‘The Mixtape’ Kalachaaram.
We live in a generation where sharing digital content has never been easier. You watch a video on youtube, you think ts funny, you just share it with your friend with just a few taps on the screen or you listen to a podcast and you find it very informative, you think your brother might wanna listen to it, you just send it to him with just a few taps. Easy as that. Thanks to the internet.
The Internet has become a basic essential in all of our lives and made sharing too much easier for everyone, all the sharing and receiving happens OTA(Over the Air) but let’s just rewind a few years back, before the Internet was popular in India in other words before everyone could afford internet in India, sharing of digital content was bit of a task. That’s when external storage devices came into play. Pendrive was one of the greatest devices in the history of mankind, back in my middle school days, only a few guys in our class used to have the internet at home, so the rest of us pass around Pendrive to get a movie or songs or games, whatever and in few cases, you might not get your Pendrive back for no reason.
So these technologies had made it simpler for sharing stuff, like sharing a song with some significant other, just because that particular song would remind them about their special one or a special time or a special place or a special memory and trust me its one of the greatest feeling in the world. Imagine a winter evening, plugging in your earphone, playing some old song which instantly takes you to the memory of the special person and the good times you had with them. Best feeling more like the safest kinda time travel.
The Dedication of Music
2004 or 2005, a TV channel dedicated to music has been launched in Tamilnadu, India. They used to stream songs from new movies, old movies, everything about songs and they also used to have a live show where you could call the channel and you can ask them to play a dedicated song for a special person, this became a major trendsetting show, every teenager would call up to this channel and they request them to play a song for their crush, just to impress them. Years later I realized this isn’t a new culture, this has already existed in the west from the late ’70s to the early 2000s and those are called ‘MIXTAPES’.
If you are the kind of person who binges on sitcom a lot just like me, then the concept of mixtape might not be new to you, if not, I’ll tell you whats a MIXTAPE is. Before the invention of CD’s people used to record songs on a piece of a plastic block called ‘CASSETTE TAPE’, if you are lucky enough you might have used them in your childhood.
So what’s so awesome about a Cassette tape and why it is considered one the greatest gift of all time.
The Mixtape
There was a trend in the west, people used to gift each other mixtapes on various occasions such as Birthdays, Valentine's day believe me or not even if a guy undergoes a break up a good friend would give him a mixtape to help out. So what's the deal with the mixtapes?
Mixtapes are Personal
Creating a mixtape is a craft, it requires a lot of time and a huge amount of patience, lets take an example scenario, say your crush’s birthday is in 5 days, and want to give him something personal. You would go to a cassette store and buy an empty cassette tape and you put it inside a radio player. There would be various radio station playing a wide range of songs, so you need to listen to all those stations for a long time and when your crush’s favorite song comes up on the radio you would hit record, so that song gets recorded on that tape, one little time mistake would spoil the whole listening experience, like this you would record a bunch of songs for your crush, it is so personal because each one’s music taste differs a lot, music is personal, if one thing that's hard to find about a person, then it is their music taste, if you were able to find a persons music preference, then you are little special to them, and making a mixtape with their favorite songs, songs that instantly take them to a good memory, could that gift be any more personal.
Music is the safest form of time travel, when I was studying 8th standard our school organized a trip to Kerala, and during the whole trip I was repeatedly listening to two songs, even after years of listening to those two songs, I’d be mentally going on a Kerala trip again with my school friends.
These are that two songs
Mixtapes are one of the things I regret becoming extinct, but we can still make a dedicated playlist for a special person and make them feel even more special.
Madhukar Ramesh :)
