GLOBAL GOAN MUSICIANS - network

2011-12-10T11:43:00.001-08:00

The Goan / Anglo Indian loop is never dying.Sadly today hotel and restaurant music is dying at an alarming pace due to the governments recent new tax that is killing our musicians because the hotels and restaurants have to pay a special new tax for live music.New talent may therefore never grow and be nurtured.Have fun great articleCCyrus Rustom Todiwala OBE DL DBACafe Spice NAMASTE16 Prescot StreetLondon E1 8AZTel.020 7488 9242Fax. 02074889339Begin forwarded message:From: Shapoor Toorkey Date: 10 December 2011 16:24:00 GMTTo: undisclosed-recipients:;Subject: Taj Mahal Foxtrot---------- During World War II, soldiers from all over the world drifted in and out of Bombay, and a motley crew of musicians became the vanguard of the city’s thriving jazz subculture. An extract from Naresh Fernandes’ forthcoming book, ‘Taj Mahal Foxtrot’As a teenager in the Goan village of Curchorem, Franklin Fernandes spent long hours practising the trumpet with only one goal in mind: he wanted to “play like a negro”. It wasn’t an ambition his teacher, Maestro Diego Rodrigues, would have understood. Like all teachers in Goa’s parochial schools, Rodrigues coached his charges in musical theory and instructed them in the art of playing hymns and Western classical music.Swing time: The Mickey Correa band at the Taj hotel, circa 1939. Photographs courtesy Naresh Fernandes from his book Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age (Roli Books)Fernandes was a precocious talent. His mastery of the violin was recognised early but the young man, to his teacher’s dismay, soon developed a fascination for the clear, ringing sounds of the trumpet. It wasn’t long before Fernandes became a regular member of the village marching band, playing at parish feasts, weddings and—in New Orleans style—at funerals too. However, unlike the New Orleans bands famed for their improvised flights of fancy, Fernandes’ village orchestra was, he recalled, a “paper band—they played what was written”. Soon, even this was to become trickier as new instructions began to appear on the music scores: glissando, mute, attack.It was all very baffling. “But when we heard the records, we knew how to play the notes,” Fernandes said. The thick shellac records that set him off on his journey of discovery bore the names of Ellington, Armstrong and Cab Calloway, and Fernandes grew addicted to hot music. Jazz, he said, gave him “freedom of expression”. He still looked at the sheet music, of course, but he knew that it could take him only so far. “Like Indian music, jazz can’t be written,” he said. “You have to feel it. There are 12 bars, but each musician plays it differently. You play as you feel—morning you play different, evening you play different.”Frank Fernandes grew so enamoured of the new music from America that in 1936, aged 16, he decided to make jazz his life. He headed to Bombay, where, like so many other Goans, he hoped to find work in one of the city’s famous dance bands. Of course, it wasn’t quite so easy. Competition for jobs was intense, so Fernandes—who would soon adopt the stage name Frank Fernand—began to work for the Bata shoe company in Mazagaon for 12 annas a day. After work, he performed at the amateur nights at Green’s hotel, hoping to attract the attention of someone who mattered.Singer Pamela McCarthy.At first, Fernand lived with his uncle but later moved out to share a room with friends in Dhobi Talao. After work at the shoe shop, he’d practise intensely. One of his roommates remembers coming home to find Fernand standing with his back to the room, blowing his trumpet into a corner so that he could hear the echoes of his instrument. Fernand’s persistence at the amateur nights eventually paid off and he was hired to play at the Majestic Hotel on Colaba Causeway by an Italian piano player named Beppo di Siati, who led a band staffed with musicians from Germany, the Philippines, the UK and the US.Like Fernand, other Indian musicians had also come to value the freedom that jazz allowed them. Indians had been playing hot music, with varying degrees of proficiency since the 1920s. In 1937, when Teddy Weatherford took over leadership of the band at the Taj from Crickett Smith, as age began to catch up with the trumpet player, several Indians had become skilful enough to play alongside the African-Americans. A photo of Weatherford’s band from 1938 shows three Indians looking out from behind their instruments. Two of them were brothers: Hal and Henry Green, from Bangalore. Their father, Cecil Beaumont Green, was an army surgeon who had fought in the Boer War before becoming the personal physician of the ruler of Mysore. Hal Green, the fourth of the doctor’s six children, had begun his musical education on a reproduction copy of a Stradivarius that his father had given him. He was an autodidact. He devoured American films and records to learn as much as he could about ragtime and Dixieland music, also teaching himself about European classical music on the side.Before they joined the Weatherford band, Hal Green and his younger brother Henry had led the eightmember Elite Aces at the Taj in 1933, performing what Ali Rajabally described as dance music with a jazz accent. Hal Green played guitar, reeds and the violin, while Henry was a bassist and saxophonist. “The type of music they had brought with them may be an overworked cliché today but it was an unheard of departure then,” Rajabally wrote. “Night after night, Hal and his alto sax drove the band through performances so exultantly