My Musical Dream: Vol 1 — Introduction and Hinderances
Almost everyone at one point in their life dreams of making it big as some celebrity. A lot of dreams are born from watching mainstream artists and actors be successful and release magnificent works. When it comes to music, there is a small ratio of these dreamers who desire the skill of being a phenomenal producer, instead of achieving mainstream success by mastery of an instrument or one’s voice. I belong to this little club. And this is a snippet about my personal experience in the journey of making this dream come true.
Since childhood, I’ve had a lot of exposure to western cultures and little to the regional ones. Which I believe, isn’t a good or bad thing, it’s just an experience. I’ve naturally found western cultures more attractive in many ways. One of the ‘ways’, being music. I’ve often been called nicknames (“gora pakora” for example) and been criticized for not savoring Indian cultures. But whatever the case, I never really let it get to me. For it’s stupid to discriminate against a person simply because their beliefs, likings and preferences barely share any common ground with yours. Plus logic has been a rare sight amongst most blinded with their perception of patriotism (w.r.t national or regional traditions, religious beliefs and cultures).
Most of western music (released in the 1970s and onwards) has had a lot of influence on my personality and physical representation. Some of my favorite genres being rock, heavy metal, rap and pop has led to me adopting different things into my lifestyle from some of their respective subcultures or cultures. For example: hip-hop, indie and grunge. I developed an extremely deep rooted attachment to 1980s-90s rock and metal, 2010s rap and 2000s indie pop/rock music. To the point that I never listened to hindi or punjabi music, simply because I found myself listening to my favorite music almost all the time.
As time passed and I spent more and more time trying to experience, replicate and understand these cultures and the music, I developed a deep appreciation for the lyricism and production in music. This further evolved into a desire to be a music artist specializing in songwriting and production. Since a few years now, the desire to be an impressive music artist-cum-writer and my personal mental health struggles mixed together a dense potion of low self esteem, extremely high expectations from self and a lack of sense of direction. I often find myself worrying about whether I’ll be able to reach the success I dream of, or even scarier, whether or not I’ll be happy with what I create.
I’ve also been facing practical struggles alongside mental ones. It has been extremely hard to find someone to teach me piano and guitar with a teaching method that aligns well with my dream. To be more specific, every music teacher I met didn’t teach the songs I wanted to learn and some even criticized me for not wanting to learn Hindi songs. Having an Indian accent has also been a major hindrance, as I’ve been wanting to learn vocals too. I’ve also not found anyone offline to help me songwrite better. The use of explicit language makes that even harder. Which I believe isn’t something I can avoid when it comes to writing rap.
This has been my experience so far. I hope someone who can relate reads this and I hope someone who has made progress reaches out and helps the members of this little club in India take a step forward in the journey of reaching their goal.
