Regional Classic Folks Music

Goa

The Goa state is the city of performing art that is full of heritage and culture that makes this city as unique.  The music of the Goa makes this city different from the other states and the culture distributes in various flavors of music, drama, and dance. The Goan chequered heritage was symbolizes by the music of the Goa that shows the colored unity in diversity. This music presents the Christian genres, Portuguese, Indian Hindu, and Muslim as an amalgam.

There is a great fact about the Goa as a rich culture in music that lots of the famous names in the field of music have their origin from the field of Goa.  One of the best most famous name is Lata Mangeshkar and other one is Surashri Keserbai Kerkar..

Goa is full of different cultural music highlight and the common language that is used in music of Goa is Konkani. The life of the Goa is full of drama and dance and also these are filled with the Goan music all over there and the music of Goa was also accompanied by the various different instruments that also has good importance. Cymbal and Shehnai are the common instruments used in Goan music.

The songs of the Goa include three genres named Suvari, Ovi, and Mando. There is a traditional touch in these forms of music genres.  The other form of music that spreads very quickly in Goan music flavor that is named as electronic trance music that was generated by the culture of hippies.  The people of Goa also like the pop music with western touch.  The most popular name in western pop music is Remo Fernandes in the music genre.

Traditional Music

There are various instruments that is used in traditional music of Goa are Shehnai, Madlem, Tabla, Dhol, Mridanga, kasale, Ghumat, Nagado, Tasso, Surt, and Tambura.  There is other instruments named Pakhawaj or Mridanga that is built with cylinder of wood covered with skin of goat and used in the musical song that is sung in the temples of Hindus with cymbals and Zanz having Konkani taal. The Ghumat instrument is made by potters of Goa.  It is vessel in shape with both side opened with small and large diameter and the middle portion of the vessel is bulging outward. There is a Konkani sap on the opening side of the vessel that is looked like a wet lizard skin also fitted on the opening that is larger one.  This Ghumat was placed on the left side of the thigh when the song or dance was held.  This Ghumat is used in various rituals that is held in temples of Hindus namely bhivari, mando, and suvari vadan.  Other instrument is Madlem that is played by Kunbis. It is also in shape of cylinder with sides covered having lizard skin.  Next instrument is tambura.  It is very similar to veena as there is also strings present but for concerts of classical Hindustani, only one string is used.

Other famous instruments of music were violin, mandolin, and piano that is brought by the Portuguese to Goa.

There were four classification of the song of Konkani.  The first classification shows the faultless music such as dhalo and fugdi.  The second shows the combination of native and western music but it contains the lyrics of Konkani such as deknnis.  The third one shows combination of native music and western including language such as dulpod.  The forth class includes combination of only Konkani lyrics and western music as well as language of Portuguese named as mando.

The Konkani songs were classified as about 35 types of songs and these are dhalo, deknni, banvarh, dulpod, ovi, mando, duvalo, fughri, fell song, launimm, kunnbi song, zagor song, talghari, plannam, tiatr song, and zoti.  The song of religion of Hindi and Christian is also of its own type.

• On the Burial day, the song Banvarh was sung by the Hindus.
• The song of Deknni has its origin from Salcete, Ilhas, and Bardez.
• The famous wedding song is Dhalo.
• The Goan life was themed by a song named Dulpod, which is basically a dance song with fast rhythm.
• The song of pregnancy is Duvallo.
• The epic of Indian history is represented by the drama based on folk that is named as Fell. This folk drama was started after rains in the months of June till September.  This song of Fell is basically a dance song.
• On various occasions of religion to give honor to the Ganesha’s deity, the dance song Fughri was performed.
• As belongs to the strata, Gaudde is the old Goan inhabitant in combination with Kunnbi. This is a dance song that is very similar to fughri and it represents the life of exploitation in the different manner.
• The legendary theme was shown by the song of Launim.
• The other dance song is Mando, which has love theme as a major and other minor portions are narrative themes based on history, social injustice, and exploitation criticism, and political issues at the time of Portuguese in Goa.
• Ovi is a song of themes having nuptial. It is a versos name given by Portuguese. The word ovi is originated from the ‘vri’, which is a word in Sanskrit language means ‘to select’. The song of ovi included one line that is unrhymed and 2 lines that are rhymed. The unrhymed had 1, 2, or three words and rhymed had 3 or 4 words. There were nine syllables in the rhymed and last line covered 4 or 5.   For the devotional rhymes, ovi form is used very popularly by the Portuguese Christian missionaries.
• Palnnam is basically a lullaby song of cradle.
• The Gaudde song is known as Talgarhi.  This song was performed by the artists that wandered at the time of season that is dry and this song is basically sung at the time of stage performance. This song represents the daily life, life of Goans, and politics theme.
• The meaning of Zagor is ‘to watch’.  The kunnbi plays include this song representing their own life. This song was sung at night.  The song of Zoti is sung at the time of nuptials.

The daily life of the Goa includes the devotional songs that represents the history of Hindus and Christians.