The recently announced Konkani Lyrics Contest 2024 was taken on as a creative challenge by many Goans and that has brought forth an great number of fabulous new songs in Konkani. The contest received 134 new songs in Konkani from 54 Konkani participants across six countries from 20 different languages in music.
The competition, organised by Uzoorba Technologies LLP, Chorao, as a project under its IT-enabled social-impact work, gave participants the opportunity to write lyrics to global hits to promote excellence in Konkani lyrics using Global Hit songs as the musical basis. Vincent Paul Toscano, managing partner of Uzoorba, explains “While Devanagari and Romi were the official scripts for our contest, we received seven Konkani lyrics in Kannada-script from an enthusiastic, senior participant based in Mangalore, Karnataka. Goa contributed the most with 110 entries from 26 locations with the highest coming from Vasco (17) followed by Panjim (14) and Merces (13). All these Konkani Lyrics have been published on our Instagram (www.instagram.com/vangddaa/) and Facebook (www.facebook.com/vangdda) channels for all Konkani lovers to enjoy singing their favourites among these new Konkani songs to their heart's content.” The participants range from as young as 13 years to nearly 80 years of age and hailing from a wide variety of occupations.
With the Stage 1 (entry submission) completed, now the contest is in Stage 2 (shortlist and public scrutiny). “The Public Scrutiny, aimed at checking for any potential copyright violations, has been supplemented with appreciation and celebration for which each of the 134 submitted Konkani Lyrics. As a result, 117 of the 134 entries are now headed into Stage 3 (final evaluation) with the participants presently recording and submitting lyrics demo audio to demonstrate their intended meter, timing and pronunciation style for each of their shortlisted entries,” says Vincent.
Stage 3 is expected to last the entire month of October during which multiple qualitative evaluation rounds will filter the entries down to the Top 20 which will then go for public voting to decide the Top 10 winners. The prize money budget has been increased from Rs 1 Lac to Rs 1.4 Lac with 40 percent assured cash prizes for the Top 10 entries besides certificates and trophies.
Additional prizes have been set up to celebrate and reward the best among the published audios and videos of entries in the contest, including most entries, most source languages in entries, highest Konkani diversity/dialects used, highest Konkani linguistic innovations, best turnaround stories for non-Top 20 entries coming back with the best revisions, best collaboration among different participants using their Konkani Lyrics and skills to create greater joint versions of their original entries and many more.