"...the music of the night"

What is it that music addresses so that we are drawn to it? Consider the variety and genres of music that are out there and it only thickens the speculative layers that one needs to wade through in order to conjure up an answer with even the remotest of persuasiveness. There seems to be something more visceral within us and in our perceptions/constructions of our selves that, somehow, music provides appropriate bridges. Within a wider symbolic world, we perceive ourselves through a detour into an other, and refine that perception in terms of desire for the object that is possessed by the other. This desire for an absent object creates longing, taste, and radical discontent. Maybe, music provides a reference for that which our selves lack, and also the medium by which we quest for a finer redefinition of our selves.

Sometime back, a friend and I went to watch Symphony X in concert. This band is a technically dextrous unit that paces its movements through multiple time-signatures; a treat for the prog-rock connoisseur. Personally, I thought Sym-X’s act was a disappointment. They raced through their set and the guitars drowned the rest of the band. The guitarist and singer hogged the entire limelight. The guitarist had his bottle of bourbon by his side and as the act progressed, he kept racing through the bourbon-induced intro-s so frenetically that, by the time we walked out, it was just noise!

A highlight for me that evening was not the headliner but the relatively unknown opening act. Not very familiar with the European genre of metal (gothic, black, Scandinavian, et al.), it was a learning experience to sit through Epica’s set. Back home, one hears of Nightwish and others often by default, but Epica caught my attention rather markedly. Part of it had to do with the lead singer. Rather well built and tightly packed in a corset top, images of her hair swaying in unison with the chunky riffs of their songs remain visibly etched in my mind. Was it a subliminal clamouring for a white other or was it a Freudian undertow? The songs were syncopated in ways quite unlike standard rock arrangements. Minor modes and alternate scales made the compositions seem to lead me through a detour into a world quite different from the three-chord rock riffs, which I realized had become a default self-position. Additionally, the lyrics were intended to cast surgical strikes on to politics and its underside. Although I never did quite catch the lyrics, I gathered this strain from a rather “aainch” intro to a song: “This song is about extremism; because extremism is not good, whether it is left or right!” “Aainch” in the sense that I thought it was trying to say too much by saying too little; almost pretentiously profound. Or were my own political sensibilities kicking in? Come to think of it, the occasional growls by one of the male guitarists were rather “aainch.” A lot of the younger people will identify with these growls, and label me an oldie for my views on it. And yet, the growls seemed to re-inscribe what Descartes had set as the modern agenda. I exist because I think, even though my thoughts come out in growls. The neglected but rational and unitary self extricates itself from societal repressions and silences to assert its existence. Breaking set meters of lyrical articulations, the growls came across as a politically charged device or gesture. Nonetheless, a discursively embedded gesture such as a growl—that even the entire Epica-package is a product of language, a system of signs—belies, contrary to the Cartesian chutzpah, the potential for self articulation it is perceived to have.

Although I adamantly refuse to growl, the trace of the night lingered. I later found out that the Epica singer who has so captured my imagination was only a fill-in. The original singer was ill and could not continue the tour. I youtubed around and came up with this clip. It was a bonus of sorts because it has both singers on it; the original singer and the fill-in singer. The fill-in singer is the blonde back-up singer (00:17) and I read that she has been long associated with the band.


Epica is just one instance that, for me, outlined the self’s desire for an objective other. I would not risk dissecting musical tastes anymore as some aesthetics in life just lose their soul if we were to blanket them with the finality of a theoretical reference. Yup, we do categorize them for easy reference. Just step into any music store and guffaw at locating your music in a rather inappropriate category. And yet, music persists beyond such flat categorizations. So does the desire.