On Carpenters and Joan Baez

One of the interesting things about my household is that the majority of the songs that were played were from the 60s,70s and 80s - filled with Billy Joel, Eagles, Carpenters, Mamas and Papas, Bees Gees, Animals etc. Which is funny to me because some 10-12 years later, I have a record player, and my collection also spans those time periods.

If I really dig back in my memory, there are two English songs that really stick out from my childhood. "Yesterday Once More" by the Carpenters, and "Diamonds and Rust" by Joan Baez.

But - it is interesting to point out that both of these songs came out within a couple years of each other Yesterday in 1973, and Diamonds and Rust in 1975. To put that into perspective, the 70s were a particularly turbulent decade in India as well as the world - Indhira Gandhi was prime minister during heavy internal left-wing sociopolitical and paramilitary strife, the Bangladesh Liberation War was raging, the major theatre of the Cold War theater was in Vietnam, economic insecurity would reach its peak with the failure of Keynesian economics.

It's one thing to read about history, but I always wonder how it was living through these events.

My parents were born during the strife of the 70s, and reached adolescence during the rapidly changing economic landscape in the 80s, and were young adults when India started to become a player in the emerging globalisation period in the 90s.

When I was young, I was never quite sure why those songs would be played so much. My mom ostensibly said that she listened to the radio a lot, and those songs would come on from time to time. But it always made me wonder..

It took me a while, but I think that in a larger sense, listening to these songs was a way of my parents sharing their childhood and young-adult experiences with me.

Yesterday once more is my mom's song in particular - she sang it when she was at a talent show at school. She still sings it to this day, to the point that it has become so ingrained in my mind that I can't help but think of my mom whenever it is played.

The soothing voice of Karen Carpenter and the song's opening lyrics, gives me a vivid visual of my mom being a little girl in sitting in front of the radio during a muggy afternoon in Kharagpur, giving me a short glimpse of a time that I can never really comprehend.

Diamonds and Rust on the other hand, I feel like roughly describes my dad from afar during his college years. Joan Baez sings in the third verse :

Well, you burst on the scene

Already a legend

The unwashed phenomenon

The original vagabond

It makes me think of my dad - and if I close my eyes, I can imagine within the shaded campus of Bengal Engineering College, a mirage of a lanky young man ambling with a cigarette in his mouth with a surrounding aura that spoke of his fiery ideals. This recent sketch by my mom well captures it:

It might not be much, but these songs, makes me feel like my parents younger selves came and took me on a journey to see where they came from!