GOAN DANCE BANDS OF YESTERYEAR: SOME PERSONAL REFLECTIONS

by Dr. Cornel DaCosta
cornel@btinternet.com

News on television of the death of Artie Shaw, at ninety-four, included reminders of many tunes made famous by him as an outstanding American clarinettist and dance band leader. These included ‘Begin the Beguine’, ‘Lady Be Good’, ‘Moonglow’, and ‘Frenesi’. These were also tunes that generations of Goan musicians played in Goa, Bombay, Karachi, Calcutta, Nairobi, Mombasa, Kampala, Dar-es-Salaam, Iringa, Colombo, and on the high seas on many ocean liners.

It has often been said that music runs in the veins of Goans. I agree, of course, but want to add that it has flowed with much sentimentality and nostalgia for cultural 'Goan-ness'. Early training in Goan villages particularly on the violin, accompanied by singing in harmony, generated and supported a distinctive Goan musicality and sociability and also created a productive symbiosis between the musicians and those enjoying what they generated.

Every one of the places mentioned above has a narrative to tell, and if only we could delve deeper down memory lane, what a lovely story we would have of so many musicians who gave, and have continued to give, so much pleasure to fellow Goans and others.

In the little town of Mombasa, Kenya, where I was brought up, I recall Goan amateur bands like Abel Correia and his Toe Ticklers, Neves Pereira and his Pieces of Eight, Raul da Costa and his Luar Blues, Edmund Silveira and his jazz quartet, and Nelson Pereira and his Gay Caballeros (before the word gay took on modern connotations!)

Interspersed with the above bands, was my group, the Melody Dance Band (MDB) which played between 1957 and 1961. However, we musicians also played in support of each other when necessary; I personally played the saxophone and clarinet across three bands. Additionally, as Mombasa was a major port, we had the good fortune of having periodic visits from large ocean liners like the steam ships (SS) Kenya and Uganda, which plied between India, East and South Africa, the Mediterranean and the UK. On board these ships, especially on the UK run via the Suez, were outstanding Goan professional musicians. They played alongside local Goan bands from time to time when their ships docked. Further, Goan dance bands between neighbouring East African countries like Kenya, Tanganyika, Uganda and Zanzibar helped to generate variety.

Until about 1960, wind instruments like the saxophone, trumpet and clarinet dominated the dance band scene with the support of rhythm, percussion and other instruments. Subsequently, a major change came about with the electric, rhythm, lead and bass guitars. These effectively replaced the traditional wind instruments. Benny Mascarenhas and his Shiftars in Mombasa, represented this transition which was undoubtedly related to developments in the technology of amplification and the new immense versatility of stringed instruments including keyboards, and to changing tastes of course. With the advent of rock, disco (a little later), and new tempos and rhythms, there was the demise of the slower romantic music. The mellower, melodic music of the romantic 1950s suddenly gave way to much livelier music.

From the stage, musicians invariably had the advantage of minutely observing the goings-on in an arena of overt and subtle behaviour between the sexes. After all, at the time, the dance floor was the 'approved' venue for partners to meet each other and the rituals were clear. All the women in their best gear sat around a hall. The men generally stood around within close proximity of the bar. Basically, they were working up enough courage to get on to the floor, especially if they were new to dancing. The extent to which the younger men were initially fearful of asking for a dance now seems odd but, for many, it was a huge burden that had to be got over! Procrastination at putting one's best foot forward was therefore common. Today of course, sitting at a dance tends to be in set groups at tables and I feel that the prospects of meeting more than the people one came to the dance with have lessened, which is somewhat disadvantageous.

Generally, a dance or large ball would be scheduled to start at 9 p.m., but what was known as "Portuguese time" invariably prevailed. The musicians, having tuned their instruments endlessly, would face an empty hall until about 10 p.m., and the dance would only begin to pick up at about 11 p.m. But when the dance was to end at 2 a.m. nobody, but nobody, amongst the revellers felt that they had had enough and it was normal to go on until around 4 a.m. Indeed, many a time, a band played on until sunrise!

