Folk Songs of Goa: Mando-Dulpods and Deknnis

From the Jacket:

Konkani Song, of which Goan Song is the preeminent branch, is a treasury of the traditional music of the Indian subcontinent. It has at least 35 types, monophonic and harmonic, the former prevalent before the Portuguese brought Western music into India, and the latter, consequent to the Western impact. It was in Goa that Indian musicians first began to compose in Western musical forms, incorporating into them motifs and nuances of their own immemorial tradition.

Among these 35 types four were created to accompany social dancing; the Mando, the Mando-dulpod, the Dulpod, and the Deknni. The Mando, the finest creation of Goan Song, is a slow verse- and - refrain composition, in six-four time, dealing with love, tragedy and contemporary events, both social and political. Aryan Books International has published two volumes on the Mando, entitled, Song of Goa, vol. 1: Mandos of Yearning (2002); and vol. 2: Mandos of Union and Lamentation (2003).

While the Mando is an art song, the remaining three types represent Goan folk song. The Mando-dulpod is a slower variety of the Dulpod (or a quicker sort of Mando), also in six-four time, facilitating the transition from the slow rhythm of the Mando to the quicker one of the Dulpod. The Dulpod itself, in six-eight time, is typically descriptive of everyday life in traditional Goa, particularly that of the Christians. The Deknni ("song of the Deccan") is a song imitating Hindu music in the musical idiom current among the Christian, in two-four or six-eight time, descriptive mostly of Hindu life, with special attention given to the temple dancers. The present volume contains examples of the Mando-dulpod and the Deknni. Hopefully a future volume will be devoted to the Dulpod.

About The Author:

JOSE PEREIRA (1931) is Professor Emeritus of Theology of Fordham University, New York, where he lectured on History of Religious. He has taught and done research in various academic institutions in Lisbon, London and Varanasi, and has published 20 books and over 140 articles on theology, history of art and architecture, and on Goan and Konkani culture, language, literature and music.

MICAEL MARTINS (1914-1999), of Ol-lli/Orlim, Goa, studied music in Goa, and in Bombay with renowned music teachers. He performed for various societies in Bombay and Delhi, and led orchestras of films in Bombay. He began collecting traditional Goan songs, art and folk, in 1933, and collaborated with Jose Pereira in recording Konkani songs from 1954, putting together as many as 11,000 number. Martins incorporated several motifs from traditional Goan song into his classical musical compositions.

ANTONIO DA COSTA (1943), a priest, psychotherapist and musician, is currently working in the field of gerontology and ministers to the elderly in Arizona, U. S. A. As a musician he was trained in the Saligao and Rachol Seminaries, the London Trinity School of Music (in Bombay), the Juillard School of Music and Columbia University, New York. Inspired by his mother Arsentina, he began collecting specimens of traditional Goan song from the age of 16, and for several years broadcast mandos, dulpod, deknnis, fugrhis, hymns and motets over Radio Goa, with the assistance of the choral groups he had founded and directed. He also organized concerts of Goan music in Bombay, Pune and Mangalore to expose Goan audience to the treasures of their traditional music.

Konkani, the language of Goan Song, appears to have been in existence by the 11th century. For as long as we have a record, its speakers have been impassioned lovers of music, and if their ancestors, at the time when the Konkani language originated, were singing songs in it, then Goan Song would have been in existence for ten continuous centuries. But whatever has survived of these songs is fast disappearing, their fragile melodies drowned by the noise blaring from the electronic maws of radio and television. It is unfortunate that these songs, as surviving in the 19th and 20th centuries, were not extensively and methodically recorded, when it was still possible to record them. The present work only preserves a pittance of the once opulent treasury of song.

For most of the millennium during which Goan Song was presumably in existence, it followed the musical style of monophony - traditional in Indian music, both classical and folk - which employs a single melodic line without accompaniment. We may assume that songs dealing with basic factors of Goan life and culture - as those referring to religion, childhood, death, occupations, theater and caste - were monophonic in character. Such songs, preva- lent in Goa till at least the end of the 20th century, were in the 16th carried to the Dravidian lands of South Kanara and Kerala by Goan Hindu emigrants fleeing from the Inquisi- tion, which had been established in 1556. It is possible that the Konkani songs that survive in these lands - where the linguistic, literary and musical traditions are so different from the Konkani - may have preserved the characteristics of the Goan music of the 16th century: their study would thus be invaluable for appreciating the development of Goan Song.

With the arrival of the Portuguese in Goa in the early 16th century, Konkani music was confronted with a new musical style, Western European in origin, employing har- mony, where usually three or more sounds combine simul- taneously to form a chord: if there is a plurality of chords, they are all interrelated. It took time for harmony to modify Goan music, for harmonized Goan songs do not appear to have been composed before the 18th century: they include Christian hymns and perhaps songs for folk plays.

