Living in Nashville, I am constantly exposed to the world of Country music. It is difficult to walk down any street in town and not hear Tim McGraw or Taylor Swift songs echoing out of someone’s home. When I was younger, in about sixth or seventh grade, my mother would force me to go with her to these things called Full Moon Festivals. What they were was basically a huge crowd of wannabe country singers and songwriters hanging in a field and jamming with their friends. There I experienced the ins and outs of the country music world and learned to appreciate it for all the work and talent that goes into it, rather than disregarding it because the style and sound didn’t appeal to my tastes. Along those lines, my high school orchestra performed ‘Bile ‘em Cabbage Down’ with the lower school strings class as they played improvisations.

My sophomore year in high school, however, gifted me with an incredible experience with the music of Indian film and Hinduism. I took a Winterim (It is the same thing as January Term) course on Bollywood film. I spent three weeks immersed in films which are riddled with crazy plots and rife with song and dance numbers. I became slightly addicted to Bollywood just because of the fabulous music you can experience just by watching their films. Even without understanding the words and phrases (There were subtitles, but the wording was often highly confusing), the melodies and dances made the story a little more clear. Near the end of the course the teacher, who was a good friend of a wife of a Hindu priest, took us to the local temple called Sri Ganesha. There, my class was able to observe the priest as he chanted and ritualistically cleaned the statue of the god Ganesha. This was one of those experiences that few are able to see and hear. The chants were so melodic and complicated that you cannot help but appreciate them.