Climate change themed 'Blowin' in the wind'

This has been the week of holiday parties, the next one is of AGU fall meeting. And our world leaders just reached a very important and promising agreement in Paris (COP21). All this reminded me of my department's holiday nerdy music party from a couple of years ago. Our band, which included my advisor (yes, I am fortunate to have an advisor who jams with me! :)), met only thrice to come up with songs and practice, and yet, I believe we pulled off a pretty decent show! :)

I had a few lines in mind- more advocacy stuff than sciency. Like millions of us, Blowin' in the wind has been very inspirational to me. Dylan sounds so earnest, angry, hurt, and exasperated. Not very different from how we climate scientists feel when folks question the hard facts that we present. Plus, the song is very simple, easy to play and sing to, is very relatable. Writing the lyrics didn't take long once I knew what I wanted to write. The biggest challenge was to sing in the same key that my band-mates were playing in, and to keep my nerves as I'm not at all used to making music in public. I'm not sure if the former went well, as I think somewhere along the track, I changed the key as I got louder. But it didn't matter as I'm sure nobody minded. That brings us to the latter- I didn't feel nervous at all, and to my pleasant surprise, felt extremely comfortable. It was a very memorable experience, and gave me a lot of confidence to participate in such opportunities in future.

Blowin' in the Wind

How many trees must a man chop down
Before he can see the barren land?
How many gallons must his cars burn down
Before he walks to a bus stand?
How many tonnes must the ice-sheets melt down
Before he decides to take a stand?

The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer's blowin' in the wind

How much more CO2 must Keeling record
Before the nations reach an accord?
How many more blobs must GRACE measure
Before we know we've lost the treasure?
How many more years must man change the climate
Before he makes peace with his planet?

The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer's blowin' in the wind

To understand the science references, please visit IPCC AR5's Summary for policy makers here, which does a great job at explaining to non-scientists, the present projected state of climate in the light of the changes we are making to it.

Sheet music for Hindi songs: 1. 'Aye Meri Zohra Jabeen' from Waqt (1965)

I have always been fascinated by old Hindi film music. Growing up, there was hardly any other music I listened to. Later, I got introduced to, and liked several other genres, but my love for the old Hindi film songs never ceased. Over the years, I have learnt to play a few songs on Mandolin. Many of these songs were taught to me by Chandrakant Ronghe, an excellent mandolinist in Pune, who shares similar love for the old hindi and marathi songs.

When I uploaded a video of me playing such a song on mandolin, several people asked me for notations/ tabs. Requests were so diverse: some were for Indian style notations (Saa Re Ga Ma..), some for notations in A B C D, a few mandolinists asked for Tablatures and one person asked for staff notations! Now I know all these notations but I don't follow them, as I play simply by my ear. So I procrastinated over making notations as I didn't know which format to write in, and because it was equally tedious for me to write to any format rather than simply upload what I could play. But now I am trying to come up with a solution so that I can do my little bit in sharing such lovely songs to a greater audience.

Thankfully, with the help of TuxGuitar and Musescore, both open source freewares, I started writing sheet music for Aye Meri Zohra Jabeen from the film Waqt (1965). I chose this song simply because it was the one that occurred to me first, and also because it is such a lovely song, with excellent lyrics, and magical voice of Manna De. After encountering a few hurdles, I have completed the sheet music to the best of my abilities, and presenting it here. The sheet is not refined (you might see several instances where there are say two tied quarter notes instead of one half note), but it works as per my satisfaction.

I chose to write in staff notations because it is universal and could be played/transposed to several instruments. In the future, I hope to upload the Tabs too (I haven't been able to solve some problems with Tux Guitar and as a result cannot provide Tabs at present). I cannot learn music without audio, so I am glad to present the audio along with the sheet music.The file could be downloaded here. You can download Musescore and play the file on it and even edit/ refine it.


Please let me know if you like the song. I aim to write atleast one song per month.  Let's see how far it goes! :)


Aye Meri Johra Zabeen by hrishikeshac



To watch (and thereby torture yourself) me play this on mandolin: