Radio Gaga
FN
For most in today's generation, radio is the poor cousin of
television, and definitely not in the least comparable with
the social media. Yet, one generation ago, the radio was the
one-stop-shop from where we got almost all our information,
most of our entertainment and a large part of our non-formal
education.
In the 1960s, not everyone in Goa had access to a
radio. Most villages were yet to get access to
regular electricity too, for that matter. A radio
usually meant a largish Philips instrument, the
size of a big shoe-box. It had to be regularly fed
with fat, probably EverReady D-size batteries.
Two of our neighbours, Assumptina and Natividade (Natty),
were high school girls, whom Mum had an arrangement with to
supervise us primary kids after school. They were drawn to
the radio. It was from them that one got into the habit of
eating food to the tunes of All India Radio in the
background, with time flying by speedily.
Of course we didn't realise it then, but those were the
golden years of Konkani music for Goa, as the film 'Nachoiya
Kumpasar' reminds us so eloquently. Noted musician Remo
Fernandes has also written elsewhere about the discovery of
the Konkani music world of those times, via the records
played at Miramar beach. This charming
Goan-music-made-in-Bombay, in the Cantaram category, took
decades more to be adequately understood (by the German
recordist Sigrid Pfeiffer and the Mumbai-based Goan writer
Naresh Fernandes, among others).
In a way, All India Radio shaped, created and almost dictated
the musical tastes of a generation. Some would suggest that
if Alfred Rose turned out far more popular that his
contemporaries, that was perhaps as much due to his talent
and hard work as to the way in which AIR (or Akashvani)
shaped taste.
Recently, at a workshop on Goa's intangible
cultural heritage, it was noted that AIR Panjim has
about the single best collection of Konkani music
anywhere, and this needs to be both catalogued and
preserved for posterity. The Goa Directorate of
Art and Culture has evinced interest in working on
this goal.
In those times, cyberspace was some decades away and even
books and magazines were quite hard to access. We lacked
libraries then, which were even fewer than now, and the few
that existed were overcrowded and poorly stocked.
(It was only later, in the 1970s and early 1980s,
that private players created a good business model
of loaning out books at a price, per day. These
were mostly potboilers, crime and thrillers, and
borrowed by eager readers. There was Ceco and
Shabbir in Mapusa; Avanti, Sun Circulating Library
and Sophia's in Panjim. In Margao, the busy
Confidant bookshop still runs its Laureatte Lending
Library, in a world which universally voices
concern over the demise of the reading habit.
Children's books were hard to come by; and as
Aloysius D'Souza reminded me recently, till the
1940s and 1950s, there were hardly any
domestically-authored books being published in India.)
In those times, radio was our window to the outside world.
It decided our time-table for us. Pleasant music wafting in
through the airwaves was a signal that it was time for lunch.
This was a new, almost-Pavlovian response. Later on, as a
hig h school and higher-secondary student, one would rush home
in time for the five-minute sports news at 8 pm.
In his ten-page article titled 'Goa's voice on the airwaves',
Domnic Fernandes of Anjuna (earlier in Saudi Arabia)
describes the changing radio scene in the Goa he knew. The
author of *Domnic's Goa: A Romp Through a Bygone Era* talks
of the rare HMV gramophone, and the arrival of radios and
transistors. He mentions the "powerful and popular"
Portuguese-run Emissora de Goa, whose broadcasts even reached
East Africa and the Gulf States.
Post-1961, Domnic [domvalden at hotmail.com] paints a
detailed picture of the people and programmes heard on
Akashwanni Ponn'je. There were programmes with names like
Amcho Adhar, Bhuimchafim, Amche Akashwannir Mudrailelim
Ghitam (locally recorded songs), Kholla Mollar, Your
Favourites, Kandllam Onvllam,Jaymala, Shabduli, Chavdder
Ghozali, Pradeshik Khobro (regional news), Monazoktim Ghitam
or Magnneanchim Ghitam, Foddni Fov, plays and tiatrs and
more.
He writes; "Radio's charm lay in the fact that it
provided entertainment to the whole family, right
from the drawing-room to the bedroom and even upto
the kitchen... I still consider radio as one of
the best media we've encountered."
* * *
In a multilingual Goa, one obvious grievance was radio's
inability to cope with diverse taste, and distinct languages
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