The space between the start and finish at a dance was filled with sets of dances with three or four pieces. Each set stuck to a particular beat or rhythm except when there was a medley. After each dance set, the men chivalrously led a partner to their seat and offered to obtain a drink as well as to book the next dance or two. Today, dancing has largely given way to individuals doing their own thing and one can be entirely creative in what steps one tries, unencumbered by the need to hold a partner. In the 1950s however, Goan men (and perhaps women too) were pretty stressed out about following the correct dance steps from the waltz, tango, Latin American steps and the jive. As there were no dancing schools, everyone had to do some self-learning with the help of old hands who could sometimes be disingenuous and teach some wrong steps for their own amusement. Further, a careful decision had to be made about the choice of a dance. In taking the slower choice, would it be a waltz or a foxtrot? Some could not tell the difference and had to check with others, who might themselves not be in the know, but pretended to be so with bogus advice!

Unspoken messages between the men and the women were often transmitted in complex ways, often through requests to the band to play specific tunes like ‘Have I told you lately that I love you?’. Other tunes in absolute demand were ‘Love Letters in the Sand’, ‘Sail along Silvery Moon’, ‘Unforgettable’, ‘Always’, ‘Eternally’, ‘There's a gold mine in the Sky’, ‘Never on a Sunday’, ‘Patricia’, ‘True Love’, ‘Fascination’, ‘Kentucky Waltz’, ‘Harbour Lights’, ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’, ‘When it's Springtime in the Rockies’, my own favourite ‘You Belong to my Heart’, and every latest romantic tune heard on Radio Ceylon at the time. But there were forlorn messages too in the case of thwarted love with consequent requests for tunes like ‘Blue Moon’ and ‘Return to Me’. There was a general expectation that we musicians, as friends, could play requested tunes at a drop of a hat. This was not always possible, of course, but we became quite good at playing by ear as sheet music was expensive and not widely available. Nor were tape-recorders available except for some very large expensive machines.

Dance bands like the MDB played at least twice at weekends, for dances, weddings, and the occasional Konkani concert. However, although we played Swahili tunes, and even ‘Meri Jaan’, which was the only Hindi number we knew, the call for Goan/Konkani numbers was small. Consequently, the mando, dulpod and the lancer were played rather rarely.

Kenya was residentially segregated and the three 'races' (Asian, African and European) lived quite separately but met in working situations in towns. Although there were a few African bands, Goan bands had virtually no competition from other community groups and therefore played for the Ismaili, Seychelloise, and European communities. As I was politically aware quite early but lived with little or no power in a colonial situation, I had absolutely no compunctions about charging the Europeans as much as I could squeeze out of them, but we often played free of charge for deserving Goan and other causes. The Indian community, as such, thought of us Goans as an odd Indian lot who loved dancing so much. They did not dance publicly then, but haven't they changed much and perhaps even outdone the Goans, through Bangra and other raucous dances now?

For me and the musicians I played with, I can really say that we just lived for the music we played and that regular day work was only a means towards that end! It was immensely satisfying to provide dancing pleasure to so many, and especially when partners were secured in the dance hall with a view to matrimony. While it has often been said that half of all Americans were conceived to the strains of Frank Sinatra, I can attest that our Goan dance bands provided fully to the vertical expression of horizontal desire! The Goan dance band (as with sport and church) was thus, in some senses, the cement that held the community together. It promoted much internal harmony and integration. Strangely, this has not been lost even though the Goan community from Mombasa (as elsewhere) is widely dispersed today. London now has a sizeable population from East Africa. Many are now pensioners but significant numbers meet, at least on a monthly basis, at day socials organised mainly by Goans but subsidised by the local authorities. At such dances, nobody asks for disco or the salsa. All they want is those old tunes we played almost fifty odd years ago, and they had so loved, especially when played by many a revitalised musician of old! We have indeed come full circle in this respect and the old Goan dance band truly lives on.
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Dr. Cornel DaCosta lived in Kenya before moving to London in 1962. He completed a doctorate and then taught at UK universities for many years. In Kenya, Cornel developed a passion for the saxophone, formed an amateur quintet and played dance music until 1961. Subsequently, he also played in London. Cornel’s varied writings have appeared in articles, books and in cyberspace.