ABBA….and I
(WARNING: FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER HEARD OF ABBA OR DON'T LIKE ABBA'S MUSIC, READ NO FURTHER. PLEASE GO ON TO ANOTHER BLOG)
I'm nothing special
In fact I am a bit of a bore
When I tell a joke
You've probably heard it before
Swedish Pop, they call it today. Sentimental drivel, they say. ABBA is passé.
For a long time, I felt that way too. Now – maybe because I am passé myself - I have revised my opinion.
Till I was twelve, the only source of music I had was our old valve radio at home. The Masters – Rafi, Kishore, Mukesh, Manna De, Asha, Lata et al. and Kerala's own Maestros – Yesudas, Jayachandran, Janaki, Madhuri, Vani Jairam, Susheela…their songs awakened my musical senses and continue to.
My cousins in the magical, mystical, far-off land of Madras introduced me to the world of English music around this time. So strange it sounded, so, so new. The rhyme and rhythm was totally unlike what I had ever heard before. But I didn't really enjoy it all that much, it was just fun because it was different.
No wonder. I later learnt that the songs they used to play for me were items by Black Sabbath and their ilk. I still don't throb to that sort of thing.
I had started learning carnatic music by then. Was being forced to learn, rather. When all my friends were playing cricket right in my front yard, I was expected to sing kirtanas, sitting cross-legged with my sister on the floor of the sitting room. There were times when I used to hide when my Guru came home, in the forlorn hope that he would go away. I studied with a half a ear…and the result was just that. I still possess only half a ear for Indian classical music – I love it, but do not really understand it…and no amount of regret is going to change things.
But I have a talent
A wonderful thing
Everyone listens when I start to sing
I am so grateful and proud
All I want is to sing it out loud
My grandmother brought me a record player (It is still with me – an HMV Fiesta Popular), along with LPs of M.S Subbalakshmi, to help me imbibe real music. But I betrayed her trust. You see, I had heard "Fernando" by then.
What a song! Though the words were gibberish to me, the tune had got into my soul. Later, when they became intelligible and I realized that the song was about an alien world and strange times, it didn't matter. By then I was hooked on ABBA.
The first LP I scrimped and saved to buy was "The Best of ABBA", in a brown jacket with their smiling countenances on it.
Agnetha. Anne-Fried. Benny. Bjorn. What magic they created! They took a world, brought up on Presley, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, by storm. And How.
Mamma Mia. Dancing Queen. Hasta Manana. Baby Give Me One More Dance. Honey Honey…I loved every song.
So I say
Thank you for the music
The songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it
I ask in all honesty
What would life be
Without song or dance
What are we?
I empathized with the person who wanted to know What the Name of the Game was. I waited by the phone waiting for it to Ring Ring. I longed for an SOS from anyone who needed me. I wept for the loser when the Winner took it All.
I saw "ABBA THE MOVIE" ten times.
We had an impromptu band, in which none of the musicians knew how to play their instruments and the lead singer (yours truly) didn't really cotton on to the strange words and swung it with a wing and a prayer. Some of the first songs we tried out were ABBA's. Nina Pretty Ballerina, Money Money Money. None of it came out very well, though we enjoyed ourselves to the hilt.
I wrote to ABBA, care of their recording company (Polar Music or something like that). I poured all my adoration into that letter, telling them about my two Swedish heroes, Bjorn Borg and ABBA. I got a postcard in return to my fan mail – one with the group posed against a blue background. I treasured it. Wonder where it is now.
One of my greatest teenage triumphs was singing "Does Your Mother Know" (by then, a real guitarist had come into the picture!) on stage successfully.
Mother says I was a dancer before I could walk
She said I began to sing long before I could talk
And I've often wondered how did it all start
Who found out that nothing can capture the heart
Like a melody can
Well, whoever it was, I am a fan
As time passed, it became no longer fashionable to listen to ABBA, at least in my circles. Most of my crowd – except for a few die-hards like me - had passed on to PinK Floyd and Eric Clapton. I had no compunctions about listening to them too, but I just didn't enjoy them as much as I did ABBA.
It was getting more difficult by then to play a tape of ABBA at a party, you could hear shouts of protest to turn that oldie pop stuff off. Super Trouper was no longer super, it appeared.
I took to listening to ABBA in the privacy of my room, quick to switch it off and go on to something more in vogue like Dire Straits the moment any of my more hep friends dropped by. I began to feel guilty about liking ABBA, like a fugitive in possession of contraband.
And slowly I began to forget.
The World had passed on.
Once in a while, some news would appear about the band thinking of teaming up once again. Like many of ABBA's old fans of fickle faith, I didn't greet the information with much enthusiasm. And I don't know if they ever got back together. I just didn't care all that greatly.
ABBA was something that belonged to my past. I was too busy with the rat race to spend too much time reminiscing about it.
*********
A friend – a really close friend – recently sent me a couple of discs in which he had painstakingly downloaded and written songs which we grew up with. The first folder in the list was ABBA.
There were several other groups in those discs. Disco from Tina Charles, Reggae from Bob Marley, Country from Kenny Rogers, Oomph from Donna Summer. I listened to all that first. I even got through Boney M. And then – only then - I condescended to listen to ABBA.
Back in time. Nothing else could describe it.
I relived my World as it was. My heart melted as I listened to all those lovely old melodies, long shoved in the back of the cupboard, but never, never truly forgotten.
There was so much meaning in those songs, words which meant a lot to an adolescent who did not know what the real World was all about. I recaptured my innocence, that set of feelings which had been buried under the dirt, bruises and calluses of harsh experience and late wisdom.
And I knew what I was once and I grieved over the child I no longer am. I remembered that boy's feelings, his disappointments, his joys, his aspirations. I gained a true perspective of what life had given me… and what it had denied.
ABBA's members must be above sixty now. How time has gone by.
If nothing else, ABBA's songs shaped the psyche of a young man who was just embarking on the journey called Life.
Thank you for the music
The songs I'm singing
Thanks for all the joy they're bringing
Who can live without it
I ask in all honesty
What would life be
Without song and dance
What are we?
Thank you for your music, ABBA.
Srinath Girish
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