searing that no band in the country, local or foreign, could have successfully challenged them for the No. 1 spot.”The Correa Optimists in the early 1930s.The third Indian in the 1938 photo of the Weatherford band is a Goan multi-instrumentalist listed as Josico Menezes, who changed his name soon after on the advice of Weatherford. The pianist told him, “It’s too much to call you Josico. Drop the ‘o’ and shorten the Menezes to Menzie. Josic Menzie, not Josico Menezes.” He was equally adept on the violin and the saxophone. Born in the Seychelles, he had been trained in England by Professor Sweeting, a violinist in the London Symphony Orchestra. He had led his own band in Karachi before coming to Bombay, where he accompanied silent films at Capitol Cinema under the baton of Jules Craen. Before joining the Symphonians, Menzie had spent some time conducting a symphony orchestra for the Maharaja of Bikaner. Menzie formed part of the six-member saxophone section that Weatherford would put together when he felt like showing off. The Goan musician would be summoned to the front line along with Roy Butler, Rudy Jackson, the Green brothers and the pianist Weatherford, who would fake it.In 1939, the outbreak of World War II in Europe shook up Bombay too. As barrage balloons went up over the Oval maidan like “a school of enormous airborne white whales”, in the description of one young observer, German and Italian residents were taken into custody or fled the country. Beppo di Siati, Frank Fernand’s Italian bandleader at Majestic Hotel, was among the enemy nationals interned. As the conflict spread, Bombay became the temporary home to troops from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and England, passing through from the Eastern front to Africa and Europe and for soldiers from the Western theatre of war on their way to the Far East. The journalist Dosoo Karaka observed the influx with his usual cynicism. “The city,” he wrote, “was a halfway house for the cannon fodder of [the] great war.”En route to the front, the soldiers created quite a commotion. One observer recalls Australian troops commandeering the horse-drawn Victoria carriages that thronged the street outside the Taj, pushing the driver into the backseat and racing one another through downtown Bombay. “The crowds roared their applause,” he wrote. “The Aussies could have perpetrated more danger in Bombay than they did on the battlefield.” The arrivals weren’t all male. Allied officers brought their wives, while other Englishwomen realised that it would be prudent to wait out the war in the safety of India. There were refugees too—Poles, Danes, Czechs and Jews from Germany and Eastern Europe.Karaka went into a funk and couldn’t bear to listen to any music at all. He became addicted to the wireless. “The news bulletins were the funeral marches of our modern composers—the men of the Hood, the men of Dunkirk, the men who died in the huge craters of Crete. That was the music of this generation—the music we were destined to hear,” he wrote. “Music that was written on the casualty lists, the dead being the flats and the wounded with their anguished cry being the sharps.”A view of early 20th century south Bombay.Everyone else, it seemed, was trying to find comfort in the screaming brass of “jump” music, a style that seemed to perfectly capture the heightened emotion of the times. The Entertainment National Service Association did its bit to help them forget the looming violence, if only for a little while. ENSA had been established to keep the British troops in good spirits and it dispatched jazz bands to cantonment towns and frontier posts across India to cheer up the soldiers. India’s first generation of jazz musicians found themselves working overtime.The most durable of all the war-time bands was headed by Micky Correa, a saxophonist born in Mombassa who had perfected his craft in Karachi with his family band, the Correa Optimists. When he moved to Bombay in 1937, he played with Beppo di Siati’s Rhythm Orchestra at the Eros Ballroom, famed for its sprung dance floor. At the band’s next engagement, at the Majestic Hotel, he performed alongside Frank Fernand and shared a room with the trumpeter in Dhobi Talao. In 1939, Correa formed his own band at the Taj—and set a record of sorts by staying there until 1961. Perhaps the longevity of his stint at the Taj was the result of his physical endurance. Correa prided himself on his fitness and exercised regularly with dumbbells, following the techniques devised by the Canadian bodybuilder Joe Weider. He also knew how to please a crowd, never turning down requests. The Taj publicity brochures described Correa as a musician who was “untired of repetitions”.Correa’s orchestra at the Taj was a hothouse for Bombay swing. The men and women who would go on to lead the city’s most popular groups found early encouragement on his bandstand: saxophonists Johnny Baptist, Norman Mobsby, George Pacheco and the Gomes brothers, Johnny and Joe; trumpet players Peter Monsorate, Pete D’Mello and Chic Chocolate; and pianists Manuel Nunes, Dorothy Clarke and Lucilla Pacheco, among others. Recalled Ali Rajabally: “The Bombay jazz scene was honeycombed with virtuosi of high calibre. The pace was intense, but it was carried on in a spirit which placed the love of jazz above every other consideration. Nobody played with one eye on the cash-box and the other on the clock.”The cover of Taj Mahal Foxtrot.Another war-time swing powerhouse was led by Rudy Cotton, the keen young saxophonist who, trumpet player Bill Coleman