I have been owning and driving a car only for the last 4 years. I used buses/autos mostly before that while travelling to work. So while I did listen to FM radio occasionally during my Bangalore and Mumbai days, it wasn't until I started living in Chennai since 2011 that I really started listening to FM during the 1 hour commute to work during morning and evening. In Chennai of course FM meant ads and Tamil film music or people talking about tamil movies, music and musicians.
Right from childhood we were brought up listening to carnatic music and I was even sent briefly for music lessons. We also used to watch tamil and malayalam movies a lot as kid, I didnt study Hindi till I reached class 5 and I think it did take another 2-3 years to even vaguely understand the language. So all the movies and film music I heard till 90s were tamil and malayalam ones and most of them were classical based as well.
Till mid 90s we only had Doordarshan channel on TV and whatever played on it we watched and TV viewing was highly controlled by parents. So all I remember is watching the epics on Sunday and occassional serials in the night initially. Rangoli, Chitrahaar, Ek Se Bhadkar ek were the music based shows I remember very well. 'Bollywood' music was very popular among kids in my age group in 90s as it represented something different more pan-indian, something more cool perhaps though we could hardly sing it fluently or speak the language properly. But in 90s whenenver we had scheduled power cuts daily and that was the time to gather and play Antakshari though multiple languages were perhaps allowed it was mostly Bollywood songs as far as I can remember. Even in school when a teacher was absent and a substitute teacher could be not be arranged some junior teacher would come and encourage students to come forward and sing some songs. Mostly it would be bollywood songs which had come in Chitrahaar recently which some gulf returned kid already a cassette and knew the lyrics!
As cable tv arrived by mid to late 1990s we all got flooded with MTV, Channel V and likes and listening to latest film songs was not something you eagerly waited every week. It was just everywhere and though it was good initially but it was never the same. In 2000s as I moved to college there was no restriction on watching TV ( who stops you in hostel anyway! ) and lot of time was spent listening to film songs on TV after dinner with nothing much to do. It was pre-cell phone, internet, computer games era and old movie re-runs and music was all we had. I had started working in Bangalore and even though it was a Kannada speaking city ( for the record I did make an attempt and did manage to learn the language) I never heard Kannada songs at all. Maybe its because of my friends circle or because my office buses with FM or CD player played only Hindi tracks. Of course bollywood music was something that you had on TV daily those days to kill time once you got back home. That has been the case often until last 5-6 years when internet and social media got us some better things to do.
In my personal ipod collection which were mostly songs from friends its mostly English, Tamil and malaylam songs and very limited Hindi songs most of which would be from AR Rahman. So while I did enjoy hindi music and had familiarity with songs from 70s to late 2000s I never used to listen to it regularly.
In US, though I did drive quite a bit the FM radio and music didnt mean much to me.All that changed when I moved 6 months back to Dallas, while moving I sought out a friend who had lived in Dallas earlier before moving to Seattle. He told me the weather would be warm and there would be lot of Indians and also mentioned that one of his favorite memories of Dallas was listening to Hindi FM channel - FunAsia. Sure enough within a few days of arriving here I scanned for the channel in my car's FM radio and till date I have not changed the channel even once.
I mostly listen in morning around 10 while doing my 30-40 minute commute to work and in the afternoon/evening between 3 to 5PM when I head back. Maybe it could be because majority of the listeners are in my age group, though they play recent ones as well there are a lot of songs that get played which are older bollywood numbers ( anything from 60s to early 2000s). The songs from 90s especially are really like 'Pensieves' and magically transport you back to that era and stage of your life and open up a lot of lovely memories associated with that time. Many of these songs were the ones we used to love a lot for a while and then slowly got replaced by more recent popular songs as time went by like with most things in our life.
These days there has been numerous occasions when I start my car thinking about something at work, some email for which I need to reply, some task to complete and while being pre-occupied with all those things there arrives suddenly a song on air which brings a sudden smile and changes/uplifts your mood suddenly and makes you hum along and tap your fingers on the steering wheel and it radically changes your day!
