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http://www.goanfoods.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Making music or mimicking? Analysing myths that make up our Goan identity By Cecil Pinto Continuing our review of the Second Edition of the best-selling book 'Debunking the Goan Identity', by Cecil Pinto, we bring you today excerpts from Chapter 7. Here we find attempts to demystify another commonly held view that all Goans have 'music in their blood'. In this chapter, aptly titled 'Disharmonic Stereotypes', the author rips apart the very suggestion that Goans, as an ethnic group, are in any way more musically oriented than any other ethnic group - other than Russians. Read extracts below: "Along with the drunkard and the vamp every Hindi movie portrayed the musicians playing western instruments as being Goan. Over the decades there have been sporadic protests from non-drunkard and non-vampish Goans against this stereotyping. Surprisingly, the non-musician Goans have never raised their voice in discordance. Why do we accept this label when a vast majority of Goans have the musical sense of a constipated water buffalo?" "I am a dyed in the wool born and bred Goenkar. I can't carry a tune in a basket. I'm not quite sure about the difference between Blues, Jazz and Hip-Hop. If I join in a Christmas Carol or a Hymn or even good old Happy Birthday, I immediately get strange looks for being off pitch and people begin to edge away from me. I can't play any musical instrument. I can't whistle or even hum in tune. But I am not alone. I know many, many Goans sailing in the same boat. Not all of them are willing to admit to it though. We try to fit into this convenient romanticised stereotype of having music in our blood." "In a widespread survey done by the students of St. Xavier's College it was found that 97% of Goans could not distinguish between a Mando, a Fado, a Dulpodd or the Macarena." "Explain then to me, if we Goans have good taste in music, why every house has, in their plywood-and-formica showcase (where audio cassettes form a background for miniature booze bottles pilfered from airplanes) at least one George Baker Selection, Best of Boney M and Pussycats Live? Why is the decade that taste forgot, the 1980s, so celebrated only in Goa?" "How is it that a Beat Show featuring five-man bands that mime, except for the guy on the synthesizer who sequences everything, attracts a crowd of thousands whereas a live Goan jazz performance doesn't have more than a few dozen takers?" "What do we sing at family get-togethers? Beatles' medleys, rugby songs and risqué limericks. Except for the chorus and a few lines nobody knows the full lyrics of any Mando - and nobody really cares. Some Goans actually believe that Lorna's songs are Mandos." "Rare exceptions exist, but how many Goan musicians actually compose original music? Dozens of Konkani Pop albums are released every month. Show me one that does not use plagiarised tunes. Where has creativity gone? Does recording an album consist of just fitting in juvenile lyrics to lifted Western tunes? Are all the composers dead and decomposed?" "Goa Trance. Did someone say Goa Trance? Monotonic, repetitive rhythms with strange beats and sounds and an occasional voice saying something about 'Vietnam' or 'The Burning Man' somewhere over the endless boom boom . You call this music? That is artificially synthesized balderdash! And even if there is some 'good' progressive Goa Trance, which is an oxymoron actually, it is probably 'composed' by some German DJ or a British dopehead on a computer in a studio a million miles away from Goa. Dan Ackroyd put it beautifully in the film 'Blues Brothers 2000', to his departing band, 'But remember this: walk away now and you walk away from your crafts, your skills, your vocations; leaving the next generation with nothing but recycled, digitally-sampled techno-grooves, quasi-synth rhythms, pseudo-songs of violence-laden gangsta-rap, acid pop, and simpering, saccharine, soulless slush'." "Forget live bands miming to pre-sequenced music, and one-man-bands acting out to MP3 files played from I-Pods, we now have self proclaimed DJs also claiming to be musicians. I wonder what qualifies one to be a DJ? I mean to be called Advocate Naik or Doctor Dias one needs to go through a certain rigorous professional education - besides of course having the surname Naik and Dias respectively. But the DJ prefix can be claimed by anyone who has a multi-track mixer bought back by his doting father toiling in the Gulf." "Again, with rare exceptions, which of our vocalists have unique style or voices? All they do is try and imitate exactly, sometimes with absurdly fake accents, the voice of the artiste whose cover version they are doing. Do they try to improvise? Do they ever try to put in their own character into the song and transform it into something new? An interpretation or an improvisation - instead of a cloning. These singers don't have music in their blood, they have mimicry in their genes!" "Music schools in Goa teach music by rote. These are the chords for so-and-so song, to be learnt by heart. And then you can answer an exam and get a certificate. Where are students encouraged to innovate, to compose their own music, to defy the rules and experiment? Where is the passion that is the essence of great music? The technical details can be taught and learnt my most anyone. When did the art and the zeal take a back seat? Did Ludwig van Beethoven work in a nationalised bank during the day and play for weddings at night? Did Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart rent out deafening sound equipment, and LCD projectors, as a side-business? Did Mozart's 20,000 watt amps make Beethoven deaf? Where is the soul that should be in the heart of great Goan music?" Other Chapters in the book, debunking myths about Goans, include, 'Can Goans really hold their drink?', 'Hospitality: Whites welcome: Indians not', 'Wanderlust or just plain lust - I wonder', 'How come nobody is sussegado when claiming ancestral property?', 'If Konkani is a developed language give me non-vulgar words for genitalia', and the recently added chapter, 'The thin surface of Religious Harmony'. Excerpts from these other chapters will be published here soon. ------- The humour column above appeared in Gomantak Times dated 13th April 2006. === _____________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. 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