had recalled in his memoirs, would hang around the Taj to chat with members of Leon Abbey’s band. Cotton was Parsi, a rarity on an Indian jazz scene dominated by Anglo-Indians and Goans. His father was a producer of Parsi theatre, a melodramatic genre of musical drama from which India’s earliest films had drawn their aesthetic conventions and acting talent. Cotton had dropped out of school to pursue music as a career, the only one of his siblings to continue the family showbiz tradition (two brothers went on to become noted boxers).Cotton started by playing the trumpet, but decided to dump his horn after dropping by the Taj one day in 1936 and being captivated by the smooth tenor sax of Cass McCord. He was an early follower of Lester Young. “In those days, Rudy was often criticised for having a soft, what is known today as a ‘cool’ tone,” an amateur musician named Rusi Sethna told Blue Rhythm magazine later. “Rudy belonged to the modern school of tenor playing but that term came into being recently while Rudy has been blowing like that ever since I can remember.”Rudy Cotton’s big break came when he was hired by Tony Nunes, the pianist who headed the Teetotallers band, but he credited his ability to really “feel jazz” to the stint he spent in the orchestra of Vincent Cummine, playing alongside such talents as Cummine’s violinist brother Ken, the bassist Fernando “Bimbo” D’Costa, the drummer Leslie Weeks and the spectacular trumpet player Antonio Xavier Vaz, who was already winning legions of fans under his stage name Chic Chocolate. Cummine’s band travelled to Rangoon in 1938, but by 1940, Cotton had formed his own group, persuading his former bandmates to join him, and adding Sollo Jacobs on piano.“As anyone who knows the history of Indian orchestras can well imagine, this combination proved a tremendous success overnight and from then onwards Rudy’s fame was on the upbeat,” The Onlooker magazine reported. Bookings poured in from the Taj, the Majestic and the Ritz, among other establishments.Toot your horn: Parsi musician Rudy Cotton, born Cawasji Khatau, became a musical force on a scene dominated by Goans and Anglo-Indians.Soon, the saxophonist’s band was spending a lot of time on the road. Each summer, the band travelled to Mussoorie, the Himalayan hill station to which Delhi’s colonial administrators retreated to find respite from the heat. Cotton’s performances at the Savoy were among the main attractions of the season. He was later lured away by Hakman’s Hotel, where he headed an 11-piece orchestra. Cotton’s secret, Rajabally contended, lay in his ability to merge a small-band approach with big-band projection. “The rhythm section…rolled on ball-bearing wheels,” he gushed. “Rudy Cotton was outstanding. He had an extraordinary tone, impeccable taste in choosing phrases, flaming imagination and a technique that few could equal.”The busiest of all the war-era bands was led by the inimitable Ken Mac, who had managed to retain his hold on the Bombay dance-music scene long after Leon Abbey’s departure. By the mid-1940s, Mac was being signed up for about 40 engagements a month. Every Wednesday, he played regular shows at the YMCA on Wodehouse Road for Allied troops. His crooner at that time was Jean Statham, whom he later married. Occasionally, his young niece, Pamela McCarthy, would sing a tune or two. She had been stricken with polio at the age of 11 and performed from her wheelchair, dressed in a glamorous ball gown. It was a hectic life. “Music and dancing was so popular and we played all the top venues—the Taj, Ambassador and Ritz Hotels, the Radio, Willingdon, Yacht Clubs and Bombay Gymkhana to name a few,” said McCarthy. “Sometimes we did two sessions a day—an evening dance and later a night dance.”Mac also made regular radio broadcasts and cut dozens of swing-tinted records. The first, “Down Argentina Way”, sold more than 25,000 copies. Mac told one interviewer that there was much more to being a successful bandleader than merely having to ensure that the musicians played the right note at the right time. “He is the band’s star salesman who must obtain the most favourable terms,” the journalist wrote. “He has to make sure the boys will meet always on time and are dressed as they should be. He has to exercise tact and good temper to smooth out frictions and difficulties. He is responsible for building up the library—as the sum total of all the band numbers is called.”Bombay’s band leaders obtained their music from publishing houses and from local cinema distributors, and listened hard to the radio and to new records. All the best bands had their own arrangers, men who wrote the parts of each instrumentalist in a unique way so as to make their outfit’s version of standard tunes stand out from their competitors’. Indian musicians were also beginning to compose their own tunes. Pianist Sollo Jacob had written a foxtrot called “Everyone Knew”; Hal Green, already a much-in-demand arranger, had composed tunes he called “Copacabana” and “Get Out of the Mood and Into the Groove”, while Chic Chocolate was performing his “Juhu Jive”.Naresh Fernandes is a consulting editor at Time Out India. This is his first book.Excerpted from Taj Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age by Naresh Fernandes; published by Roli Books, accompanied by a CD of original recordings, 192 pages, Rs. 1,295 (the book may be pre-ordered on Flipkart.com). Taj Mahal Foxtrot will be released on 20 December.Write to lounge@livemint.comhttp://www.livemint.com/2011/12/03114919/Excerpt--Long-gone-blues.html?h=B

