What is music?

Written by Puja R. Krishnan

A song isn’t just something we hear—it is something we feel. Something we live. Time folded into sound and memory stitched into melody, to hear a song is to remember, even when we don’t realize we are. When the details of a moment slip away, the music remains, a ghost of something once felt.

Maybe it’s a song that played in the background of childhood—before we even knew the meaning of nostalgia. Or a track from a road trip, now inseparable from the scent of asphalt after rain and the glow of a setting sun. Perhaps it’s a song we haven’t heard in years, buried so deep that we’ve forgotten it existed. Until, suddenly, it finds us again. A stray note from a passing car, the hum of a chorus in a grocery store, an old speaker crackling to life. And just like that, we are no longer here. We are then. We are back in that moment, feeling it as if no time has passed at all.

Music holds our past selves in its chords. A reminder of the person we used to be. 

Do we still recognize them? Does the song still fit, or has it become something unfamiliar—a melody outgrown?

But even more than a memory of what has been, music shapes what could be. It has long been a force for change, a rallying cry for those seeking justice. Time and time again we have watched music become a spark for revolutions. A call to action that transcends borders and class and every other frivolous separation we’ve created to divide ourselves—sever ourselves from some “other”. 

Because the right song at the right moment awakens something dormant.

The right song at the right moment fuels movements, and gives voice to the unheard, and ignites action. The right song is resistance and hope and defiance. The lyrics we sing today might become the battle cries of tomorrow, and the melodies we create could inspire revolutions yet to come. 

A force that breaks silence, that demands to be heard, that refuses to be forgotten.

Something unstoppable.

That is music.