< content="MS 6.00.2800.1400" name=GENERATOR> Of all the fine arts, the art of music and dance is considered to be the finest. Music is an inseparable part of human life. Both human beings and music are the creations of Nature. This is the precise reason why the human mind instantly gets attracted towards music. Human beings cannot live only by satisfying the needs of their body. Listening to and enjoying music is also a basic necessity to satisfy the spiritual hunger of human beings. Obviously, human beings cannot even think of life without music. Music is very natural to the human mind. Thousands of years ago, man learnt about musical notes or Swara by listening to the singing birds. He also learnt about rhythm by listening to the rhythmic sound created by the flowing water of rivers. In fact, every human being learns about rhythm after listening to his mother's heartbeat while he is in her womb. Music is nothing but sound waves created by vibrations. So it is imperative to know how the musical notes were formed. From nature, man learnt about the most powerful primordial sound OM or AUM, which was a spiritual sound and contained the three most basic notes from our musical scale Sa, Re, Ga, Ma, Pa, Dha, Ni. So musically, AUM is made up three base notes, which are Sa, Pa of the fundamental scale and again Sa of the immediately higher scale. When one pronounces these three notes in continuity, all the basic notes from Sa to Ni are also heard. The chanting of AUM helps in clearing the impediments in the vocal chord. All notes of various octaves of the musical scale have evolved from the three basic notes of AUM. The syllable AUM represents the Trimurti (Triad) of Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh. Before beginning any spiritual program such as bhajans or a religious discourse, AUM is chanted a few times to create the spiritual atmosphere. Another facet of chanting AUM is that it dissolves all the thoughts from one's mind. AUM encompasses the complete spectrum of sound. When you say "A" (Akara) of AUM, the mouth is completely open and when you say "U" (Ukara) of AUM, you are slowly closing your mouth and in the end when you say "M" (Makara) of AUM, you close the mouth completely. Silence should follow after saying "M". Note that "U" is the transition between "A" and "M". If AUM is properly chanted as explained above, then it will create the correct vibrations in the atmosphere. And the person who is chanting AUM experiences total bliss. The sound energy released after chanting AUM in the correct manner brings tranquility to the human mind. In a way, the chanting of AUM represents the expansion and contraction of the universe as explained in the Big Bang theory. Sound manifests itself in two forms, which are Nada and Pada (word). Sometimes Pada is formed when Nada takes the form of a group of letters. Lord Shiva is the embodiment of Nada and his five faces deliver Sangeetham (Music). The origin of the Vedas is Sabda Brahma. And this Sabda Brahma is manifested after the Supreme Being incarnates in the form of Nada or the Omkara. Omkara is a form of Nada. In fact, Sabda Brahma is the origin of all Vedas. Only Sabda Brahma can initiate the process of self-realization, which can lead a person closer to God. We all know that the ultimate aim of every human being should be self-realization. Thus, music is a powerful medium to reach God. As per the Rig-Veda, actually there are four stages of sound. The first three stages of sound are not audible to the human ear on the material plane. These three stages are Para, Pashyanti and Madhyama, which are not manifested but are secretly established. The fourth stage, which is audible to the human ear, is called "Vaikhari". At every stage, the sound becomes grosser until finally it becomes audible. Hence one can easily trace back the human sound to the source of creation or the body of Brahma. And this is the exact technique used by Nada Yoga. This also forms the basis for Naam Sankirtana or Naam Japa to the realization of God. The level at which the vibrations cease is nothing but absolute or Brahma. When you chant a Mantra or do Naam Japa, we actually bridge the gap between matter and spirit as the mind travels from the material plane to a subtler plane. According to the tradition of Indian classical music, all music has originated from Sabda Brahma. Patanjali refers to Sabda Brahma as Sphota. According to the theory of Sphota, casual sound gives birth to both speech and music. Some ancient musicologists deify Nada as Goddess Saraswati herself. They claim that music is influenced by Goddess Saraswati. The music of Sama Veda dictates that mantras should be sung with the correct intonation and precision. In Christian theology, the Gospel of John states that, "In the beginning, the word was with God and the word was God." This means that the word with God existed before creation. So it cannot be the spoken word. Hence 'word' referred to here is the creative power of God. In Hinduism, we call this word as AUM. In