Interconnectedness, Part One

Interconnectedness: Strange musical events..

I find that travel reveals more instances of 'interconnectedness' of people than I would normally observe because at home I have a deeper knowledge of the people I surround myself with, personalities, routines, etc, so any synchronous connection I have with them, I usually attribute that to our deeper awareness of one another's lives, which naturally happens over continued interaction over years. First, I want to write about parallel phenomena I experience with music. Later, I'll get on to the people side of it.

This is a commentary on how I have seemingly discovered a new song, or a style of music, and, after my discovery, I seem to hear it around me in whatever environment I happen to be in. About 5 years ago, my husband Navjot introduced me to Bob Marley and Reggae. I loved it, and infused it into my music collection. Soon after, I heard reggae in many places...restaurants, stores, TV movies, most recently in a cafe in Washington DC. Was reggae always this prevalent, and I remained unaware of it until I had a personal experience with the music?

After I became a lifelong fan of Philip Glass, an American composer who created his own style based on a musical concept called minimalism, I began hearing his music in movies....he wrote the scores to the movies, "The Others" and "The Illusionist." Glass remains easily recognizable, and I liked his scores for the movies...his style fit the themes of the movies very well. Glass has been writing music for decades, and I only learned of him through a history class at MSU, and through an old CD of Alan, (our former roommate)....then Glass hits it big. It may sound like I am egotisically suggesting that my awareness of certain music brings it more into my world, even on a large scale. I am not suggesting that. I am only intrigued by the timings.

My most recent experience with this phenomena occurred when I came to India. While I was staying in Chandigarh, I bought a 2 CD collection of music by the British rock group The Police. In college I had liked the songs Synchronicity I and II, and Wrapped Around Your Finger, and this collection had those songs, AND, Do Do Do, Da Da Da and Every Little Thing She Does....other faves I got from my Mom when my uncle would make tapes of favorite songs for her. So, I listened to these songs till around April when I finally turned my attention to a few of the other songs in the collection: Driven To Tears, and Canary in a Coalmine. There are worthy elements in these songs, but they are more obscure, and I don't think I had ever heard them until I played them on my laptop in April. In early May, Navjot and I went to Himachal Pradesh. One afternoon, on a rooftop restaurant in Dharmasala, while we were waiting for our food, the speakers start plugging out Driven to Tears by the Police! In India! I had never heard that song before in my LIFE until one month earlier! The Police have a distinctive enough of a sound that if I had heard it before, I would have known it was The Police, and when I heard it on my laptop in April, I would have known if I had heard it before....so, again, I wonder....are these songs just played regularly, and I remain completely oblivious to them until I listen to them carefully? Or is there some interconnectedness between my awareness of certain music and its appearance in unexpected public places? It is probably just coincidence....not synchronicity. :)