A SONG for GOA

2010-09-17T01:31:00.001-07:00

Category:

Organizations - Non-Profit Organizations

Description:

We are inviting The Global Goan Musicians to come TOGETHER to COMPOSE a SONG for GOA. We have had quite a good and positive response so far. If you would like to contribute in some way or the other - you are welcome to do so.

The Global Goan Musicians plan to meet in Goa over Christmas in Goa - we hope we can put our thoughts together...before that - we begin today.

The SONG for GOA will on similar to ...... WE ARE THE CHILDREN - The song will be composed by
Goan Musician , sung and recorded by GOAN singers - the best from all over the world -

Your thoughts are welcome. ... lets JUST DO IT !!

Privacy Type:

A SONG FOR GOA

2010-08-28T04:20:00.000-07:00

It is with great pleasure that i shae a thought , a thought that my wife shared with me ...
and i had no option but to carry it forward.

It is a simple idea. My wife .. Maria suggested that the GLOBAL GOAN MUSICIANS come TOGETHER and Write - compose - arrange - sing a SONG - a SONG FOR GOA. A song very similar
to the one ..many of us may have heard .. WE ARE THE CHILDREN.

This song will be produced wholly by GOANS from all over the world. I have had about twelve Goans
who have indicated their interests in the idea. I would like some very POSITIVE feed back from each and every one on this forum. I need your thoughts on how to go about this project. I need some one to put what i have written .. in a more understandable manner.

The theme of the song will be GOANsCAN ! we can have UNITY ... PRESERVING our GOAN CULTURE ... Celebrating our UNIQUE HERITAGE etc.,
or something on these lines. We will ask for your lyrics .. and pick and put all the lurics together. .. will it be possible , yes it CAN.

If you think you would like to suggest any Goan namesfor this project, please do not hesitate to write to me.

We will include only those GOANS who respond... POSITIVELY ! It is your choice , we have hundreds of Goan Musicians world wide. I will correspond only to those who respond to this post.

rene

WORLD GOA DAY- GOA jazz heritage

2010-08-12T04:47:00.000-07:00

GL0BAL GOAN MUSICIANS network

2010-07-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

Add caption

http://www.konkanimusic.blogspot.com/

KONKANI SONGS -

KonkaniSongBook.- by Francis Rodrigues

2009-07-02T06:33:00.001-07:00

http://www.konkanisongbook.com/

Konkani Song Book.
---------------------------by Francis Rodrigues
==========================================

It gives me great pleasure to announce - that on this our Tenth
celebration , on the 20th of August, 2009 of our WORLD GOA DAY
global celebrations - our equally well known Goan personality - Francis
Rodrigues will be officially launching his beautifully illustrated and
researched KONKANI SONG BOOK - a treasure-trove compendium of
unavailable sheet-music (with translations) of popular Konkani music.
Though a Canadian publication, copies will be released in Goa on 8th
August i.e. 12 days prior to World Goa Day, to enable Goans and Goan
Associations worldwide to receive copies in time for World Goa Day.

