Stanley Pinto reviews the first ever Konkani Jazz CD. Pinto is a Jazz singer and pianist who has rubbed shoulders with global jazz legends, even while managing an international ad agency.
I have known for fifty years that Jazz knows no boundaries. It started in the USA, at the hands of Blacks born of African slaves. Perhaps the only good thing that came of World War II was that American soldiers and US Army bands spread Jazz wherever they went. And then later, as part of a strategic front to win over the Soviet-influenced countries during the Cold War, the US started Jazz radio broadcasts to the world. So many of us cut our Jazz teeth on the late, great Willis Conover's programmes that worked on so many levels. It resulted in the formation of the Polish Jazz Society, with the largest membership in the world. The Romanians sent a band that transformed their country's folk songs into jazz forms to one of the international jazz festival I staged in Calcutta in the 1970s. I even have a recording of Russian Jazz from those years. Who'd have thunk it? So how could Goan musicians and singers not one day gravitate toward Jazz as a genre of music? All I can say is it's taken too damn long. Admittedly, we had many legendary Jazz musicians of Goan origin performing in Bombay and a few other Indian cities over the last century. But Goan Jazz performers, home grown from Goa's soil, and in full-time residence in Goa? As I say, it's taken too damn long. But that's apparently a foible from the past. Goa now has a growing jazz culture thanks to people like Armando Gonsalves who started to stage concerts on the balcony of his mother's home in Campal while we sat in the streets enjoying it over glasses of feni and more. And now we have the bassist Colin D'Cruz who has exploited the digital age to take a group he calls Jazz Goa around the world. Not a day goes by that I don't receive a Facebook message from Jazz Goa, almost always with a clip of Jazz from Goa. This morning I received the first jazz CD featuring singers and musicians from Goa. Finally, God and St Francis Xavier be praised, Goan Jazz! The CD is full of surprises. Imagine, Sonia Sirsat, the accomplished Fado singer who weeps her peerless fados regularly all over Europe and specially Portugal, attempting a Jazz-flavoured song. Imagine the resurrection of Lorna Cordeiro, famous for her discovery by the great Chris Perry and her tumultuous relationship with him. She's back at age 70-plus, still the same little girl with the big voice that startled us out of our seats when Chris first unveiled her at Firpo's Lido Room in Calcutta. There's Queenie Fernandes, all innocent charm, a Nora Jones audio doppelganger. Her style, like Nora Jones', is ... 'no style'. It worked for Nora Jones as it does for Queenie. Her second track on the CD is an old, much loved Goan song, the heartbreak of a lover's farewell. It had me in tears, remembering a love I not long ago lost. But of the individuals on this CD, listen specially to Mozart Rose, Seby Fernandes and Mesha Philipine. Their performances, unique in their styling and voices, took me to Cuban jazz. To Tito Puente, Chucho Valdes, Mongo Santamaria, Chano Pozo and more recently the delightful Buena Vista Club whom I heard at the Marciac Jazz Festival in the South of France, and whom I then followed to Havana. This emerging Goan Jazz is in the spirit of Cuban Jazz. Listen to Mozart and Seby and Mesha and tell me you don't hear echoes of Ibrahim Ferrer and Omara Portuondo and Celia Cruz of the great Buena Vista Club. This is not to ignore the other singers on the CD. While not of the purist Jazz genre, Verphina Dias and Susan Rocha's reliving of our own Goan mandos is delightful, there's a lurking mischief in Veeam Braganza's voice as she swings on about Go-aaah, and the velvety crooner Andre Souza whose voice is something to cuddle up to when the witching hour finally comes. Providing fine support to the singers are the accompanying musicians, clearly hand-picked by Colin for their special skills. Gerard Machado is a lovely guitarist in the old style, from what is now my home town Bangalore. God bless Colin D'Cruz, for he is perhaps one of the last musicians playing the upright bass in India, something few of the nouveau bass players have the courage to attempt. Gerard and Colin's work throughout the CD is top class. Instrumental Jazz at its best. And finally there is a sprinkling of soloists who, with names like Олег Каспер, Bob Tinker, Helga Sedli and Mtafiti Imara are clearly expats, bringing more value to Goa than we have come to expect from too many others who have flocked to the easy life in Goa. Did I remember to say Jazz knows no boundaries? Well, now those boundaries have stretched to our Goa. It's taken too damn long, but it's never too late. April 2016 https://www.facebook.com/notes/colin-dcruz/at-last-the-first-konkani-jazz-album-its-taken-too-damn-long/10154123627676477