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1960s Love: Simon & Garfunkel ♫ The Sound Of Silence

I have a penchant for retracing radical movements during the 1960s. Back then, drugs, politics and women's rights were on everyone's tongues (not much has changed there). Unlike today's industry, music was more of a revolutionary genre and everyone "digged' the Orient, and, surprise, surprise, America educated MIT students to develop weapons of mass destruction.

Singers Simon and Garfunkel also contributed through their introspective and thought provoking chunes. I have a personal attachment to this particular song, one reason being that I studied it for a history course. On basic analysis, The Sound Of Silence speaks of challenging the status quo, religion and the Marxist maxim "the opiate of the masses", and the dangers of ignorance. Needless to say the impact of music cannot be compared to Qur'an revelation, scholarly nobility or prophetic traditions, yet the freedom and release of a wordless tune can do more than implant seeds of hypocrisy. For now, take a listen. Lyrics below video.

The Sound Of Silence, 1967. Simon and Garfunkel (check out The Dangling Conversation and America).


♫ Hello darkness, my old friend,

I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.


"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows. Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence. ♫


More videos:
1970s Love: Bob Marley Redemption Song
Fajr Salat: Qur'an, Surah al-Fajr
1970s Love: Mohammad Rafi
"Israel Is Untouchable"
Hamza Yusuf's Family Interview
1980s Love: Jim Carrey, Gay Environmentalist

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