Not only is the book a fantastic performance resource and learning tool,
but makes a priceless gift throughout the diaspora.
http://www.konkanisongbook.com/

We should all feel Proud of our Global Goan Culture , our mother tongue
Konkani - to fully understand what I mean, please visit the following
VIDEO sites and listen to the all time great Goan Konkani Songs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSwX0PUZRHk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbRH0KYOlJY&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuyUeHs2w_U&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=mWFoZIbufhU&feature=channel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHtdqmIskF8&feature=channel

Let us be Proud of being Goans and share the music we all love - this
publication will help us understand our Goan Culture much better.

Yes, Goans have Talent !

If you enjoyed listening to these Videos, do share them with your friends.
Feedback is ALWAYS gratefully appreciated - so Please do leave your comments
on the YouTube videos.

If you would like more info contact Francis Rodrigues :
info@konkanisongbook.com; fcarodriguez@hotmail.com;

rene barreto
Overall Coordinator .,
WORLD GOA DAY
WORLD ALLIANCE OF GOAN ASSOCIATIONS:

GOANWORLD: http://worldgoan.blogspot.com/
WORLD GOA DAY - is a day set a side to CELEBRATE our Goan Cultural Heritage,
a day to promise that we will help the less fortunate in our community:

000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

The Konkani Song Book authored by Francis Rodrigues is being released Internationally
for World Goa Day on 20 August, 2009 in Toronto , Canada.

The author will also be personally present at the other release dates mentioned here
below: Book copies will be available and will include personal signings by the author.

INDIA - Goa: 9 August.2009
U.K. London: 15 August.2009
CANADA - Toronto: 20 August 2009 - World Goa Day.
U.S.A. - San Francisco: 30 August.2009

India Launch
The Kala Academy are hosting the Goa launch :
==================================

The Kala Academy, Goa will host the Goa launch of the Konkani International
Song Book at 4 pm on Sunday, 9 August 2009, at the Black Box.

The Commissioner for NRI Affairs, Hon. Eduardo Faleiro will preside, there will
also be a cultural programme following the author's talk and demonstration.
Book copies will be available, including personal signings by the author.

All are invited, refreshments provided. Limited seating, on a first- come basis only.

UK - Launch
St. Peter's Church Hall - Staines , UK
====================

In London , Francis will release the Konkani Song Book at a get together on the
15th of August, 2009 - St. Peter's Church Hall, Laleham Road - Staines , Middlesex.
Dancing to the music of Mustang.

Details on Flyer at :
http://worldgoaday2009.blogspot.com/2009/07/world-goa-day-london-uk_19.html

Videos Links - the Konkani Song Book:

Sweater Kori
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGm6ML12AIQ&feature=related

Cadiza za za & Olha Policia
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKDmir-maJI

GREATEST KONKANI SONG HITS #1:
____________________________________________
transcribing the fine music of a great culture - revisiting
the original magic, and recreating a modern idiom:
_____________________________________________

"HANV SAIBA POLTODDI VETAM"
_____________________________________________
"I'm Going Across To the Other Side Of The River"
_________________________________________
LEGEND: "Hanv Saiba"

This is the most famous Dekhnni (a semi-classical Goan dance form),
composed by Carlos Eugenio Ferreira of Corjuem, Aldona in 1887 and
published, with the help of his brilliant pianist brother Eduardo,
in Paris in 1895, as ?The Balladas de Concan?. Tipografia Rangel
subsequently brought it out in Goa three decades later in 1926.

Dekhnnis are often called "The Song of The Dancing Girl" (kolvont),
and here a couple of these beautiful nymphs approach the boatman to
ferry them across the river for Damu's wedding. This extortionate
worthy baulks on one pretext or the other, refusing their offers of
jewellery, flowers, etc, until satiated by a kiss! This rousing and
evocative strain was even adapted by the noted Bollywood music-duo
Laxmikant-Pyarelal for producer Raj Kapoor's celebrated 1973 film
"Bobby". Lifted almost in its entirety, for an arguably Christian
wedding-scene, it was retitled "Na Chaahoon Sona Chaandi", but the
melody is unmistakable, right down to its "ghe, ghe, ghe," refrain.
_______________________________________________________
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED: "Hanv Saiba"

Shiroda, Goa, March 1887.

