“Without music life would be nothing.” Nietzsche had once said. And its straightly reflects the importance of music in human life. There’s not a soul who’s not influenced, inspired or moved by music, whether this type or that. It is a subject so vast that any attempt to explain it, no matter how elaborate, can only manage to trace a few or little of many directions in which music moves – the context in which it is created, produced and listened to. From folk to classical, jazz to blues, country to hip-hop, pop to rock, instrumental to fusion and mystic to metal and etc., every genre has it’s enchantment upon us mortals all over. One doesn’t need to ‘know’ music in order to appreciate it and enjoy it. Just being lost in it is enough. And for those who ‘know’ music or ‘attempt to know’ music, this knowing never ends both in terms of time and experience which forever seems to keep growing with time. People come. People go. But music remains - and forever unfathomed and inexhaustible. This is the mystery of music. It is a saw that cuts all, a wine that intoxicates all, a divine herb that heals all and above all, a universal soul that unfailingly embraces all. For me music is not only the most beautiful yet most powerful medium of aesthetic expression and magic communiqué but also an unconscious process of soul-searching and a god in itself. Music truly is life in all its richness and vibrancy.

My earliest sense of music was that strange, continuous whistlelike whisper coming forth from the lapping waters of Thulibheri flowing past our stone-house in Karnali zone. And then the sound of bell I’d hear during my father’s prayers in the morning and evening which I’d myself play whenever he wasn’t around - just for the sake of sound. Never did I see a livelier musician than an old, sightless Khampa mendicant who’d step-dance in front of our house to the rhythm of his worn out Tungna, always accompanied by his little daughter singing with him and helping him carry out his begging trip. And though I never understood the language he sang in he remains my icon more than any of those big singers I see in the (visual and print) media and whose music I buy in the market. Then comes Kitaro, composer of the soundtrack of ‘Silk Road’, for whose one-minutes’ wail of flute (it sounded like flute but am not sure what instrument it actually was) I’d wait anxiously for a whole week and never grew weary. Our Bengali matron sister in hostel sang so beautifully that I couldn’t help hiding myself around and hear her sing while she did laundry every Wednesday and Friday. They were the people who whetted my appetite for music, yet never to their knowledge. Now when people say I’ve grown up and when I have my own list of favorite singers/musicians it is to these people I attribute my current taste for music. And though now I enjoy listening to various songs of various singers representing various genres I can’t help but yearn deeply for the magic of old Khampa’s tungna, sound of Thulibheri flowing, my fathers old prayer bell and the soothing voice of our Bengali matron sister is hostel years ago.