If you were someone born in the last 2-3 decades, you would have definitely grown up singing along or dancing to the music on the cassette player. Sure, newer technologies and digitization of music has revolutionized the way we listen to music today. mp3 and digital audio files are extremely easily accessible and given to the popularity of earphones in today's world, enjoying music has become more of a personalized experience than a group session like it used to be in the early days. Earlier, in the times of the radio, huge radio sets would take up important places colloquial to the ones our TVs would occupy today. Since it was the only home entertainment and information source, whole families would gather round it and listen to music or cricket commentary or news or anything that would be aired. It was the same with gramophones, except that they gave a more personalized option of playing the music of our choice. Cassette came in as the next generation audio devices that further altered our music listening experience.
My memories begin with my mom gifting me a Videocon tape recorder when I turned 4. The first cassette I listened on it had Aashique on A Side and Dil on B Side. Though I had no clue at all about the lyrics, the constant listening to it had made me learn them by heart (I've forgotten them now however). With more time, more cassettes added up to the tape rack. I would religiously play a cassette everyday and listen to the songs. Most of the songs would be from the movies I had watched. At the same time, listening to music of movies that I'd not watched was more of an imaginary experience where I would imagine the visuals according to the music.
As I grew up, I began to sing along with the songs and tried to match up the scales. This gave me an insight into assessing where I went off and where I fit in and work on my singing skills. I am not a formally trained singer except for music classes in school which I seldom practiced. But I would surely listen to the music on tape and sing along.
As I got a little older, I learnt about Stereo technology and would sit in front of the tape recorder with my head placed at the center, between both speakers for perfect stereo experience and listen to cassettes, sometimes for even hours. I would intently watch the tape roll to the other side through the plastic pane and be amazed as to how such a thin tape could contain such beautiful music.
With access to a few genres and restricted to a limited number of cassettes by both choice and availability, I would play the same cassette again and again so much that I can still unconsciously recite the lyrics of the hits of yesteryears, even while not paying attention to as what the lyrics meant as long as they sounded right. Over time, the cassette player gradually wore out and died one day. During it's lifetime, it had immersed me in a world of blissful experience for 20 years. In the middle of its life, it had fallen a couple of times owing to careless handling and non-availability of genuine parts.
Every time I sing something out of memory, I would definitely have heard it on tape. For the lyrics of the new age songs, I have mostly depended on the internet and haven't bothered of seriously remembering it. This is generally true because the songs that we had heard in those cassettes back in those years are all now in our hearts, no matter what music we all listened to. Even though we seldom listen to those songs or admit we listen to them, we can unconsciously recite them anytime a cue is triggered.
I was cleaning a cupboard in my room where I found a box full 50-60 of cassette spanning across three decades. These are the things that inspired me to sing and write and find joy. Playing a cassette on the tape recorder for me is a way to spark up nostalgia and travel to the times of my childhood. Every time I hear those songs on youtube or TV, I am transported to that timeline where I had spent days together relishing that music from the cassette.
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