The dancing-girl's eyes glittered, her steps faltering slightly.
She'd had a little too much to drink, whirling the night away at
Damu's wedding. She sat down unsteadily at the ferry wharf, waiting
for the boatman to take her back alone. He'd been at the wedding too
- white with anger, her memory returned of the rapacious advantage
he'd taken of her and her two absent companions, after he'd extracted
a passionate kiss to take them across. She murmured a prayer to Kali
goddess of the dance, from whom they got their name "kali'vont".

He rowed her back to the islands alone, leery thoughts quickening
his stroke. He was going to have all the jewellery she'd promised, to
row her across, and then her. As the lithe craft beached the opposite
shore his iron grip clamped her bangled wrist, and she yelped in
fear. Glazed, she reached down her free hand and unfastening both the
promised anklets, flung one viciously at him. It hit him square in
the temple, he swore and tripped, his stout oar thrown aloft.

Deftly she caught it, and both hands now free, like lightening snaked
the other anklet around his collar, garrotted it to the oar and
swiftly broke his neck. Quickly retrieving the other anklet, she
pushed the corpse out in the boat. Downtide he would vanish in the
Arabian sea by dawn. Twin points smouldered deep under the dancing
waves - her eyes - Kali was also goddess of death.

"Hanv Saiba"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSwX0PUZRHk
_________________________________________________________

GREATEST KONKANI SONG HITS #2:
____________ _________ ______________________
transcribing the fine music of a great culture - revisiting
the original magic, and recreating a modern idiom:
____________ _________ _____________________

"TAMBDDE ROZA TUJE POLLE"
____________ _________ _____________________
"Rosy Red Art Thy Cheeks"
___________________________________________
A. LEGEND: "Tambdde Roza Tuje Polle"

This Mando (the traditional slow six-four Goan art song), rather
lighter in character than its contemporaries, is oft taken as a paen
to the fanciful memories of spinsterhood. In its original form it
is popularly atributed to the great Curtorim mando composer Ligorio
Costa who penned it late in the eighteenth century. It is instantly
recognizable at any Goan gathering, picnic, wedding, litany or trip.

At once rousing and banal, its heavy undertow drags in the unwary
listener. The hopeful promise of the lovers' early courtship - their
repeated entreaty for her father's blessing, menaced by the threat
of a lover's curse - gives way to the despair of her forced marriage
to another. Her unhappiness is further compounded by the continued
attentions of young admirers amongst the local gentry. Despite this
mood shift, its cheery progress in the major key has crystallized
it into somewhat of a community anthem all over the Konkan diaspora.

____________ _________ __________________________________

B. TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED: "Tambdde Roza Tuje Polle"

Mapusa, Goa, March 1998.

The melody floated, sweet on the spring air, then halted. The home
director gulped,"It's her, oh my God!" "Do tell!" cooed his visitor.
The director gazed six floors down at the rectangle of white roses...

The girl was sixteen, dark-haired and sensuous, when she fell in
love with her impoverished music-teacher' s son. A lovely mansion
overlooking Mapusa echoed to her sinewy saxophone. Her folks were
blueblood, the richest vintners in Goa, but all Tony could offer
was a gorgeous melody he dedicated to her. Tamara was delighted.
She finally persuaded her father and they were to wed at Easter.

At Christmas, after a drunken brawl Tony was done to death with
a crowbar by the "Motte Aulist" gang - a local mafia connected
to the wine-industry. His body was thrown into the pit of a new
hospital under construction on the city hill and cement poured.
The girl never had any doubt of her family's complicity and very
shortly turned insane. Twenty years later she entered a home.

The melody swelled now, rich and mellow. "Come" said the director
at the window, "Watch!". His visitor froze. In the sparse garden
below, the lone patch of white blooms opened slowly to the music,
turned pink, then rose-red. "That's the piece he named after her!"
the director whispered. "And her name?" the visitor croaked. "Oh,
you know the famous "Madame d'Rosa" distillery, she's "Tam D'Rosa!"
"God!" quaked the visitor, "Where am I?" "Oh, this used to be the
hospital," said the director. "You mean??" the visitor shrieked.
"Yes," choked the director,"The roses, that's where his body lies!"

