and needle in close embrace from beginning to end.jpg via Wikimedia Commons