Imagine.
Imagine John Lennon’s Imagine playing as we dance on the streets.
Imagine Chris Martin (or substitute your favourite here) for Zeus. Lana del Ray for Aphrodite.
Imagine concert stadia as our temples and our churches, singers and musicians to be our gods and goddesses, their compositions their superpowers, their songs our prayers to them, live performances their blessings to us, Tomorrowland our pilgrimage, as also our festival, the stage their altar.
Imagine Musicology. World music as a Global religion.
Music, that elixir of life, the giver of hope, a balm for broken hearts and stressed minds alike.
Imagine a world where we have substituted present-day religious processions on the roads, blaring loud music over ill-performing speakers, with those with melodious music. A huge party, a concert, on our roads. As things exist at present, people can stop traffic, block roads, and play loud music night-long in the name of religion; but if we were to do the same with the music we love, we’d be booked by the police. Why?
So, those’d be our festivals. We’d also take out processions and block roads and play music in public through the night, but our choice of music. And no one can stop us, for one can do anything, literally anything, only if it’s done under the garb of religion. We’d have Rahman-tithi for Ganesh Chaturthi, ChrisMar for Christmas, LuckyAli for Diwali.
And what a religion it’d be! Religion is seen as a cure for ailments by many, and we know music heals. Religion is purported to unite people, and we know what a great unifying force music is. As Tomorrowland says, Live Today, Love Tomorrow, Unite Forever. Music gets people of all shapes and sizes, nationalities and ethnicities, colour and creed, genders and demographics, together, in celebration of life. Here is a religion where the gods are not too distinct from us, where they are approachable, where they are a part of the celebrations and the festivities as much as we are. Where they don’t expect us to bow down to them, where we can choose to not like any of them, or their music. Most people have diverse tastes in music cutting across genres. We would be divided by our tastes and preferences, but we won’t claim one to be better than the other and we certainly won’t fight and kill over it. It’d be better than most religions of today on most parameters.
Unless, of course, like with modern-day religion, Musicology starts with a noble idea only to have its practitioners corrupt it later.
So, who wants to join in the bandwagon?
