“Music doesn’t lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music. ”
– Jimi Hendrix

A musical note is a solitary messenger, putting across multifarious emotions in ways beyond one’s imagination. Furthermore, a train of such vivacious notes would definitely create wonders. The general situation demands these notes to be chaotic, higgledy-piggledy, and many a times, just noise. Even an untaught ear can tell that two notes do not “match”, and hence are just random and anarchic. Just two notes in harmony can sound enchanting to everyone. Hundreds of tones from different musical instruments, standing poles apart from each other in all terms of music but sounding the same, have a magical power that no other event in music has.

That surely defines Desh Raag, but only half-describes it. Desh Raag majorly delves into the symbolic resemblance of multiple notes resonating with the same sound. The profound waves of thought and invocation directed to the masses of the Indian subcontinent that resonate with the music of Desh Raag and the words of the songs it engages in, sums up the most crucial purpose of Desh Raag. One realises that it successfully aligns along the lines of patriotism and inculcates in all the fervour of recognising the needs of our nation and doing best to assuage the anguish of our brothers and sisters. The appeal in the music promoted by Desh Raag possesses the fuel to instigate feelings of national responsibility to the youth of India.

It’s difficult to ignore the issues in our society around us. There is happiness though with endurance, harmony though earned with decades of reprisal and retaliation. There is extravagant exuberance in the cities but thriving beneath is the grim world of corporal markets of the immoral and the sinful. There is corruption, though unfortunately it’s them who have the power. There’s the appalling renunciation of respect and basic rights to the women in the uninformed niches of the society, while we have a preposterous system of governance claiming to be the world’s largest democracy.

These are just some of the millions of untold stories of India- the part of the newspaper which fades into oblivion not because it holds less substance but more because it’s too prevalent. The fact that this is the status quo since long and will be calls for the youth of India to voice their thoughts against these. Desh Raag, as I look at it, is an attempt to raise a united voice, disguised in the universal language of music, so that it resonates with the young population for long.

The national anthem and many songs which have at times moved the whole country have been just about narrating the braveheart freedom fighters and commemorating the martyrs of our motherland. Little has ever been in the records about the twinges that really plague the society. The music that comes out of the young blood of our nation makes Desh Raag one of its kinds. The other day I was surfing through the songs that came up last year. There was one thing that made me realise why these songs are different from those I have heard concerning India. They have a certain hum in them. The music stays even if you put the lyrics behind you. It finds me in raptures to learn that this new season of Desh Raag is much more than what it was the last time. It concerns us, exclusively. It definitely gives me an ecstatic feeling of an impending spectacle of the marvels music can make.

Ishaan Rakshit
Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay