Between the Sword and the Pen, lies the Guitar
Nostalgia's gripped people like never before - you read it in the papers, see it on TV, hear it in conversations and relive it in your reminiscences. American guitar-manufacturer, Fender, released a re-issue of their legendary Stratocaster electric guitar of the 70's with the punch-line, "Accept it, you are nostalgic about the 70's!" What date-stamp better than the music-genre of the period in question? When you listen to a song of days gone by, doesn't it remind you of a particular incident of that time? Sometimes, it's the other way round too - speak of the 60's and you think of The Beatles but for most locals of Daman (a former Portuguese colony) over the age of 50, it's about the Liberation.
It was morning, December 18 1961, but I thought it was night. All the windows of the house where my parents, as also the wounded Portuguese governor, Brig. Costa Pinto, had sought refuge from the bombers flying overhead, were shuttered and the electricity being cut off, candles provided the only light. During each of those bombing raids in the two-day siege, my parents shielded me with their bodies as they stood between a wardrobe and the inner wall of the house, as if clinging to their only possession while all the little boy in me could think of was a chance to have a peek at the fighter planes!
We soon got our freedom from the 400-year Portuguese rule and Damão became Daman (though Goa did not become Gowa and Diu did not become Div). People began to adopt the new system, adapt to mainland Indian culture and etiquette, and adjust with the new currency as they attempted to build a new life from what could be salvaged. But while the sound of guns continued to echo in our ears in the aftermath, I suddenly realized that there was a silence that was much louder than this din and which I thought only I could hear - it was the absence of music. That's when I joined the elders in the search for lost possessions. I cannot forget that glorious moment when I finally found my treasure trove in the attic of my grandparents' house - a hand-wound HMV gramophone with a huge stack of 78 rpm shellac records.
I would play the gramophone the first thing when I woke up in the morning and the last thing I did before going to bed. I used up box after box of styluses and dabbed the records with cotton buds dipped in kerosene oil to remove the grime that got into the grooves. One day, I did not go to school, staying home listening to records all day, trying to figure out the parts of the songs and identifying the instruments. And my parents as well as my class teacher, approved of it! That was my first taste of freedom.
It was only when I turned 15 that I found my music teacher - an old man who had been a church violinist before he took up to the bottle. He agreed to teach me European music theory. The sessions lasted the entire monsoon, 'classes' being held in the shelter of his umbrella under pouring rain as he supervised the transplantation of the rice crop in ankle-deep water. Notebook in hand, I soaked in the music. No, we did not have printed music sheets so he wrote melodies in ink in my notebook and made sure I got to sing pieces I had never heard or set eyes on before. When I could sing a difficult genre called 'Motet', he sent me off on my own with the advice to buy an instrument, preferably a violin, if I could afford one. It was here that my mother, who used to sing harmony in the church choir as a girl, stepped in and suggested that I take up the acoustic guitar. She said girls in her time loved guitar-playing 'guys' more than football-playing 'boys'! That was when I got my first guitar, back then in the 70's and I went on to acquire a line-up of 15 guitars along my road to freedom.
I have also done my share of songwriting - lyrics came first and then the melody, the guitar being my primary instrument for writing though I often use arranger keyboards for my OMB performances. I started writing songs in the late 80's when I learnt that Stevie Wonder was blind and that the Beatles could not read music notation and that it was perfectly okay to write by ear. After all, music per se is written for the ears and notation, tabs, etc. are but means to an end. Music is a means of experiencing as well as expressing freedom and, the guitar is a celebration of this freedom.
Click here for part-2 (December, 2011)
Copyright © 2005 Noël Gama
http://www.noelgama.com
Soon it will be Christmas Day
'Last Christmas, I gave you my heart...' goes the popular song by Wham! And come to think of it, we all look forward to Christmas and yet when it’s Christmas Day, most of us look back, reminiscing.
