Week 1529 - The One-Time Listen

The Concept Explained

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1579

Why 1579

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

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On Saturday, we went to NMACC to listen to Buena Vista All Stars, a Cuban Havana based band that plays a mix of jazz and latina music. It was fun, the music was excellent, and we found good seats at the back where the acoustics were, after a long time, nice (we have been experimenting with the ideal seats for concerts and musicals and plays at the Grand Theatre and I think we have now cracked the ideal rows - Gold not Platinum for music). 

I did try to check them out on Spotify a week prior, but had no major desire to “understand” their music in advance. And while it was great fun at the concert, I don’t think I will listen to them playing again, unless they have another live performance a few years from now.

Jazz lends itself to this concept of a “one-time” listen. You go to a concert, enjoy the music and the evening, immersed in the sounds that are a combination of spontaneity overlaid on a prepared track, with no other distraction, in tune with the others around you who are doing the same. 

I wrote this on 01 Dec 2024 in my Week 1573 piece. 

Counting Down to 90 - Week 1573 - Blessed: Music, Matunga, Moments

Blessed to be living in Mumbai in King’s Circle/Matunga with easy access to every venue in the city and having knowledgeable friends and family to guide me across different genres and to go to these performances with.

Bhavin's WritingsBhavin Jankharia

With such rich access to live music, it is worth remembering that for most of human history, live was the only way to experience music. Our ability to listen to music anytime and anywhere is only 150 years old, dating back to Edison's invention of the phonograph. Perhaps this explains why we remain so deeply hard-wired for live performances…they tap into something primal, evoking sensory and emotional responses that recorded music, for all its convenience, can never quite match.

Live performances also offer an anchor to reality in an age where we increasingly lose ourselves in social media and virtual worlds. They pull us out of our digital cocoons; we have to physically move through the city and share space with strangers and navigate each venue's unique character. Often something magical happens; we form fleeting but profound connections with the performers and those around us and each performance becomes a unique, unrepeatable moment in time, shaped by the dynamic interplay between artist and audience. That collective "whoosh" of energy when a crowd moves as one…is something no digital experience or recorded music can replicate.

Come autumn and winter and the music scene takes off in Mumbai. Tony Ann is playing two weeks from now, then we have the International Jazz Festival in November, a bunch of other shows by local and international artistes…and this will go on till around March.

So many of these for me are just “one-time” experiences. I loved Ibrahim Maalouf and his band of horn players last year at the NMACC and then the jazz players including Gonzalo Rubalcaba at the International Jazz Festival at the NCPA two weeks later. I may attend another concert if they are playing, but I do not think I will put them in my playlist and listen to their recorded work. It is tough for me to listen to recorded jazz numbers and unless you are a major jazz aficionado, which I am not, then the best way to enjoy jazz is live…in bars, in clubs and during performances. 

Not everything in this world has to be repeatable. Some moments are just those…to be cherished at that time and then left to linger in the crevices of our brain, perhaps showing up once in a while as old memories when we land up attending other similar concerts or if their music pops up suddenly somewhere. 

With recorded music, the music remains the same…the only person who has changed is you…you are not the same person you were the last time you heard that song, even if the gap has been just a few hours or days. With a live concert, both you and the artist have changed in that period of time…which means that each live concert is a new experience for both of you, because neither of you is/are the same person/people you were the earlier time…it may seem similar, but it is never the same.

I know many people who just don’t do “live”. I too find it difficult to attend performances by amateur singers, especially doctors in their 40s and older who have suddenly “discovered” singing and want to exercise their skills on audiences of other doctors and friends and family. I would rather then listen to the original artistes such as Kishore Kumar, Mohd Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar than “besoora” wannabes. But a professional artist who is good, is a different animal and I will take the effort to go and listen to that person or band, just to savor that moment in time…moments that make life worth living.