The 'G.O.A. Retirees' is an offshoot of the larger Goan Overseas Association of Toronto and comparatively much younger than its parent. It is one of the many older-member Goan-majority associations in the Greater Toronto Area, and holds its own in terms of energy and organization.
Its recent function was a pre-Christmas treat. Rarely does one hear music from the 60s and 70s played on real string, wind and percussion, nothing synthesized, mixed or electric about it. The players were in the main, resettlers in Canada from Africa, who knew how to select the pieces they played by reading their audience well. The whole thing was reminiscent to me of Bombay of the Golden Music Era of those years, the time of band-leading stalwarts like Cyril Sequeira, Johnny Baptist, Micky Correia, Maurice Concessio and the like. A week or two before that, was a similar treat; another band just like this one, playing great music at an event of the 55 Plus Goan Association. When it rains, it pours. It doesn't take much of an imagination to see these men as young boys in Kampala, Nairobi or Dar-es-Salaam, playing their hearts out to make a few bucks, or to impress pretty girls, or just because they carried the musical genes of their parents. Two of the latter who played, were Errol and Tom Francis with whom I proudly share grandparents though I have been handed down no such talent myself. There is a lot of music in the souls of the men and women of the Goan Diaspora. Started in the rooms of the village church with violins and guitars, or in the grand 'salles' of the landed gentry on expensive pianos or in schools where music was an important part of education, albeit with chrome-peeling saxophones or clarinets, the boys and girls in Goa, the parents and grandparents of the current amateur musical talent in Toronto and elsewhere, took to it like seeds in wet and fertile ground. Certain readers will recall with fond memory Johnson and His Jolly Boys playing in Goa. Excellent musicians all and coming from all parts of Bardez, they could read music well but played from memory even better. Those were days when electricity was a very iffy thing even in the big towns, but upstarts like the Tuna Sparks who depended on electronic instruments were offering a challenge to JJB. Organizers of big functions whether weddings or dances were engaging Johnson as well as his rivals in a two band billing. Johnson would play his half of the function and when it was the other band's turn, the electricity would go off and Johnson would quickly be asked to return. Rumour had it that it was Johnson who arranged for the juice to fail but since he didn't charge any more than he was promised, nobody knew the truth. However what did happen was that people stopped engaging the other bands, JJB regained their hegemony and their electronic rivals slowly bit the dust, one by one. By the time utilities became more reliable, Johnson had retired from his beloved music as undisputed king. I have seen and written about our Goan musical talent before, in my article on the Aunties of Dhobitalao, describing it as the music of much pleasure wafting in the air as you walked down the narrow lanes of Dhobitalao. Even now it never ceases to amaze me any less than painstakingly cooked meals by your grandmother in a Goa kitchen that was once filled with smoke from burning twigs and leaves under a huge cauldron that was heated to give you the hot water for a refreshing bath. That same smoke by the way, also cured her sausages to perfection. There must be many other things that Goans were, are and always will be good at. Me, I am happy with just the music. For the Roland Francis Linkedin profile, see https://www.linkedin.com/in/roland-francis-9769a97 Comments can be sent to roland.fran...@gmail.com Forwarded by Eddie Fernandes