My earliest memory of music – professionally produced music, that is – is the sound of my mom’s radio playing Marathi music every morning. The radio sat on our small fridge (to the best of my recollection) in the kitchen and played mostly music from Marathi movies as my mom made breakfast and lunch for all of us. Years later, I hankered for that music, and bought the “Tukayache Abhanga” and “Sant Dnyaneshwar” CDs and listened to them over and over.

Then, growing up, Hindi movie music was ubiquitous and fun. Mostly Amitabh movies, then anything by Kishore Kumar. Quick note here that my taste in music has always been what I would describe as “utilitarian”. Other friends praised Mohd Rafi’s ethereal voice, or Mukesh’s plaintive singing, but for me, the simple but melodic songs sung by Kishore Da were the best.

Things changed in 1984. I had just started listening to American pop music. It was summer, and our family went on its yearly summer vacation to our ancestral home in Goa. We had a great time as always, but on coming back, I was dismayed to hear from my friends that there had been something called a Pre-Grammy show aired on Doordarshan, India’s national tv station – the only tv channel we had – where they had played a selection of songs that were nominated for the Grammy awards. There was someone named Michael Jackson, and a band called, of all things, The Police.

The saving grace for me was that I was told by my friends that the actual Grammy awards were being aired the following week. My brother and I were ready with our panasonic tape recorder in front of our old beat-up TV set to record the audio!

The Grammy awards were more amazing than anything I had seen or heard ever before. From Donna Summer to Irene Cara to Michael Jackson, the Police and Culture Club! For months after, we played the tape recording of the show, to the point that we had the entire script of the show memorized.

Disclaimer that I have the Wikipedia page for the 26th Annual Grammy Awards pulled up, and my reconstructed memories are taking a bit of a beating. For example, I have no recollection of John Denver hosting the show. Even more sad for me, apparently my biggest guitar hero now, SRV, played on stage with Chuck Berry and George Thorogood. More on SRV in an upcoming post.

I was singing my own words to “Beat It!” (because a 12 year old non-native English speaker like me had no way of understanding the real words) with gusto every day as I rode my bicycle around the neighborhood feeling cool – ’cause you want to be bad!

Those Grammy awards launched an enduring and all-consuming love for Western pop, rock, blues, jazz and other forms of music that continued for decades.