my musical journey

I started taking Hindustani classical singing lessons when I was 5 years old or thereabouts. I don't know if the stereotype of Indian American kids enrolling in dozens of different extracurricular Indian-themed activities existed back then. There were other Indian kids at those lessons, so it must have existed. My first teacher had been my head teacher and ASL teacher at preschool. I don't have too many memories of those lessons, except that I largely enjoyed them. I still have the Elasmosaurus figurine Mrs. SR gave me when I turned six ("let me keep" is probably more apt) because I was really into The Land Before Time and dinosaurs. If a six-year -old ever took anything away from my home, I would probably be none too pleased. This speaks to the general saintliness of Mrs. SR's character as well as that of the figurine's owner (presumably Mrs. SR's child), assuming they were aware and willing. These lessons culminated in a group performance of "Ae Malik Tere Bande Hum" for some kind of Indian Independence Day celebration. I didn't know a word of Hindi at the time, but I still remember a lot of the lyrics – then just abstract sounds. Also I remember "roshni" meant light, because Mrs. SR made special mention of this to a girl named Roshni, who was in the class. Shortly after that we moved to India.

For continuity purposes, one of the first things my parents sought out for me before we had even finished unpacking at our new rental home was a music teacher. I auditioned one of the Sai Bhajans I knew for him. He didn't look particularly impressed, which startled me a little, for as a kid, I was used to people going out of their way to shower praise and smiles upon me. This would set the tone of my relationship with the teacher for all the years to come. I did not enjoy these lessons, and I believe now that they weren't meant to be enjoyable, not for any fault of the teacher's. Enjoyment is simply not a value that Indian culture placed upon extracurricular activities (back then at least); they're more about discipline and excellence. I was emancipated from this teacher and his lessons sometime in the 9th grade, when school started demanding more of my time and energy. Then the summer after the 10th-grade Board Exams (of which I've written extensively on this blog between 2008 and 2009) my mom out of blue took me to a piano teacher, and ever since then I have been in a faithful monogamous relationship with the piano.

I would be remiss not to bring up my fascination with the pipe organ, which began ever since I saw Forte in Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas when I was 7. The details are unimportant. My interest waned as I grew older, and then suddenly in the 8th or 9th grade I had the bright idea to look up pipe organs on YouTube, which had recently become a thing. I think this was spurred by a sighting of the instrument in the anime Trinity Blood. The first result was a performance of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Hans Andre Stamm on the Trost organ in Waltershausen. I remember feeling awestruck. From then on, Bach was practically all I listened to. The Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor played by Karl Richter in Ottobeuren was a particular favorite. I would try to pick up the main motifs of these pieces by ear and reproduce them on my Casio keyboard, whose organ tone fell woefully short of the organs I saw on YouTube; but that just meant I needed to work my imagination harder. I credit these forays with creating a technical base of sorts for my subsequent piano lessons, where I showed some talent for the instrument, if I do say so myself, particularly for someone who was no child prodigy and had started lessons at the relatively advanced age of 15. It's possible they deserve no credit; regardless, I think my obsession with Bach drove me to devote more time to practicing than I might  have done if I had started taking piano lessons instead of singing lessons as a 5-year-old, when I didn't have such a strong motivator. I had read online that the first step to becoming an organist is to learn the piano, because an organ, like a piano, is a keyboard instrument; in fact, it has several keyboards for the hands and a pedal board for the feet. (But that's where the similarities end.) I viewed my piano lessons as a kind of stepping stone to becoming an organist.

At some point I came across Glenn Gould's abridged video performance of Bach's C Minor Partita. I think I enjoyed that piece primarily as a Bach composition rather than as a piano composition, which Glenn Gould would have approved of, since he regarded the piano as no more than a vehicle for grander musical ideas rather than an end in itself. Then I believe it was Kouri (FFn pal) who sent me a link to Stanislav Bunin playing Chopin's Revolutionary Etude at the 1985 Chopin Competition. It was a fine piece, and Bunin's dexterity astonished me, but it didn't move me the way Bach moved me. Then at some point I came across Martha Argerich playing Chopin's C-Sharp Minor Scherzo at the 1965 Chopin Competition. I think I saw Argerich being pitted against Glenn Gould in a YouTube comment, when I decided to look her up. I recognized Chopin from the Bunin video. Watching this performance, I experienced an awakening similar to the one I'd experienced when I first watched Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, particularly during the coda. As far as I can remember, that's the moment I decided to make my home on this stepping stone, and as of this writing I am still a devoted pianist.