I remember the early 60s in Daman when people would start collecting eggs weeks in advance, carefully writing the dates on the eggs and storing them under layers of rock salt in tins. Back then, the ovens were not electric but made of clay and known as panela de barro, fueled by burning coconut husk which was sold in gunny sacks. Sugar was 'controlled' by the ration-shops and so just like the ants, we too would ingeniously start hoarding sugar, even going to the extent of using the quota in the ration cards of domestic servants who did not need sugar, preferring toddy to tea!
By the 10th of December, housewives in groups of about six would gather in the kitchen of one of their houses every night after putting the children to bed and, with coffee and gossip to keep them going, would make sweets like boroas, queijadinhos, bolinhos do coco, etc. Coconut and egg yolk were the common ingredients. In Portugal, the wine industry until recently used the whites of eggs in their processes and the residual yolks gave birth to the delicious sweets industry. I think no other sweet symbolized the fusion of the erstwhile colonies better than Bolinhos do Porto which is made of just 4 ingredients viz., coconut symbolizing India, raw egg-yolk symbolizing Portugal, cocoa symbolizing Africa and, sugar the universal ingredient!
'But the times, they are a-changing...'croons Bob Dylan and home-made sweets are giving way to off-the-shelf sweets from Bandra, caroling giving way to recorded music, e-mails replacing Christmas cards and so on.
But there is one thing that has solidly withstood the test of time and that is the humble Bolo de Sura, a modest cake made of flour, eggs, jaggery and for leavening, toddy from which it gets it name (‘Sura’ is toddy in Portuguese). In the days of plenty, this cake was made for giving to the poor on Christmas Day. To this day, a slice of this poor-man's cake adorns every platter of sweet that is exchanged among neighbors and friends, rich and poor.
Just like the Yule Pudding of the English, the Bolo de Sura is Daman’s own Christmas cake symbolizing the very spirit of Christmas.
Noël Gama
02.12.05
Copyright © 2005 Noël Gama
http://www.noelgama.com
I remember the early 60s in Daman when people would start collecting eggs weeks in advance, carefully writing the dates on the eggs and storing them under layers of rock salt in tins. Back then, the ovens were not electric but made of clay and known as panela de barro, fueled by burning coconut husk which was sold in gunny sacks. Sugar was 'controlled' by the ration-shops and so just like the ants, we too would ingeniously start hoarding sugar, even going to the extent of using the quota in the ration cards of domestic servants who did not need sugar, preferring toddy to tea!
By the 10th of December, housewives in groups of about six would gather in the kitchen of one of their houses every night after putting the children to bed and, with coffee and gossip to keep them going, would make sweets like boroas, queijadinhos, bolinhos do coco, etc. Coconut and egg yolk were the common ingredients. In Portugal, the wine industry until recently used the whites of eggs in their processes and the residual yolks gave birth to the delicious sweets industry. I think no other sweet symbolized the fusion of the erstwhile colonies better than Bolinhos do Porto which is made of just 4 ingredients viz., coconut symbolizing India, raw egg-yolk symbolizing Portugal, cocoa symbolizing Africa and, sugar the universal ingredient!
'But the times, they are a-changing...'croons Bob Dylan and home-made sweets are giving way to off-the-shelf sweets from Bandra, caroling giving way to recorded music, e-mails replacing Christmas cards and so on.
But there is one thing that has solidly withstood the test of time and that is the humble Bolo de Sura, a modest cake made of flour, eggs, jaggery and for leavening, toddy from which it gets it name (‘Sura’ is toddy in Portuguese). In the days of plenty, this cake was made for giving to the poor on Christmas Day. To this day, a slice of this poor-man's cake adorns every platter of sweet that is exchanged among neighbors and friends, rich and poor.
Just like the Yule Pudding of the English, the Bolo de Sura is Daman’s own Christmas cake symbolizing the very spirit of Christmas.
Noël Gama
02.12.05
Copyright © 2005 Noël Gama
http://www.noelgama.com
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