Goan Music

Joyous songs of praise and worship waft from the interiors of magnificent churches at the crack of dawn in picturesque towns and villages across Goa as the faithful congregate for Holy Mass. In the fishing villages that dot the many miles of pristine beaches, fishermen sing happy songs as they set out on their country boats to gather the fish of the deep.

India’s legendary singer Lata Mangeshkar and her equally illustrious sister Asha Bhonsle hail from Goa, their musical genius shaped by their father Pandit Deenanath Mangeshkar. In the 80s, popstar Remo Fernandes gave depth and breadth to Indipop, composing songs of angst and hope and even making the seamless crossover to Bollywood film music, with a series of hit songs in blockbuster movies. His Konkani and Portuguese folk songs, his poetry and his wizardry on flute and guitar still enthrall audiences in India and abroad.

Goa’s music is rooted in its state language Konkani, which survived Portuguese hegemony; its cadences and textures enriched by writers, composers and singers, making it even more intrinsic to the Goan ethos.

Goan popular music is ever evolving, influenced over the centuries by the folk music of Portugal and its colonies, its strong roots in western classical music strengthened by the educational system and church choirs; its Hindustani music percolating from gharanas that survived British rule in the rest of India and given new life by resident maestros, and in the late 60s, 70s and 80s swamped by acoustic and later electronic dance music created by Flower Children and other seekers of a more happy and content way of life.

In the early years of the 20th century, Goan musicians including pianists, accordion players, percussionists, saxophonists, trumpeters and other practitioners of wind instruments migrated to Mumbai and became a part of the club and fledgling movie industry. Film music legends like RD Burman worked with these musicians to create the original fusion music that is now accepted globally as the Bollywood genre. Goan musicians also set the Kolkota night club scene on fire and many found places in Big Bands in the USA and in Europe. In the 40s, 50s and 60s, most great cruise ships had bands with more than a sprinkling of Goan musicians.

It is the heady, frenetic musical scene that gives Goa’s culture an exotic zing. Konkani music and song is a treasury of the traditional music of the coast with over 30 monophonic and harmonic strands. It was in Goa that Indian musicians first began to compose in Western musical notations and forms, incorporating into them motifs and nuances of their own musical past. The Mando and the Dulpod, the most popular schools of Goan folk, were honed to perfection in the 19th century as they increasingly became an accompaniment to social dancing, especially the Mando that became a part of the social swirl - in ballrooms, clubs and at church functions.

The Mando is a verse-and-refrain composition, in six-four time, that arcs towards love, romance or tragedy. The Dulpod ellipses into the more mundane everyday, the couplets compressed into catchy, foot-tapping tunes, the staccato beats segueing into syncopated rhythms in such well-known choruses as Maya-ya-Maya-ya or Lia-lia-lo.

Other forms of Goan music include Savari, Banvad, Cantaram, Dasra Vadan, Gadya Ramayan, Gaun Kani, Gosavi Gayan, Gudulya Geetam, Jat, Lagan Geet, Lavni and Pavada.

Music and song has also evolved in Goa’s rich Tiatr (Konkani theatre), where traditional music has now been wedded to western pop, creating both peripheral and central musical counterpoints to vignettes of intense social and political drama.

And there is the globally popular Goan Trance, electronic music that developed in beach shacks and discos in the late 1980s and early 1990s, its beats laced sometimes with the haunting strains of Buddhist and Gregorian chants. Trance moved from here to the West, especially Israel and has been succeeded by Psychedelic Trance aka psytrance.

The free spirit of Goa makes it a melting pot of sounds and styles. From live bands that play evergreen rock and pop tunes to mega electronic and dance music festivals like Sunburn, Goa resounds to a constant and eclectic mood music all its own.

“People often tell me they can hear a Goan touch in all my music. When they say ‘Goan touch’, I know they mean the famous Goan confluence of Portuguese, Latin, South- American (specially Brazilian) and Indian cultures. Whether it be a pop, rock, chill-out or Bollywood piece I have composed or sung, they claim to hear this ‘touch’. I guess that is what Goa does to a son of the soil - consciously or sub-consciously, Goa is with me, within me, in everything I do, compose, sing, write, think or feel. Whether I want it or not.”

Remo Fernandes, Musician