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Music is an emotion and passion that people cannot do without. A recent study done by global market research firm Synovate with 8,000 adults ages 18+ across 13 countries, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Korea, Philippines, Spain, UK and US confirmed music to be the world’s favourite pastime.

Singers and musicians have, through discomfort, made a breakthrough in the entertainment business. They have infused new thoughts that have heightened collective and personal human emotion. Let me illustrate this by taking Western music as an example.

Western music’s evolution from medieval, renaissance, baroque to the classical opera, operetta and philharmonic symphony to today’s rock, rap and jazz happened amidst immense discomfort in their musical world. Classical masterpieces emerged mostly from Eastern and Western Europe since 1740. Georges Handel was among the precursors who set the foundation of Western classical music.

Simultaneously from the 1600s, African music from the enslaved African community in USA opened another musical chapter with rhythm as the base. Black music started as spiritual, and evolved incorporating work-songs, ragtime and minstrel shows during the American Civil War from 1861 to 1865. Blues and Dixieland were born in the late 1800s, while jazz and gospel began in early 1900s. After World War II the black influence invented rock and rap music. African American gospel music, the collective humming voice of the black community in church was not considered aristocratic by Caucasians. Over centuries they were used to hearing songs sung in characteristic monotone as in country music. In the 1950s Elvis Presley created a new musical era of discomfort when he brought black gospel music and rhythm into mainstream society as rock ‘n’ roll. He also broke the rules of musical performance and disapprovingly got dubbed ‘Elvis the Pelvis’ for gyrating suggestively, moving his hands and legs while on stage.

Elvis had followed his father’s profession of being a truck driver; he worked for Crown Electric Company. One day he stopped his truck at Memphis Recording Studios where he had heard that anyone could record a 10-inch acetate for $4. He was 19 years old, totally smitten by music, and enthusiastically recorded his own composition ‘My Happiness.’ That was the beginning of an extraordinary journey to be crowned the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll.

When television shows censored his rhythmic leg movements as too sexy, Elvis concentrated on rhythmically moving the upper part of his body. He wanted his music to stir up everybody’s dancing shoes because the atmosphere after World War II was very morose. His sensational singing style became extremely controversial, with American puritans taking a jab at Christianity and calling it the devil’s music. Elvis was unique in that nobody was ever neutral about him. The shock of this negative–positive current made him the rock ‘n’ roll phenomenon of all time.

Another discomfort in music came from the Beatles in 1962. John Lennon, James Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Richard Starkey (who took the name of Ringo Starr later) were born into working class obscurity in post war Liverpool, a dingy depressed town where money was scarce. They took the world by storm, and Beatlemania became a worldwide cult. Even the Queen of England honored them with the MBE in Buckingham Palace in 1965.

An Evening Standard interviewer queried John Lennon about religion, and his apolitical reply was: ‘Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that. I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity.’ Pandemonium broke loose. Disk jockeys in the southern American states encouraged a God-fearing youth to destroy Beatles records and memorabilia at bonfire rallies. Within a week, 30 US Bible Belt radio stations banned the Beatles from airplay. Lennon created discomfort at the risk of breaking his own group’s career at the height of their success.

The shock was momentary though. Lennon inspired a whole generation to think fearlessly, openly and clearly. He also touched a raw, discomfiting nerve in a social atmosphere stifled with a telling generation gap. In a world tired of domination, discipline, prudishness and morality, the genuineness of the Beatles was powerfully refreshing. Millions of young and old fans worldwide still uphold the Beatles as the perpetuators of ‘All you need is love.’

Musicians and singers comprised a new kind of creature who emerged to kill gloominess and depression in Europe and America in the second half of the 20th century. They deliberately brought discomfort with a message. Singer Mick Jagger, now over 60, is still creating discomfort with ‘I can’t get no satisfaction.’ He’s taken his 40 Licks World Tour to wake up newer generations across the globe.

There was a cliché that the Punks were less a musical genre than a state of mind. In their discomfort creating heydays from early 1970, being a Punk fashion victim became fashionable. The Punks remained an underground music sect upto 1976. They demonstrated individualism and even revolted against older sub-cultures like hard-rockers and hippies. Being an anarchistic, anti-power movement, the Punks were amazingly successful in establishing a trend that influenced industry and lasted beyond their generation. For 40 years the Punks have been considered the trend that brought color into European fashion and music with breakaway characteristics and tremendous business gain.

But today the music industry faces a commercial dilemma about how to better encash music when computer downloads and recording from TV has become the music lover’s way of getting music. As per Synovate’s 2010 study, MTV in 1981 ushered in a new way for fans to connect to artists. About 57% of people surveyed said they watch songs on TV, but the computer is fast catching up as 46% use it for enjoying music in.