Jewish theology, 'Odes of Solomon' conveys the same truth, which states that there is nothing apart from God, because He was there before anything came into being. And the worlds came into being by His word. In the Sikh religion, there is an important morning prayer, which is called 'Japji' where Guru Nanak expresses the same idea: "All creation is a manifestation of Thy word." As per the Mandukya Upanishad, AUM encompasses the past, present and future. And the one, which is beyond this triple conception of time, is also AUM. The sound of AUM is the body of Brahma (the Ultimate Reality). The entire universe has been created from AUM. Here I would like to clarify that there are two types of sounds, Ahat and Anahat (An+Ahat). The Ahat sound is produced by hitting two material objects or it may be produced using air and the diaphragm. Our vocal chord is like an instrument in our throat being played with the help of air in our breath. On the contrary, Anahat Nada literally means that the sound, which is not created by any collision but can only be heard through revelation from our soul while the mind is meditating. Many mystics have heard this sound from the innermost recesses of the heart through revelation. This sound is not the regular audible sound that the human ear knows, but this mysterious sound is experienced through revelation only. This mysterious sound is the sound that emanated from the dawn of creation, which is also called Nada. This sound is highly spiritual in nature and is constantly heard in the cosmos. Thus Nada is the voice of God. When we say the whole universe was created by AUM, we mean that it was created by Anahat Nada, the most original sound. Whereas the AUM that we chant to create the spiritual sound is Ahat Nada which originates from the original Anahat sound of AUM. The Vedas refer to sound as Shruti. Sound is nothing but the power of God's infinite energy that has manifested into a finite form, so that the human ear could listen to it. God also created air on the earth so that the sound energy could be propagated through this medium so as to make it audible. Sound is the power of the infinite. Especially, the primordial sound OM, resounds in every particle of the creation incessantly. Researchers have found that about forty-five thousand thoughts cross our mind every day. This means that approximately one thought occurs in our mind every two seconds. When your mind is focussed at one point, as we do in meditation, we get rid of all the thoughts. And at this point when one listens to the sound coming from the innermost soul inside our heart, he can experience total bliss. This leaves a lasting experience. This sound is very vivid and is very real compared to any other sensory experience. Hindus perform Naag Pooja and pooja of the sacred pipal or asvatta tree (ficus tree) on the occasion of Vat Poornima, which indicates the yearnings of Hindus to worship Nature. Man accepted the gift of music from Nature, which he later nurtured. Music changed drastically as time surged ahead. Initially, folk music evolved in different parts of the rural areas. Folk music reflected the flavor of the region where it was created. Indian classical music came into existence from folk music. First, it was Haveli music, which was the purest form of classical music. The present day Hindustani classical music is a subset of Haveli music. In a way, the music created by the human mind reflects his own taste, inclination and his outlook towards life. Music is a natural phenomenon for the human mind. Wherever there is a human being, there is music, which exists next to him. Music is omnipresent like God. Music does not mean just singing. Music consists of all three forms, namely singing, instrument playing and dancing. This has been mentioned in the Sanskrit shlokas from the great Vedas "Geetam, Vadyam, Tatha Nrityam Trayam Sangeet Muchyate." The language of music is universal. The human mind gets solace from the daily mundane life only after listening to music. Music has no national boundaries. Music does not have restrictions of the languages. The Indian sitar played in the west is appreciated by westerners and jazz music played by the westerners is appreciated by easterners. Social stability throughout the world is heavily dependent and controlled by the power of music. Music has contributed a lot in maintaining social order and peace throughout the world. The human mind always has a tendency to express its feelings and music is one of the powerful mediums through which it can express it. All the nine rasas namely, sorrow, happiness, comedy, peace, anger, pity, playfulness etc., can be expressed through music. All the different ragas created by the human mind reflect either a particular time of the day or a particular season of the year or a particular mood of a person. This is explained with the following three examples. Bhairava raga is sung during the early hours of dawn, which creates serenity in the atmosphere whereas the seasonal raga Basant-Bahar brings