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 and somewhat dissimilar dialects. Today, ironically, when there are so many options available via FM radio broadcasts, radio listening is at an ebb. As youngsters then, we would hunt for popular music. AIR (All India Radio) at Altinho had its daily afternoon fix of Western music, often with 'Yours Truly' Imelda behind the microphone, for maybe an hour or so. For more, we had to struggle to tune in to the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation early mornings or after 6 pm. While the morning transmissions continued till 10 am, by the time the sun moved higher up, propagation was poor and we could only get snatches of music. The station is soon to be 90 years old later this year. Incidentally, for SLBC (formerly Radio Ceylon) fans, there's a rich fare of old nostalgic recordings of this station still available on youtube.com. It's like going back in time, listening to the happy, pre-civil war voices of Vernon Corea, and others. We didn't realise it then, but there was a Cold War going on between Sri Lankan and Indian airwaves. Set up in December 1925, Radio Ceylon was the first broadcasting station of South Asia. From the 1950s to the 1970s, this small David challenged the new Goliath in the making, All India Radio (AIR). Originally, as we learn from the Net now, Radio Ceylon was an asset of the Empire during the Second World War. The South East Asia Command broadcast news of war to servicemen in the East, offering its propaganda to counter that of the Axis powers. In 1952, Indian I&B Minister Balakrishna Vishwanath Keskar banned Hindi film music, cricket commentaries and the harmonium on AIR. Indian listeners shifted en masse to Radio Ceylon. The Sinhala-Tamil conflict later also played out on Lankan airwaves, as did its mistrust of 'Big Brother' India. In the flush after Independence and Liberation, some holier-than-thou stands were perhaps quick in coming. Western influences and English were looked down upon in Goa too. Politics took over in the jostling for air-time, instead of going by popular tastes. In Sri Lanka, there were similar pressures away from the popular, though for some reason the broadcasts from Colombo struck a chord. Was it the partly shared experience of somewhat distant Colonial Cousins in Monsoon Asia? Remember the Jetliners, Mignonne Fernando, Tony Fernando and Vernon Corea? If you do, visit YouTube.com and do a search. Radio Australia, with its own peculiar accents and musical tastes, came in till a little later in the day, and lasted maybe till 11.30 am or noon our time. I often heard this music wafting out of Uncle Jack's home while passing by. Our Tricity Chetana set, as big as a trunk and bought from Mr Dalal in Mapusa, was driven by radio valves; its ability to catch DX (distant-and-unknown) radio stations worked when the weather and radio signals were good. Those were times of import substitution. The other option for Western music was Friday night, Your Favourites from Panjim. This was where college boys and other pranksters sent out mischievous 'requests' in the names of their 'friends'. Or 'Saturday Date' from the distant and lacking-in-power AIR-Bombay, which came between 10-11 pm weekly. I remember how thrilled we were to realise that we could get some more Western music on Wednesdays around the same time, also from Bombay. Nobody knows what happened to the Renaissance Portuguesa programme on Friday nights. Is it still around, or given a quiet burial? These shared memories need to be understood and built on. The past offers us pointers to the future. As we romanticise the radio era, and mourn its shrinking influence, the sad fact is that Goa, with all its music and linguistic talents, is about the only State which lacks a community radio station of its own. Maybe some educational institution or NGO will come forward to fill that gap, and add to our diversity of the airwaves. ### First published in The Navhind TImes. Send your feedback by email to goa...@goanet.org where you can also discuss and share comments/news on any topic related to Goa.