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This article was originally published as a newsletter.
What is music if not something new, something old and something borrowed? Much like trends that are cyclical (the 90s clothes that seem back in fashion), music too is believed to follow a 20-year-cycle. Some like Adam Gopnik believe that trends turn cyclical following the 40-year-old rule while some others believe that the cycle might only be 12-15 years long. Regardless, the one thing that’s established for sure is that every time we look back, we do see trends resurfacing and music is not an alien to the trend of cyclical trends.
Perhaps that is the reason why we are back to sounds similar to the ‘80s. Whether it is The Weeknd’s Blinding Lights or Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia, we also often find ourselves going back to music from our highschool days.
As a matter of fact, a study conducted by Timothy Yu-Cheong Yeung found that the Coronavirus lockdown had people turning to music that induced nostalgia for a sense of comfort. The study analysed data of 17 trillion songs played on Spotify in six European countries — Sweden, the UK, Spain, France, Belgium and Italy and stated that: “Demand for nostalgia grew with frustration as the lockdown remained in place, and such a change in behaviour was gradual, but did not react closely to the change of the severity of the pandemic. One possible way to recover — or to generate positive utility — is to seek nostalgia that reminds people of the good old days.”
For many indie musicians of the Indian music scene, music stems from a place of personal storytelling. The themes are borrowed from personal experiences, hence, it is no surprise that memories function as an important part of their song-writing process. Of all the musicians and songwriters we interviewed at Homegrown in 2020, one trend in particular that stood out was that of Indian musicians going back to nostalgia as a prominent theme. The coronavirus had indeed had an impact on their songwriting process and many of them were turning to nostalgia to seek out their artistic best.
If we go back to the music from November 2020, a box of old photographs and letters prompted producer OAFF (musician Kabeer Kathpalia’s music endeavour) and dream- pop act Landslandsmusic (singer-songwriter Sohrab Nicholson’s brainchild) to create a new single, Youth. Sohrab wrote the poem around the theme of finding an old box worth of memories that was converted into a song.
In the same week, Bengaluru-based singer-songwriter Gowri Bhat released her second single Younger featuring Derek Mathias. Younger was a nostalgic trip to childhood, both reminiscing the carefree days of childhood and the spontaneity and impulsiveness of the decisions we used to make as children.
Frizzell D’Souza’s Drown Away got us drowning away into a stream of nostalgia as she ended 2020 with a song drawing from memories of beaches and sweet summer air packed with salty breeze and family getaways. Her song was like an old note tucked away in a book, sweet nothings from a time gone by.
Manas Jha too ended 2020 on a nostalgic note with his single Curtains which was an introverted love story about his meeting with his wife and how all young they both fell in love.
From across the border, Haniya Aslam’s Ayi Re was a perfect reminder of all the stories we carry with us and how we try to navigate the world with our experiences.
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