us the joy of spring. The sad raga Jogia brings tears to our eyes. Hence music and the human mind are closely interrelated. Nowadays, music has lost its original purpose of selfless service. Now, most of the present day artists have become business minded. With a few exceptions, music is now being used only to make money. However, it is heartening to note that music has touched the hearts of almost all the human beings of the world. Although there is a vast variety in music, the purpose of creating music remains unique, which is to bring happiness and peace to the human mind. This is the reason why the art of music once considered worthless, has now become the most useful form of art for the entire world. Music has finally crossed all artificial barriers created by man such as national boundaries, religion, caste etc. Music has helped all of us in following a spiritual path through devotion to music. Music will stay forever with us. Nations may eventually get destroyed but its music will always stand tall reminding the future generations about the past glorious culture of that particular nation. In order to get eternal bliss, human beings always try to tune their minds with the infinite or God. Sound is the power that can lead man to the infinite, only if he understands how to use it. Man has designed several methods to achieve this goal. These methods are various meditation techniques, ceremonial worship, chanting hymns, singing bhajans, and repetition of the names of God. The love of music is a universal feature of the human species. Music is deeply embedded in multiple structures of the human brain. Musical instinct long antedates the human race.
Researchers of biomusicology -- the study of the biological basis for the creation and appreciation of music -- show that music is at once a primal human enterprise.
Various musical instruments have been discovered which date back to 53000 years – more than the age of the famed Lascaux cave paintings. Humans have been so much interested in music that they have been fashioning musical instruments for hundreds of thousands of years. This was proved by researchers who found the oldest instrument flute made of animal bones. An accomplished flautist Jelle Atema of the Marine Biology Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., USA, recreated these ancient flutes using ancient bones and the ancient design and was very much impressed by their sweetness and versatility. These flutes created pure and haunting sounds in very specific scales. This proves that ancient man was an expert instrument maker and without a complete understanding of music he could not have been able to create such sophisticated sounds. The Academy of Science, USA did research to explore the role of music in all living things. Researchers found that human beings were not alone in holding the copyright on sonic brilliance; there were nonhuman animals that produced what can rightly be called as music, rather than random drills, trills and cacophony. Recent in-depth analyses of the songs sung by birds and humpback whales show that, even though their vocal apparatus would allow them to do otherwise, the animals converge on the same acoustic and aesthetic choices and abide by the same laws of song composition as those preferred by human musicians. As explained earlier, this shows that God has made sure to resound the primordial sound unceasingly within every particle of creation. The male humpback whales that sing continuously for about six months in a year, use rhythms similar to those found in human music and musical phrases of similar length. Whales are capable of vocalizing over a range of seven octaves and they sing in a particular key (a specific musical note). They mix percussive and pure tones in a ratio consonant with that heard in Western symphonic music. Whales use rhymes in the same way as human musicians, as a mnemonic device to help them remember complex material. Dr. Gray who is one of the researchers at the Academy of Science writes: "It is very easy to play along with pure and unedited whale songs and they are absolutely comprehensible to us." Dr. Gray has done research on movements for saxophone, piano and the whale. Birds also compose songs with the same notes, rhythmic variations, harmonic patterns and pitch relationship as those found in human compositions. The hermit thrush sings in the pentatonic scale in which the octaves are divided into five notes. Dr. Gray says: "This is a very recognizable and pleasant scale that is found across many human cultures. The pentatonic scale is the scale on which prehistoric flutes were built, and it is also the basis for a lot of rock 'n' roll music today." The California marsh wren may sing as many as 120 themes in a given jam session with each theme matched by the immediate neighbor known among musicians as the call-response pattern. The palm cockatoo of Northern Australia selects a hollow log of a preferred resonance, and then breaks off a twig to use it as a drumstick. Roger