#19 - Singing & Dancing

Singing & Dancing

From my childhood, I always wanted to sing & dance. I tried to participate in a singing & dancing competition at a very early stage & gave up. But somewhere deep down I want to sing out loud & dance like no one is watching. So, sometimes I rarely sing out loud & dance whenever I am alone & when the doors are locked. One day in my office, there was a DJ dance night happening & in that I badly wanted to dance, but was very hesitant, anxious & very much afraid about what others would think of me & they would judge me. The sound system was so good & I could feel the beats inside me. Slowly each person came out of their shyness & within half an hour everyone was dancing. Initially the DJ was playing hindi songs & english songs, rarely tamil songs & towards the end the last half an hour, DJ played many Tamil songs & I danced not caring of what others think & I felt really happy. That night I really felt both my body & soul very soothing. I slept peacefully that night.

From that I wanted to attend these kinds of community DJ or dancing events. I felt happy seeing people being happy amidst coming from diverse language & cultural backgrounds coming together & dancing from their heart. Seeing this & participating in this gives a whole new happy energy in me. One thing I noticed after this is that, human beings are social animals & everyone while dancing were in a trance state without any alcohol or something. This made me feel that these are our true human instinctive attributes that came out of us from being hunters & gatherers, just sitting around the fire, drumming, singing & dancing in caves as a community. We crave human connections & these kinds of singing along & dancing along events are very much needed for human beings right now imho. 

Also, in Chennai, I have seen people singing in groups in Local trains & buses. Mostly gana songs & they would tap the window or the top surface of the bus or train to make beats & it would be really good to hear. I havent seen these kind of things in Madurai. Then, in Kerala, in Kappa TV there was this show called Music Mojo I guess were various bands sing famous songs on their versions & there I found thaikudam bridge, masala coffee, etc. But sadly in Tamil Nadu mostly people are not interested in Bands & singing kinds of stuff. It is very rare. We people want to enjoy but not want to experiment on it, not making it a group activity. But post covid, people are more on look out for more community driven events and many concerts &  jamming sessions are happening in Chennai & Bengaluru as far as I know(maybe it would have been happening always too).

I have seen a video on social media were a group of people singing loosu penne & it got trended at that time. And in my previous office, there was powercut & we tried to sing that same song with 10-15 people but was stopped by heads of the office. It was fair as office was not the place to sing loudly. I like that vibe. And recently on insta, I was seeing many sing along events which was really hooking me to attend. So there was this one event conducted by dopamine music community, & its theme was “Kaadhala Kaayama” it is about love failure & love songs. So,I asked my frnd but he told it would kinder his old feelings. So, I left it. But I wanted to go. I then asked another colleague & she too told the same. Then I felt, ok lets go alone myself & I booked the ticket.

The event day came, I reached the venue. I was alone little anxious, but trying slowly out of my comfort zone. The auditorioum was full. A qr code was displayed to get the lyrics of the songs to be played, they made a custom website with a pretty good UI & site being hosted in vervel. They started with some good love melody songs & love failure songs one after another like “Nilaave vaa”, “Pogathey”, “Ennodu Nee irundhaal”. Then the chief guest of the event, music composer C.Satya came & he sang few songs of his like “sotta sotta nanaya vaithai”, “maasama aaru maasama”, “thamarabharani” etc. After that few sings were sung by the team & then a group of dancers from their team danced for few songs, it pumped up the energy of people & very few people were dancing here & there. That was the end of first half of the event 

Then in the second half, again few songs were sung like, “kaadhal valarthen” & “loosu penne” were sung. I sang along with them, now I realised my throat was paining & I couldnt sing high pitch notes. Singing requires a lot of practice too. But still I liked singing along eventhough my singing skills are bad. Then all the vibe songs were sung, like “oorum blood” where they asked us to turn on the flash lights, then “sathyama ne enakku theva illa”, “pottala muttai”. Then this part is like s skit kind of thing with all the love failure songs mixed with alcoholic sings like “Kannadasan Karakudi”, “Hey Paapa”, “Anjala”, “Open the tasmac”, “Pacha Ela”, “Beep song”, “Maiylapur mayile”, “Mannarkudi kalakalakka”, etc.

At last there was a 10 minute DJ songs played like “Kaathadikkidhu”, “Monica”, “Thalapathy Kacheri”, “Naakamukka”, “Dindigul sarathy”, “Madura palapalakkudhu”, etc. 

It was really fun, I was happy being there to see people being happy. I danced a few steps at last. On going to this event, I had a spark of a movie script where the protagonist wants to start a startup company/band that travels across tamilnadu & does these kind of singing & dance along events, & last 20 minutes will be a DJ ending & people should dance inside theatres & it should feel like a carnival. May be it will materialise one day I guess. Fingers crossed. I really loved the ambience & good energy there. I am thankful & grateful to myself for making the decision to go there. But the only con about the event is the pricing, luckily I can afford but many cant afford, also it was happening in the month end. I urge people to keep saving money like 2-3K and spend on these kinds of events once or twice a year. 

Peace ☮️

Senthil Rajan.