In India 38% of people use their mobile phones to listen to music. That’s because the mobile phone market is growing phenomenally here with millions of subscribers being added every year. In fact a fully loaded mobile phone has become a basic in India. About 73% of Indians polled say they watch music videos, mainly Bollywood music, on TV. Bollywood still rules the roost so we have not seen many artists make breakthrough change in the music scene here by creating the kind of discomfort that the West has experienced.

The flourishing entertainment business worldwide is a perpetual discomfort-creating machine. Being a perfect performer is never enough; the masses will endow the artist with commercial success only if they can remember the discomfort the artist created when reaching out to them.

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The first time I watched the World Cup on TV was in 1974, a few months after arriving in Paris. Before that, I’d caught the experience only on radio, hearing the spectacular voices of commentators Ajayda, Kamalda and Pushpenda. They were so good that without being in a football stadium, we could visualise a match with Kolkata teams like East Bengal, Mohan Bagan and Mohammedan Sporting, among others.

Being Bengali football freaks, even without the presence of TV, we felt very close to the World Cup. Brazil was almost a part of the Bengal team where Pele, at 17 years and 239 days, won the World Cup for his country in 1958. The greatest footballer of all time, Pele played in four World Cups, thrice bringing home the Cup for Brazil. Argentina’s Diego Maradona is as big a world football icon, sharing the FIFA Player of the Century Award with Pele. Maradona made his international debut at 16 and played in World Cups from 1982 to 1994.

Cite Universitie in Paris 14 district where Greek House Director Yourgoulis gave me hostel accommodation is where I sat mesmerised before that b&w TV set. I’d grab a chair in the small table tennis lounge-cum-TV room an hour before the match. I could not speak French then so had to guess at everything, including the incredible moves of Beckenbaur and Muller. I peppered my fervour with Greek swearwords like malacca and putanis. The word ralenti often cropped up so I asked the only other Indian student—who had given me to understand that he spoke very good French—what it meant. He said ralenti is like penalty. I believed him but discovered by the 1978 World Cup that ralenti means slow motion in French.

In 1994, I visited Argentina to implement a global project. Much to the chagrin of my client, Elizabeth, I’d wander into the ‘dangerous’ Buenos Aires slums to observe social trends. I found that companies like Pepsi and Coca Cola had sponsored good football grounds to encourage slum children play. In fact, Manchester City striker Carlos Tevez, who is now part of the Argentina team, played street football in these ‘no go’ areas as a child.

At that time, as I watched young boys practice football, others quarreling—one even had a gun—and I remember thinking how terrific these sophisticated sports arrangements were. This crumbling slum had murky streets where even emergency services often refused to enter. In our poor village in Bengal, we could never think of such sports facilities or of anybody from our village becoming a world famous football player. Yet, even football champion Maradona, currently Argentina’s coach, was raised in a poor family in a Buenos Aires shanty town. He was ten when he was spotted by a talent scout.

Elizabeth and I once went to a coffee shop at a national football ground. A boisterous group were gesticulating wildly about an imminent major local football match in the city starring Boca Juniors versus River Plate. I wanted to join their table-talk. Elizabeth did not approve of it but I explained to her that the food company they had acquired had its roots here and its transformation work required us to gather cultural aspects of Argentina and football was an intrinsic part of it. This kind of social phenomenon would bring us the right insight for this acquired company’s future plans.

I walked across to those guys and introduced myself as a Bengali Indian living in Paris. The moment they heard Kolkata, they hugged me. It seems a few in this group of football journalists had gone to ‘Mother Teresa’s city’ with the Argentina team in 1984 for the Nehru Cup. They marvelled at the Kolkatans’ passion for football. Happy to meet a fellow football lover from across the globe, they offered me a ticket to the match that day. I’ll never forget that immediate connect that football created.

I’ve been to two World Cups now—in France and in Spain—and seen other European football matches and found the excitement that emanates there to be incomparable to any other bonding experience.

Fortunately, there’s something beyond elite intellectual global recognitions like the Nobel Prize. Excellence in sports can also create international heroes. The youngest Nobel Laureate, Lawrence Bragg, was 25 when received the prize along with his father. And in sports, Pele and Maradona were teenagers when they acquired world fame with their genius. Pele, who grew up in São Paulo, could not even afford a ball and played with a grapefruit or a sock stuffed with a newspaper. He earned working in tea shops until he was discovered by a coach. When he scored his 1,000th goal, he dedicated it to the poor children of Brazil. These famous players are a great inspiration and powerful motivators for underprivileged

children.

In India, sports is always short changed, the focus being on education. But everybody in society cannot be, or does not need to be, a graduate. Basic school education is enough to become a globally renowned sportsman. In India, sports can be a great medium to encourage disadvantaged people to acquire prowess instead of abandoning them into ghettoes where crime generally grows unabated.

