1865 Furtados
The harpsichord store
By Vivek Menezes
Musicians in the subcontinent were using so-called “foreign” instruments,
such as the violin, much before the sitar was invented—even before what is
now commonly known as Hindustani music first emerged in north India.
By the 16th century, there were innumerable skilled native users of these
instruments accompanying the church choirs of the Portuguese possessions
arrayed on the west coast—from Goa to Bassein (now Vasai) to Diu.
When the Italian voyager Guiseppe Sebastiani attended a sung mass in
1683—seven choirs accompanied by “flutes, shawms, cornettoes, viola de
gambas and harpsichords”— he marvelled: “I felt I was in Rome. I could not
believe how proficient these Canarese are in this music, how well they
perform it, and with what facility.”
The music largely stayed in church, however, until the Napoleonic war, when
the British moved in to occupy Goa on the excuse of fortifying their
Portuguese allies against Tipu Sultan, who was threatening collusion with
the French to take over the tiny colony.
It was just 1865 when Bernard Xavier Furtado first opened the doors of the
now legendary BX Furtado & Sons in the old Jer Mahal building in Dhobi
Talao, Mumbai, and began selling and servicing instruments to his Goan
countrymen who had settled in the surrounding localities: Cavel, Dabul,
Khotachiwadi.
The British personnel stationed in Goa during that period of more than a
decade found the native converts ideal to serve many of their needs in
India: The cooks could handle beef, the tailors knew how to cut coats, the
bakers managed excellent loaves, and a limitless supply of skilled
violinists, trumpeters and other musicians constituted bands and orchestras
to play the familiar music of home.
With the Goan economy in severe doldrums throughout the 19th century, young
men of the territory were compelled to find work outside. This is when
thousands of them picked up their church-choir instruments, quickly figured
out how to play God Save the Queen, and headed out to seek their musical
fortunes in the cities of British India, and the colonies beyond.
As author Naresh Fernandes has outlined at length in his marvellous Taj
Mahal Foxtrot: The Story of Bombay’s Jazz Age, many of these musicians
headed straight to Bombay, where they were heralded as talented “Italians of
the East”, and soon became ubiquitous performers in the city’s many hotels,
clubs, reviews and restaurants.
The store flourished through the last decades of the Raj, but the Furtado
family eventually ran into financial difficulties. In 1952, a young man, who’d
been buying and selling religious supplies to make a living, learnt that the
store was in liquidation. Just 25 years old, John Anthony Gomes must have
already burnished a stellar reputation because the Goan tailors of the
neighbourhood pooled together the necessary funds, and backed him.
The decades thereafter unravelled like a roller-coaster ride for Furtados
Music India Pvt. Ltd. India was then subject to misplaced cultural
nationalism. The pioneering maestro Anthony Gonsalves was officially
informed that someone like him with a “foreign name” playing “foreign music”
(actually sophisticated raga-based orchestral fusion) would never represent
India. Similarly, imports of all musical instruments were summarily banned
for decades.
Shabby second-hand pianos began to cost as much as cars. Gonsalves left
India in disgust. Meanwhile, Furtados struggled to keep the flame
alive—supporting music education, refurbishing old instruments—as
responsibility for the business steadily shifted to the four Gomes siblings.
At the end of the 1980s, following heart trouble, John Gomes passed the
baton to Anthony, Christopher, Nonabel and Joseph just in time for them to
catch the seemingly unstoppable wave of demand unleashed right after that
absurd ban on “foreign instruments” was lifted in 1991.
With silly old hang-ups about “foreign music” fading fast, Furtados has now
dramatically repositioned itself to nurture, support and reap terrific
benefits from the massively increased interest and demand for the
instruments and music it has specialized in for more than 150 years. Today
the company operates 25 retail outlets around the country, from Dimapur to
Amritsar to Puducherry.
The family-owned company is also the local agent for the Trinity College
London music education programmes. Then there is a Furtados School of Music,
a Furtados Institute of Piano Technology, and another new division that
specializes in music (composition) sales.
In addition, the Gomes siblings are proud of their annual festival Con Brio:
The John Gomes Memorial Piano Competition & Festival, which each year brings
an increasingly impressive line-up to Mumbai’s National Centre for the
Performing Arts (NCPA). This July’s edition featured several A-list
international performers, including pianist Paul Stewart and Mumbai-born
soprano Patricia Rozario.
Leaning over the desk in his modestly appointed office at the Panjim, Goa,
branch of his family’s company, Christopher says, “All of today’s benefits
have come to Furtados because we kept the faith, kept working hard to
satisfy the needs of our customers all through the lean years of the import
ban.” That service ideal of strict loyalty to the customer’s needs is at the
heart of Furtados’ value system, which Christopher describes as “our
trademark, our USP, the source of all the goodwill that we now enjoy”.
Christopher also tells me with visible pride that 90% of Furtados sales
(many of which are big-ticket) are strictly on the basis of MRP, or maximum
retail price. “It is true we don’t offer discounts on price,” he tells me
with a smile, “but there are also no discounts on service, and no discounts
on quality.” Furtados has built an intensely loyal customer base by
reciprocating the near-fanatical allegiance.
It is a most unusual value to nurture in the 21st century, and I saw
evidence of it on a counter outside Christopher’s office while walking out
after our meeting. There stood an array of plaster statues and religious
supplies, all at extraordinarily low prices that couldn’t possibly yield
profit margins of more than a few rupees—certainly not enough to justify the
space they occupied. But this trade has been part of their family business
from the beginning, and that is enough for Furtados and the Gomes family.
They have learnt what it takes to keep a good thing going for decades.
Source:
http://www.livemint.com/2012/08/10205445/1865-Furtados--The-harpsichor.html?h=B
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