Payne, president of the Ocean Alliance in Lincoln, Mass., USA says: "Music is far, far older than our species. It is tens of millions of years old, and the fact that animals as wildly divergent as whales, human beings and birds come out with similar laws suggests to me that there are a finite number of musical sounds that will entertain the vertebrate brain." Dr. Isabelle Peretz of the University of Montreal has done extensive research on patients with lesions in the auditory cortex that impairs the ability to recognize music while leaving unscathed their ability to understand speech, environmental sounds and other acoustic information. According to Dr. Peretz, the brain has specific areas, which are designed to process music, although the nature and location of this area is unknown. Neuroscientists have found that neural structures, which process music, also process other forms of cognition and other acoustic information. Traditionally, it is commonly understood that the right hemisphere of the brain does the processing of music. But recent neuroimaging studies have shown that the processing of music is done by the subtle interplay of the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The left hemisphere does 'fast acoustic' to tell the listener whether a note was being played on a violin or a guitar. Thereafter, the right hemisphere takes over the 'slow acoustic' so as to process and appreciate the note being played. At this point, if all goes well, then the brain cedes control to the body. And the person listening to the note starts enjoying the music to the heart's content. Lastly, I would like to mention interesting facts about the 'harmonics' of the sound waves. Whenever you play an instrument, either a wind instrument or a stringed instrument or instrument of any other kind, it creates sound waves. The sound waves created has one fundamental frequency with a certain amplitude (volume) followed by additional sound waves called as harmonics which is an integral (whole number) multiple of the fundamental frequency with a smaller amplitude (on its sine curve) than the amplitude of its fundamental frequency. Harmonics are also called as 'timbre' (pronounced as 'tamber'), which is also called the color of sound. These very harmonics created by an instrument make the instrument a distinct one. This is the reason why a note that is plucked on the sitar sounds different from the same note played on a violin. This is because even though both notes are the same, meaning both notes have the same fundamental frequency, the number of harmonics generated after the fundamental frequency by each instrument is different. This is why we are able to differentiate the sound of sitar from the violin. The same thing holds true for any other instrument. Every human being is gifted by God with the most valuable instrument, which is the vocal chord. The theory of harmonics explained above also holds true for the human vocal chord. From the theory of harmonics, it is clear why the voice of every singer sounds unique just like a human facial appearance is unique. It is the harmonics that differentiates the voice of Lata Mangeshkar with that of Asha Bhonsle and the voice of Asha Bhonsle with that of Geeta Dutt. Sometimes it is possible that the voices of two or more singers sound very similar, although they are not exactly the same. This is because the harmonics of all these voices are almost identical. But in reality, they cannot be exactly identical. There will be a small difference. For example, the voice of Suman Kalyanpur sounds very similar to that of Lata Mangeshkar, so much so that sometimes you cannot not even tell the difference unless someone told you who sang the song. This is so because the harmonics of both the singers are almost identical. Some interesting conclusions can be drawn by doing the following experiment: First, you record a note created by one instrument on one audiocassette. And then record the same note created by another instrument on another audiocassette. You make sure that while recording the note from each instrument, you play the same note and play it for a long duration. And then by some means, using some sophisticated software audio-editing program, say you are able to remove the harmonics from both the sound waves and only retain the fundamental frequency of the note in both cassettes. Thereafter, you play both the audiocassettes one after the other and you will see that both the instruments will sound the same and you will not be able to distinguish one instrument from another instrument. In summary, sound is really a mysterious gift from God, which makes every one of us feel the presence of God in all his creations throughout the universe. . References: 1) India Tribune Magazine: "Mysticism of Sound and Its Impact on Human Mind" by Sudhakshina Rangaswamy (November 18, 2000)
2) New York Times: "Sonata for Humans, Birds and Humpback Whales" by Natalie Angier (January 9, 2001)
3) Veda Literature
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