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You may enjoy the failures children experience in reality television, but unconsciously, like antibiotic, you absorb the frequent advertisements at the pause of reality shows. When a child or earnest youngster is highly criticized for his or her imperfect performance, tele-spectators find vicarious fun there, although most do not admit it. It’s comparable to the excitement that stung the Romans when watching gladiators rip each other apart, or the excruciating thrill Spaniards feel when they roar as the bull fighter or the bull died in the ring of every famous bullfight.

Let me restrict the impact of reality TV to children as they are the most vulnerable. Why do the brilliant judges think they are entitled to criticize youngsters any way they want to in front of millions of tele-spectators? Have they thought about the future career of these aspirants? While enjoying the defects and defeat of striving young artists save the winner, you the tele-spectator, are endorsing the total success of the program’s producer for getting high TRP ratings for the TV channel.

The reality boom hit the US at the turn of the century with shows such as American Idol and Survivor; earlier shows like Miss America Pageant never made the big time. India’s highly proliferated native cultural societies copying the Caucasian American seems a mismatch. Look at America’s evolution, from being invaders into a continent to embracing the cowboy culture. Their selling-marketing attitude made them take big risks and gambles, and led to their becoming outstanding inventors of all time. US inventions have changed the way the world thinks and works with its rapid advancement of digital technology. All such disruptive consequences may have created American society to be forever agitated. In the US, every citizen is allowed to carry a gun for self protection and defence as the crime rate is supposedly very high. As gun-toting people, their mental make-up is totally skewed towards being daring and damn-care. We cannot compare this with India’s culture that has transcended from ancient traditions which has a compromising attitude.

Let me illustrate with a personal experience of the disconcerted American social order. I once accompanied an American client of mine from New York City to his suburban home in New Jersey after working hours. There was a bumper-to-bumper traffic jam that could be seen for miles. My client suddenly switched on a device atop his dash board which had programmed inside it different kinds of irritating sounds. The one he chose was the machine gun shot. In this colossal traffic jam, he attacked all the cars in front with gun shots, as though he was taking part in The Terminator film. I watched amazed, feeling stupid, as we’ve never experienced this in Europe. He laughed saying this way the time will pass faster, and we will not feel bored. By the time we reach, he said, we’d have killed so many vehicles that this, he finds, has become his best stress busting tool. On another occasion in a friend’s car, I noticed an unsettling program he activated in his car. He put his car radio in the auto scan mode so that every 30 seconds the radio station changed, and he ended up listening to a medley of songs. These are anecdotes of disquiet in the American way of life which is a unidirectional society.

American entertainment has its own history since the last 60 years. It is far removed from Indian entertainment that runs on outstretched fantasy. But India is imitating America’s hybrid culture without evolution, just jumping from fantasy to reality in a short span of time. Americans have become tired of blockbuster Hollywood films and scripted TV shows like Dallas and are now turning towards reality TV. I have no cribs against American culture, I love their Barbie doll and hamburger ethnicity, but when India blindly follows this culture, authenticity gets discounted. And originality all but dissipates into just collecting money from TV advertisements. Indian reality game shows and voyeuristic people-watch programs are good for boosting TV ratings. However, when young performers have to take barbs from so-called guru and maha-guru judges, their morale gets totally destroyed.

In the last 11 years, the artists that have emerged from such national and regional channels have been just a handful, less than ten at the national level. I find it quite amoral and inhuman the way children are harassed by judges on TV shows. When the prestige and confidence of debutant artists break, can it result in producing artists from the masses, as is the purported objective of these entertainment programs? The performing arts cannot be taught facing a public forum; doing so intimidates the children.

Famous silver screen actors and playback singers are often the judges. Actors have the advantage of shooting take after numerous take until the correct retake is captured. So in the released film, the public never sees their shortcomings and flaws. In today’s practice, singers dub with modern technology, recording line after line, multiple times and in multiple tracks. They sometimes don’t even see the musicians. All voice imperfections are corrected with digital technology. Even in front of an audience on stage, the musicians have to manage a singer’s mistakes. The public is never privy to the professional artists’ kitchen. But when these artists become reality show judges, its amazing how, sometimes with sugar-coated words, they feel free to bombard the young ones with high definition censure. Undoubtedly, reality TV has helped underprivileged people to express themselves, earn money and fame, but criticising them on TV is a totally anti-artistic solution.

As a telespectator you enjoy the defeat of hapless children artists. They do not exactly get physically killed as did the barbaric gladiator competitors in the Roman Emperor’s arena, but such reality shows can kill their self-esteem. Incidents have already happened where children have become severely unwell, such as becoming paralytic with the shock of defeat. It appears that the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights is enquiring into the long hours, remuneration and working conditions of children in reality shows, especially as employing a child under 14 is a crime

.

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