Book on Goan music, focussing on mando, released in India's smallest State

Aug. 22, 2010 - PRLog -- PANJIM: Goan song has ten different types, and 34 sub-types. Goans initiated the Westerization of Indian music, and pioneered in Indian ethno-musicology, offering a model to preserve India's rich folk music, says a new book.

'Song of Goa', which was released at Hotel Mandovi on  July 30, 2010 (Friday) at 4.30 pm at a well-attended and music-filled event, says Konkani Song focuses on three aspects of life: its ultimate meaning, its crucial moments, and its festive occasions.

There are religious songs, songs of childhood and marriage and death, random folk and art songs, occupational songs, songs of the Gaurhos (Gauddi) and Kunnbis, theater songs, dance songs (including the Mando), and popular art songs.

Religious songs include the Fugrhi (a Hindu dance song, for religious festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi), God-dde (a folk Ramayan), Launnim (popular Hindu songs on legendary themes), sacred Christian and Hindu art songs, and many others. There are even pregnancy songs (duvallo) and lullabies (palnnam), among many others.

But this book focuses on the Mando, a dance-song. Its main themes are love and reports of events (fobro), social and political in nature.

But its favourite theme is love, oriented towards marriage, where the lover years for union with his beloved (utrike), achieves that union (ekvott), or laments his failure to realise it (villap).

"As a dance, the Mando, India's ballo nobile, was the last aristocratic social dance created anywhere, faithful to the idea of cortezia, joi and amor," adds the book.

The 497-page book is co-authored by prominent scholar Dr Jose Pereira, outstanding Goan composer the late Micael Martins, and expat priest-psychotherapist and musician Antonio Costa.

This first-ever Goa edition is the work of alternative publishers Goa,1556 and Broadway Publishing House, an affiliate of Goa's largest bookstore.

Giving hint of the importance of this tiny region to music, the book says it was in Goa that Indian musicians first began to compose in Western musical forms, incorporating them into motifs and nuances of their own immemorial tradition.

ENDS

# # #

A book publishing venture in Goa, India. We mostly focus on non-fiction books related to Goa. Launched on a rainy day (June 20, 2007), Goa, 1556 is a quest to do things differently, and with goals that are different. Our aim is to democratise the production of knowledge. In our own small, alternative way. And we strive for quality simply by laying down high standards, while actively pursuing the goal of creating space for 'other voices' to be heard.