"Tambdde Roza"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuyUeHs2w_U&feature=related
____________ ___-_____ _________ _________ _________ ______

GREATEST KONKANI SONG HITS #3:
____________ _________ ______________________
transcribing the fine music of a great culture - revisiting
the original magic, and recreating a modern idiom:
_____________________________________________

"MALAIKA"
__________
"Angel"

_________
A. LEGEND: "Malaika"

>From the Konkan belt, hundreds of thousands migrated to foreign
pastures over two centuries, most of these to Africa. When many
returned, they turned out not only gifted performers who formed
scintillating troupes, but brought back raw, hypnotic melodies
from the Dark Continent to become an indelible part of Goan music.
Innumerable bands in Goa and the diaspora respond to ceaseless
requests for "Malaika", "Mama Sofia", "Lala Salama", Jambo Bwana".

Malaika ("Angel") is of course indisputably the most famous melody
to emerge from Africa. Over two score composers are listed in the
Swedish copyright database as claiming its authorship, from Adam
Salim to the late Fadhili Williams, who won the copyright battle
(1986). Research indicates a traditional Tanzanian lullaby source.

Characterised by the familiar "rolling bass" melodic hook in the
much-hackneyed opening chord-progression, and the serene tonic-
dominant harmony, our young man here laments his inability to pay
the bride-price resulting in his beloved going to another. Harry
Belafonte, Boney M, Miriam Makeba, Angelique Kidjo, and many Goan
bands have all recorded this great tune. Throughout the diaspora
they remain fascinated by this universally evocative song-hit.
____________ _________ _______________________________________

B. TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED: "Malaika"

Mombasa, East Africa, 1854.

The girl was half-caste, hazel eyed with light brown hair, quite
aptly named Jeanie by her mother - a Scottish missionary, who'd
met and tried unsuccessfully to convert her father, a lithe Arab
trader with rippling muscles. The boy was chocolate, bummed the
dazzling Nyali sands for coins as a child, earning the sobriquet
"Pesa" or money. They met one lazy summer, fell headlong in love.

He sang to his angel, and Jeanie's soft "pesa wasumbua" refrained
concerns for him. Her father was a traditional Omani though and
betrothed her to an elder from the Old Town, who brought a great
dowry. The penniless boy was heartbroken and watched the wedding
ceremony at the sands' edge, as the dowry was counted. Suddenly the
girl lit a match to the money, jumped in and was consumed by flames.

The boy rushed to her rescue and caught fire as a huge wave roared
down sweeping them both out to sea. From the magnificent pyre a
silken phoenix rose and melted into the sweet summer air. Only the
old women remembered that the fairy spirit of the sea took the form
of a bird, and why yes, the Swahilis did call this spirit a jinni.

"I dream of Jeanie with the light brown hair,
Borne like a vapor on the sweet summer air..."
Stephen Foster(1854)

"Malaika"
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=mWFoZIbufhU& feature=related
____________ ____________________________________________

GREATEST KONKANI SONG HITS #5:
___________________________

transcribing the fine music of a great culture - revisiting
the original magic, and recreating a modern idiom:
___________________________

"ADEUS KORCHO VELLU PAULO"
___________________________
"The Farewell Hour is Here"

A. LEGEND: "Adeus Korcho Vellu Paulo"

Adeus Korcho Vellu Paulo: "The Farewell Hour is Here", the bridal
farewell to her dear old home as she departs for her nuptials, was
composed by the great Torquato de Figueiredo for the farewell of
Josefina Cruz and Ubaldino Mascarenhas circa 1905.

The classical mando, an art song expressed in square dance, blossomed
between 1830 and Figueiredo's death in 1948. Serene and sedate,
generally a monologue in the Brahmin Konkani dialects of the South
Goan villages of Loutolim, Raia, Curtorim and Benaulim, three distinct
schools evolved, focusing on varied themes including love, marriage
and longing. Konkani and Portuguese words predominate.

This mando, synonymous with sentimental farewells, was part of the
"xim" bridal departure ceremony where she crossed an imaginary line
strewn by liquor drops into her new spouse's family. Heavy of heart
the bereft damsel is reassured by the kinfolk of her continued place
in their hearts. The minor key lament climaxes into the major, bidding
her godspeed. The moment freezes, but it's "time to say goodbye".

