The Colour Of Songs

[SimplyRoy]

There's a line from Suman Da's "Sararaat Jwalechhe" that always turns my head:

"Kichhui Rangalo Holo Na, Nayto
Aagamir Range Chhopa Daag, Hoyto
Ja Kichhu Nei Nai-Ba Holo Saab Paowa
Na Paower Rang Nao Tumi
Aagamir Rang Nao Tumi."

It's one of those greatest lines I have come across in the history of music - and it has great impact on me especially if, like me, you are a synaesthete, and have a lot of colours in your mind to share.

The dry-boned definition of synaesthesia is "a neurologically based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway." In more sybaritic terms, it's a world of people who say the taste of spearmint feels like cool smooth glass columns, and that Tuesday smells like raspberries.

The Mind of a Mnemonist, a study of a man with intense synaesthesia published in the last century, noted that when played a high-pitched tone, he would respond: "It looks something like fireworks tinged with a pink-red hue. The strip of colour feels rough and unpleasant, and it has an ugly taste - rather like that of a briny pickle. You could hurt your hand on this."

Several non-synaesthete composers have attempted to replicate the synaesthetic experience - Alexander Scriabin, for example, who once created a work called Prometheus, which incorporated light and music. At the time, it was deemed enormously fashionable to have synaesthesia, and Scriabin once bitched about another composer's claims to be a synaesthete to the psychologist Charles Myers. "Whereas to him the key of F# major appears violet, to Rimsky-Korsakov it appears green," Myers wrote later. "But this deviation Scriabin attributes to an accidental association with the colour of leaves and grass arising from the frequent use of this key for pastoral music."

Known synaesthete musicians include Pharrell Williams, Aphex Twin, Franz Liszt - who would baffle orchestras with requests such as "Gentlemen, a little bluer, if you please!" - and Duke Ellington, who once remarked: "I hear a note by one of the fellows in the band and it's one colour. I hear the same note played by someone else and it's a different colour ... If Harry Carney is playing, D is dark blue burlap. If Johnny Hodges is playing, G becomes light blue satin."

People always ask which part of a song you hear first: the words or the melody. I'm with the lyrics - probably because my own synaesthesia binds up words and colours. I can tell you that I particularly love the colour-run of H Word's "Ekta sujog dao HOYTO pather baaki itihas anyo rakom Hote pare." But in truth, I think it is because when I hear H, I see an autumnal russet.