Nothing like good old 90s music to set off that wonderful nostalgia train and bring back that smile!
Right from childhood we were brought up listening to carnatic music and I was even sent briefly for music lessons. We also used to watch tamil and malayalam movies a lot as kid, I didnt study Hindi till I reached class 5 and I think it did take another 2-3 years to even vaguely understand the language. So all the movies and film music I heard till 90s were tamil and malayalam ones and most of them were classical based as well.
Till mid 90s we only had Doordarshan channel on TV and whatever played on it we watched and TV viewing was highly controlled by parents. So all I remember is watching the epics on Sunday and occassional serials in the night initially. Rangoli, Chitrahaar, Ek Se Bhadkar ek were the music based shows I remember very well. 'Bollywood' music was very popular among kids in my age group in 90s as it represented something different more pan-indian, something more cool perhaps though we could hardly sing it fluently or speak the language properly. But in 90s whenenver we had scheduled power cuts daily and that was the time to gather and play Antakshari though multiple languages were perhaps allowed it was mostly Bollywood songs as far as I can remember. Even in school when a teacher was absent and a substitute teacher could be not be arranged some junior teacher would come and encourage students to come forward and sing some songs. Mostly it would be bollywood songs which had come in Chitrahaar recently which some gulf returned kid already a cassette and knew the lyrics!
As cable tv arrived by mid to late 1990s we all got flooded with MTV, Channel V and likes and listening to latest film songs was not something you eagerly waited every week. It was just everywhere and though it was good initially but it was never the same. In 2000s as I moved to college there was no restriction on watching TV ( who stops you in hostel anyway! ) and lot of time was spent listening to film songs on TV after dinner with nothing much to do. It was pre-cell phone, internet, computer games era and old movie re-runs and music was all we had. I had started working in Bangalore and even though it was a Kannada speaking city ( for the record I did make an attempt and did manage to learn the language) I never heard Kannada songs at all. Maybe its because of my friends circle or because my office buses with FM or CD player played only Hindi tracks. Of course bollywood music was something that you had on TV daily those days to kill time once you got back home. That has been the case often until last 5-6 years when internet and social media got us some better things to do.
In my personal ipod collection which were mostly songs from friends its mostly English, Tamil and malaylam songs and very limited Hindi songs most of which would be from AR Rahman. So while I did enjoy hindi music and had familiarity with songs from 70s to late 2000s I never used to listen to it regularly.
In US, though I did drive quite a bit the FM radio and music didnt mean much to me.All that changed when I moved 6 months back to Dallas, while moving I sought out a friend who had lived in Dallas earlier before moving to Seattle. He told me the weather would be warm and there would be lot of Indians and also mentioned that one of his favorite memories of Dallas was listening to Hindi FM channel - FunAsia. Sure enough within a few days of arriving here I scanned for the channel in my car's FM radio and till date I have not changed the channel even once.
I mostly listen in morning around 10 while doing my 30-40 minute commute to work and in the afternoon/evening between 3 to 5PM when I head back. Maybe it could be because majority of the listeners are in my age group, though they play recent ones as well there are a lot of songs that get played which are older bollywood numbers ( anything from 60s to early 2000s). The songs from 90s especially are really like 'Pensieves' and magically transport you back to that era and stage of your life and open up a lot of lovely memories associated with that time. Many of these songs were the ones we used to love a lot for a while and then slowly got replaced by more recent popular songs as time went by like with most things in our life.
These days there has been numerous occasions when I start my car thinking about something at work, some email for which I need to reply, some task to complete and while being pre-occupied with all those things there arrives suddenly a song on air which brings a sudden smile and changes/uplifts your mood suddenly and makes you hum along and tap your fingers on the steering wheel and it radically changes your day!
Nothing like good old 90s music to set off that wonderful nostalgia train and bring back that smile!
2 comments:
YES- to nostalgia. Take your time with the list ;-)
Taking time with the list is not really easy, someone has been hounding me for weeks and has put up an interim post clarifying that the post is because 'Anush has not yet put up his list'
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