“Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” – Maya Angelou

Fun fact: In 2009, archaeologists excavating a cave near Southern Germany, discovered a flute carved from the wing bone of a vulture. This artefact is now recognized as one of the oldest musical instruments discovered in archaeology. This means that human beings have created and listened to music for over 40,000 years!

Hello fellow poets!

It is said music makes the world go around. For me music is poetry in motion. There is music all around us…in the bird’s song, in the raindrops falling, in the rustle of leaves, the ever sweet babble of a toddler, when my kettle sings, when the vegetable vendor call out to sell his wares and even in the street sounds!

H.W. Longfellow very famously said, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” It couldn’t be truer. The recent win of Telegu song “Naatu Naatu” at the Oscars proves that music cuts across all barriers. India is a union of 28 states and 8 union territories and almost each region has folk songs that celebrate birth, marriage, even death and everything in between. Indian cinema, spanning all regional movies, is incomplete without music. If anyone of you has ever watched a movie from the Indian subcontinent, you might have been flummoxed by the song and dance routine but we love it!

Music should make one feel something, make one respond to it. Music can help one cope with feelings after a bad break up; it can also assist one in wallowing in self-pity after a bad break up. Music is the voice of rebellion, it is also a means of escapism. Music helps one heal, music soothes the soul. And as Beethoven said very poignantly, “Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear.”

Have you read Yeats’ ‘A crazed girl’! I love it.

That crazed girl improvising her music.
Her poetry, dancing upon the shore,

Her soul in division from itself
Climbing, falling She knew not where,
Hiding amid the cargo of a steamship,
Her knee-cap broken, that girl I declare
A beautiful lofty thing, or a thing
Heroically lost, heroically found.

We often turn to music when looking for inspiration, when we are happy, when we want to celebrate and also in moments of solitude and dejection. Writers, through the ages, have written poems about the power of music. Poems about music stand as testaments to how it has been a saviour, as Byranna T Perkins says:

Music is the ocean
That pulls me to the shore.
Music is the rhythm
That moves me to the core.

Or it can be about the purity of music as Dan Howell in ‘Piano‘ says…

Her wattled fingers can’t
stroke the keys with much
grace or assurance anymore,
and the tempo is always
rubato, halting, but still
that sound—

And a very apt poem from the mediaeval times, ‘When the Nightingale Sings‘

When the nyhtegale singes,
The wodes waxen grene,
Lef ant gras ant blosme springes
In Averyl, Y wene;
Ant love is to myn herte gon
With one spere so kene,
Nyht ant day my blod hit drynkes
Myn herte deth me tene.

Here’s what Cleo Wade said about Aretha Franklin.

The Challenge

For today’s challenge let’s write a poem about music in any form. You can mention music fleetingly or write a poem dedicated to music. BUT please include any two titles from the following list. These are all taken from Linda Perry’s albums. These days my husband and I are enjoying the music of Linda Perry.

1. Edge Of Your Atmosphere
2. Sunset Strip
3. Life Despite God
4. Sunny April Afternoon
5. Bang The Drum
6. Life in a Bottle
7. Fruitloop Daydream
8. Tiny Box Of Lies
9. Knock Me Out
10. I Am My Father’s Daughter
11. Don’t Touch Me While I Am Sleeping
12. Secret Lover

Please link back your post to this post and Mr. Linky as well. Read, comment and engage with the dVerse community. I promise you we are a friendly bunch! Waiting for you all to make music.