We Goans are a curious lot. We love to talk and write about our hallowed past and extrapolate the connection with our present.
But every time I read yet another self-congratulatory piece on the state of music in Goa, about how we have “punched far above our tiny weight” on the national and international stage despite our geographic size and population percentage, I feel they obscure much more glaring, uncomfortable facts: the missed opportunities and the squandered potential of our youth for so many generations that they’ve become a ‘blind spot’ in our imagination.
I recently made a trip to Mumbai, solely to hear two chamber music concerts at the NCPA (National Centre for the Performing Arts). It’s been ages since I’ve heard a live performance of a Beethoven string quartet or a Brahms piano trio, much less a Mozart or Dvořák string quintet.
This is because in Goa we are deluged with sacred music (not all of it of good quality), to the pitiable neglect of every other form of western classical music or even ‘lighter’ music.
The performers at the Mumbai concerts were billed as “the musicians of the SOI (Symphony Orchestra of India) with Ralph de Souza. The latter name was another attraction for me.
Ralph de Souza and his younger brother Harvey are Bombay (before the city was renamed Mumbai) Goans. Both are living violin legends. Harvey de Souza is concertmaster of the prestigious Academy of Saint Martin-in-the-Fields. But for now let me focus on Ralph.
Among the pantheon of legendary string quartet ensembles of all time, the Endellion Quartet (which recently disbanded in 2020 after over four decades) is up there with the Busch, Borodin, Amadeus, Alban Berg, Kronos, Takács, Ébène, Guarneri, Emerson and Lindsay quartets.
I’m pretty certain Ralph de Souza is the only Goan-origin (Indian-origin, even) string player ever to earn a place in a string quartet of this superlative caliber. He has been in the Endellion since 1986, quite soon after its formation.
The NCPA and SOI have wisely grabbed him to mentor their musicians and students. Just imagine what a valuable pedagogical resource such an experienced chamber musician can be.
Again, curious as we Goans are, we ought to have been vying to get the de Souzas to perform and to teach our teachers and students. But barring one appearance by Harvey de Souza as violinist in the Indus Piano Trio in 1989 (with Fali Pavri piano; Evan Drachman, cello), in all the intervening decades, we haven’t tried to bring either of them here.
Mumbai (the Mehli Mehta Music Foundation, MMMF) on the other hand, roped in both brothers in the Sangat Chamber Music Festival (SCMF), established in 1996 and which ran for two decades.
The opening paragraph about the SCMF on the MMMF website makes this crucial point: “The string quartet has been the prime basic factor of my entire musical philosophy”, said Mehli Mehta [Maestro Zubin Mehta’s father] a long time ago. It is chamber music that he spoke of, the very soul of western classical music that is the heart of the SCMF.”
A festival like this should have been initiated much earlier in Goa, but hasn’t. We should have rolled out the red carpet for the de Souzas, as MMMF did, by virtue of the Goan connection if nothing else, but we haven’t. Mumbai ‘gets’ the core importance of chamber music in not just broadening the horizons of aspiring music students, but as nourishment to society at large.
Without government, philanthropic or corporate sponsorship, it is difficult to get even a string trio (let alone a quartet) into Goa even from Mumbai (much less from overseas). A string trio would entail four flight fares (one for the cello), accommodation, performance fee, hall booking and publicity. It is impossible to recover this from donation passes or tickets alone.
Goa has the wherewithal for extravaganzas like Sunburn and electronic dance music (EDM) with budgets exponentially higher but not for something as intimate yet as vital as this.
We have money for vanity projects, for highways and bridges to nowhere, for unnecessary second airports, but cannot invest a tiny fraction of that in the future of our own children and youth.
It is just as well that the de Souza family was based in Bombay, not in Goa. I say this because (and I quote from the concert brochure): “Ralph was put on an aeroplane by himself at the age of ten to go to the Yehudi Menuhin School (YMS), where he found himself sharing a room with Garfield Jackson and Nigel Kennedy.”
Nigel Kennedy is the world-famous British concert violinist; and Garfield Jackson (although neither of them could have foreseen it then) would become Ralph de Souza’s colleague as violist in the Endellion Quartet.
What would have been the plight of a ten-year old, however inclined or ‘gifted’ to music, in Goa? If they were lucky, they would have gotten into the Kala Academy (KA) at the age of eight and been in their second year of whatever music instruction was available, by ten.
Instead, the de Souza siblings were sent much earlier to the renowned pedagogue Melbourne Halloween. Although apparently an ‘unorthodox’ teacher, to put it mildly, nevertheless the fact that Ralph could get into the YMS (and Harvey followed later), and then went on to the equally prestigious Curtis Institute some years later speaks volumes of the robust early foundation they both received.
Quite soon Ralph’s exposure to chamber music at the Marlboro Festival of chamber music in the United States, listening to and playing chamber music dictated his choice of career path, to be a professional chamber musician. The rest is history.
How many generations of home-grown Goan children have slipped through our fingers without even knowing where their God-given potential lay, how far it could be taken, and could take them? Think of the Biblical parable of the ‘talents’. Don’t we as parents and elders owe this to our children?
Is it so far-fetched to envisage something like this here, an honest-to-goodness milieu for high-calibre teaching and performance?
So much can be achieved just by creating more performance spaces for classical music other than sacred music (for which we have churches and shrines galore), preferably with in-house concert-grand piano. It’s a one-time investment in our youth and society that will repay huge dividends.
The Poona Music Society has an active concert calendar, largely through hosting visiting soloists and chamber music ensembles that anyway perform at the NCPA. Mumbai-Pune is much closer than Mumbai-Goa, but it’s still quite do-able if there is the bureaucratic will to make it possible.
By default, the KA spaces (sadly temporarily closed but hopefully reopening soon) are our answer to the NCPA. Like the NCPA, the KA should be curating, years in advance, a lively year-round concert calendar not just for western classical music but for every genre of music, theatre and dance. A partnership with the NCPA is eminently possible. Every performer I’ve met loves to come to Goa.
Let’s not get intoxicated by our own hyperbole. We lag far behind Mumbai just next door. We have to first be jolted out of our complacency to do justice to our children’s as-yet-untapped potential.
(Dr Luis Dias is a physician, musician, writer and founder of Child’s Play India Foundation. He blogs at luisdias.wordpress.com)