On Music

I was at the Laneway Festival Singapore 2013 last Saturday with my girlfriend. Just to put it on record, it was not the first music concert that I've been in my life, but it certainly was the first one that I had to attend under a blistering hot sun and endure a horrible weather of overly powerful sunshine, suffering bad sunburns as a result of listening to music 'live'. I enjoyed the concert, but certainly not the weather.

I'm not exactly a music fan. I mean, I like to listen to music but to pay $120++ to stay under the sun while listening to multiple artiste beat out their tunes from 12pm to 12am is not exactly my kind of thing. I know of people who are fanatics enough to actually enjoy that, but I'm certainly not one of them. Not forgetting to add, of course, the kind of money-grubbing mechanisms in place at the festival - no food and drinks allowed in (and I even see people get their brollies confiscated at the gate, I mean, woh!), and then selling overpriced food and drinks (kebabs at $10, drinking water at $5!). I spent nearly $50 on food and drinks that day, and I didn't even buy much. I can imagine the organisers earning big bucks, with the weather being such a killer and the organisers monopolising the supply of drinking water in the area.

That said, I enjoyed myself at the festival nonetheless. The artistes were good, the fans were really excited, and the overall atmosphere and mood was a generally excitable one. As the artistes were singing, and the people dancing around me, I could feel a little of the groove going into me. Alright I'll make a note here: if you know me well enough, you will know that I am a rather stiff guy. I don't dance much, and I haven't visited any clubs since 2005 (wow, 8 years?). I don't listen to much music either. But hey, during Laneway, I could really feel the groove. My girlfriend even said I grooved more than her, but I didn't think that meant much (she's a huge fan of music, but I can't say the same about her tendency to dance). Everyone was happy (well mostly, except for a few rather 'conservative' audience who did not expect Laneway to be a major dancefest dominated by Caucasians, or what we call "Ang Mohs"; what, did they think there would be seats and everybody was gonna just sit and listen to music or something? Lol, I just loved their faces when they stared at the others dancing as if that was not the thing to do at a music festival).

I have this funny theory. Funny little theory about music. Okay, maybe I shouldn't say funny. I have this theory about music. You know how everything in this world has a certain vibration? It's like physics, you know. Everything in this world vibrates to a certain frequency. So if I can use some way to match the vibration of a certain something to the vibration of another thing, the thing that is matched will break apart. For example, you know glass shatters when sound waves of a certain frequency matches that of the glass? Yeah, same principle. So everything has a certain vibration - physically.

I think the same thing applies to music as well. I believe music has a certain vibration as well. And it comes in so many parts. I was just thinking about it when I was at Laneway and standing right in front of the speakers that were trying to turn me deaf (my ears were ringing as I tried to sleep that night). There's the vibration coming from the speakers, and the bass, and these resonates with our bodies. Its as if my body was feeling the music, not just my ear listening. I could feel my heart move with the bass. It was such a strange sensation. But you see, that's physically - the 'physicality' of the music resonating with the physicality of my body. But there's something else as well.

The soul. You know when you hear really good music played 'live' in front of you, you feel this attraction to the music. You fall silent, everybody fall silent and the feel the music in their hearts, no, their souls. It's just such a rare and amazing moment if you ever hear good music that connects with you perfectly. At that moment, it feels as if that piece of music is vibrating with your soul, and you are so ready to just fall apart. Its as if a piece of good music reverberates with the soul. You are connected to everybody, and all the audience with the artiste are connected and vibrating together with their souls. You can sense the sadness, misery, happiness, excitement, anger or whatever emotions that the artiste is working into that piece of music.  And that is amazing.