[HCDX] Goa radio claims national record by airing live band

[Mukesh Kumar <thecosmosclub@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Goa radio claims national record by airing live band

IANS[ SATURDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2004 03:45:34 PM ]
 
PANAJI: The radio station here claims to have made
history by hosting a pop band live on air, providing
entertainment to an in-house audience as well as
people across this state. 

"This is the first time such an event has taken place
in India," RJ (radio jockey) Savio of All India Radio
(AIR) Panaji, the successor to the colonial
Portuguese-run Emissora Goa and Radio Goa said. 

On Friday night, the local band Alcatraaz - named
after the former high-security US prison - kicked off
the first in a series of planned live concerts from
the radio station. 

Bandleader Jude Mascarenhas explained the band's odd
name, saying: "Music is like a prison. Once you're in
there, you can't get out. I tried to leave the band
twice or thrice myself." 

Savio and his colleague Bambino said that with Goa's
multitude of Western music bands, the station could
have a number of shows. 

Programmes have been lined up for the next four
fortnights. "But we have at least 12 good quality
bands (in Goa) and dozens of smaller groups here,"
said a radio station official. 

Now part of the nationwide All India Radio network,
this rebuilt station is a successor to a prominent
South Asian station. 

In days when the rest of Indian broadcasting was
turning puritanical - and looked down even on popular
Hindi film music - the Portuguese-run radio station at
the hilltop locale of Altinho in a town then called
Pangim attracted listeners from far and wide. 

Radio Ceylon became a hit on the South Asian airwaves
only later, and as some critics note, it was the
populist-broadcasting policies of a Goa then ruled by
a Portuguese dictator that drew attention to the
talent of top singers like Lata Mangueshkar, whose
family incidentally hails from this state. 

This weekend, AIR FM Rainbow became the first Indian
radio station to host a live music band, rocking right
out of its studios. 

AIR said once a fortnight, Goa's best bands would be
invited to perform in its "Nite of the Fortnight"
shows in a specially designed Western music
auditorium. 

FM radio has been growing in Goa and first got a boost
in the early 1990s from Mumbai-based private players. 

Younger talent and market pressures have pushed the
largely state-funded AIR into being more conscious of
local tastes, rather than being dogmatic about
languages and style. 

Two private radio stations, which were supposed to be
set up in Goa, have not yet materialised. But new
attempts to marry commercial sponsors with local
tastes might help to somewhat recoup part of the sheen
lost by a station that has considerable gaps of
silence between broadcasts, and has sometimes been
charged with being pedantic about what it airs. 

Station director B D Mazumdar praised Goans for
"knowing music, loving music, and creating music". 

Noted fusion drummer "Bondo" (whose real name is
Joseph Ballarmio Fernandes) was chief guest at
Friday's concert. "This is the place where I started
my (musical) life," said a wistful Bondo, whose
sobriquet means an empty coconut in the local Konkani
language. 

He narrated how he got a chance to perform on radio
while still in school, and how the influences of the
tabla and harmonium led him to experiment with Indian
classical music too. 

>From indiatimes.com 
 
Regds. & 73's

Mukesh Kumar 
Muzaffarpur
INDIA>

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