In the early 19th century (from around 1830, to be precise), Goan music was impacted by another character- istically Western cultural phenomenon - social or ballroom dancing - that was to affect that music deeply and to inspire the creation of the epitome of Goan Song, the Mando. Goan architecture, as it was being developed at that stage, also favored the practice of dance. In the vast mansions built by the aristocrats, a large hall, the ballroom, was reserved for festive occasions, the high point of which was the dance. Goans became addicted to ballroom dancing: they mastered the dances of the 18th century (the Minuet and the Contredanse, which combine in a kind of synthesis in the Mando); and of the 19th century (like the Lanciers, a variety of the Contredanse, the Mazurka, the Polka and the Waltz; as well as the Pas-de-Quatre, invented in France in 1892). Goan dancers and singers now required their Konkani songs to have melodies that could direct and accompany ballroom dancing. Besides the Mando - and performed subsequent to it - were three other dance-song types, the Mando-Dulpod, the Dulpod and the Deknni.

A brief description of these four types follows. The Manda is a slow verse-and-refrain song, in six-four time, dealing with love, tragedy and contemporary events, both social and political. The Mando-Oulpod is a slower variety of the Dulpod (or a quicker sort of Mando), also in six-four time, facilitating the transition from the slow rhythm of the Mando to the quicker one of the Dulpod. The Dulpod itself, in six-eight time, is typically descriptive of everyday Goan life, particularly that of the Christians. The Deknni ("song of the Deccan" or "in the Deccani style"?) is a song imitating Hindu music in the musical idiom current among the Christians, in two-four or six-eight time, descriptive mostly of Hindu life, with special attention paid to the temple dancers. This volume is devoted to two of these types that follow and accompany the Mando.

The last three types have not been widely studied. The pioneer collector of Konkani folk songs, MIGUEL VICENTE DE ABREU (1827-1884), concentrated on the Dulpod; from 1866 to 1870, he collected many samples of the type ["Um Curioso", Ramalhetinho de alguns hymnos e candoes profanas em portuguez e concani offerecidas a mocidade goana de ambos os sexos. Nova Goa: Imprensa Nacional, fasc.1 (1866), fasc. 2 (1870)]. Abreu's collection was made while dulpods were still being composed; the present collection was completed when their period of composition had long ended. They portray an idyllic world that in our own lifetime has vanished past recall, and which some of us were privileged to witness while it still enjoyed some of its vitality. Among the types portrayed here are the advogad (lawyer), alfiad (alfaiate, tailor), beatinny (pious spinster), bikari (beggar), firngi (paklo, white man, particularly a Portuguese), forvoti (sawyer), harvi (fisherman), iscrivaum (scrivener, notary), inglez (Englishman), kolvont (temple dancer), marinheir (sea- man), maskany (really masollykany, fishwife), mistis (mes- tizo), padri (padre vigar, vicar, padre cur, curate, patiu, priest, from padre-tio, uncle priest), poskar and poskany (from posorkar, shop owner, merchant, male and female), render (toddy tapper), rendenny (toddy tapper's wife), roper (clothier), sonar (goldsmith), tanddel (ferryman) and tovoi mest (car- penter).

Not many folklorists have analyzed the Dulpod. Among the few who have are ANTONIO MASCARENHAS (1916- 1993) and LUCIO RODRIGUES (1915-1973), particularly the latter, who not inaptly termed it "the song of joy". For it describes the life of Goa, such as it was lived in the 19th century and in the first half of the 20th, with joy and enthusiasm: this stands in contrast to the way some Goan writers in Portuguese viewed that life, like the novelist "GIP" (FRANCISCO JOAODA COSTA, 1864-1901) and the short story writer JOSE DA SILVA COELHO (1889-1944). Both saw it as a tissue of hypocrisy and pretense, features which it undoubtedly possessed. The Dulpod, however, depicts the other side of that life, as authentic as the one portrayed by the satirists.

Helpful in dating the dulpods are political events to which they sometimes allude, like the rebellion of Kuxttoba (1869), the Abkary Act (1878), the building of the railway (1881-1886) and the revolt of the Rannos (1895). The songs are for the most part anonymous. But occasionally we have been able to trace the name of the composers, like AZA VEDO DINIZ (1860-1907), ARNALDO DE MENEZES (1863-1917), CARMO ABREU (fl.1887-1894), FRANCISCO MENEZES (fl.1906-1910), GIZELINO REBELO (1875-1931), MEST FILIP (fl. early 20th cent.) and PAULO MILAGRES SILVA (1855- 1931). Not all the verses of the songs attributed to them are necessarily theirs, however; the Dulpod is a folk song, and as such was subject to variation, accretion, and improvisa- tion.