________________________________________________________

B. TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED: "Adeus Korcho Vellu Paulo"

Loutoulim, Goa, December 1896.

The stable-boy splattered the manure as the wedding cortege passed,
but nary a drop stained her trousseau, and he choked with bitterness.
Valentina was his master's daughter, and she was marrying another -
gentry of course. "Vellu" he called her, his Valentine, but she'd
broken his heart into a million pieces, in the stables next door
to the church.

Raging, he piled more saltpeter over the winter charcoal in the
stable, sandwiching the sulfur scrapings he'd gathered from the
disused mine on the village outskirts, as the Chinese sailor had
shown him. Next door the choir struck up Vellu's wedding dirge
"Adeus Korcho" (saying goodbye), alternately sad and ecstatic.
Was parting such sweet sorrow?

Paulo oiled the length of twine jutting from the compost, led it out
and lit it. Tipping past the closed church doors, he quietly bolted
them and slipped away to the neighbouring village, for a drink with
the sailor who had shown him how easily charcoal and saltpeter could
be turned into gunpowder. In ten minutes when the sky burst and the
earth shook, Paulo silently murmured his own ending for the departed
bride "Adeus Korcho, Vellu.....Paulo!"
_________________________________________________________
GREATEST KONKANI SONG HITS #6:
____________ _________ ______
transcribing the fine music of a great culture – revisiting
the original magic, and recreating a modern idiom:
____________ _________ ____________________________________

"ADEUS" from 'Bhueirantlo Munis'
____________ _________ ______
"Goodbye"

A. LEGEND: "Adeus"

Adeus:
"Goodbye" was the surprise summer-hit from the celebrated
composer-musician Chris Perry (Christopher Pereira) and Tony Coutinho's
'Bhuierantlo Munis' (Caveman), the first Konkani movie in colour
(1977). Like Tennyson's brook, this enchanting melody ripples in the
memory. Aside from the regular star-cast led by C. Alvares, there was a
special guest appearance by Radha Bartake (Miss World Teen Princess
1974-75).

The soundtrack included a number of popular dulpods
('Undra mujea mama', 'Combea sadari', 'Tolleabandari' , 'Moddgonvam
Toviaguer') with noted film playback singer Asha Bhonsle rendering the
title song. To the mellow baritone of Adolf went the hit numbers
'Nokre' (with Mabel), and this beautifully articulated "Adeus", an
emotive soliloquy on the transient nature of love, expressed in words
that are as fleeting as time itself.
____________ _________ ____________________________________
B. TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED: "Adeus"

Nachinola, Goa, December 2006.

She
met him on the internet, as these things often do nowadays. Her heart
fluttered at the little Goan village library computer, first because
she was almost thirty, an old maid by Goan standards, and second
because after a month online, she found he was real. He was forty, a
film-singer and lived with his mother in Mumbai, not so far away, and
when she phoned, his sombre bass tones were steadily reassuring. They
exchanged pictures and the streaming words softly turned into love.

Except
that the phone-line kept worsening over the four-month monsoon until
she could barely hear his voice, and so they were back to email. His
messages began to grow in ardour and she responded likewise. His had a
sense of urgency though, encouraging her to develop her artistic
talents, predicting a great future for her. Her? Surely he
meant...them? Was there...another? Still he professed undying love, and
though he never seemed to answer her questions, he did write her
everyday.... .

The mail grew stronger in support, almost as if
he was teetering on proposing, ever encouraging. At Christmas when his
flow faltered, she said it was now or never, and took a train to
Mumbai. She found his apartment, and his handsome old mother welcomed
her. He wasn't there, she said, had slipped away. When night came and
they were alone, the mother broke. He'd been terminally ill she said,
and spent the monsoon writing hundreds of messages for her. "You
mean...?" the girl's heart filled with dread. "Yes, Mabel," wept the
mother, "Email storage is a godsend. I've been forwarding one every day
to you since September. He wanted you to be strong, always. Adolf
passed away three months ago."

"Adeus" from 'Bhueirantlo Munis'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SJtfB4EotQ
____________ _____________________________________________________

GLOBAL GOAN MUSICIANS

2009-06-17T10:25:00.001-07:00

table style="width:194px;">

WORLD BUSK DAY -14.6.2009

http://www.desivideonetwork.com/view/7m7fg23km/a-bard-from-goa/