Goa Psychedelic Trance did a lot of good and bad for the State. It put Goa on the music map of the world. It brought in revenue to the state, and the country on the whole. Today, however, we are talking about how it choked live music and brought it to a standstill for more than a decade — between the early 1990s and the early 2000s — and how live music is finally back on its feet.
Ori Balak, the founder of Drum Walla, a percussion store in Anjuna, recalls that in the 70s, music on the beaches resonated from the live jams that brought together musicians from all over the world, with their instruments in tow. He says that Goa Gil was then famous as a bass player. It was only years later that he became famous as a trance DJ.
“In the 1980s, many foreigners had arrived with large speakers, transported by buses over the then-open land routes from Europe,” says Dinaz Colognese, a Parsi from Mumbai who moved to Goa in the 80s. This sort of amplification changed the face of partying in Goa. What was earlier multiple clusters of musicians jamming turned into a single set of musicians for a larger scale of live entertainment that drew crowds. “I heard that around this time there were people DJing using cassettes and portable audio cassette players,” says Ivan Pinto, the founder of Art Café Parra.
At the end of the 1980s, electronic music had set in and the 1990s was known for the trance movement. Business owners and live musicians speak about that era with a sense of resentment. Richard, who runs Sri in Vagator and whose family is known for running Shore Bar in Anjuna, calls the trance party goer “a generation deprived of love”. The electronic bassline was almost all pervasive and there was little escape from it in North Goa. When the big millennium party arrived, Goa had become a party destination. Ivan says, “Earlier, it was a place to get away from the action, but suddenly it was the place to go for the action.”
Except for the locals who held on to their traditional music, live music almost did not exist during the 1990s. Paco Rodriguez of the Kundalini Airport and Sitarsonic says that even though he was in India almost every year since 1994, he did not play live till 2004 — around the time that the law had changed and the trance parties were kicked out for good.
Once the law changed back, party goers were sorely disappointed, but looking back today, this has been healthy for the live music ecosystem. Yes, there is a clearly defined space for EDM festivals like Sunburn and Supersonic, but these festivals feed off from the peak tourist crowds of late December.
For the rest of the season and the year, there is enough live music to nourish the soul. Today, musicians from across the world and India are increasingly moving to Goa to play, compose and jam. Nipsi Belliappa of BLaNK, one of the musicians who moved from Chennai to Goa less than three months ago, says that whenever she feels like it, she bikes up to Studio Ra near her house and records a tune.
This avatar of Goa has allowed collectives like the Art Escape to crop up. This organisation now has some great festivals under its belt, including the International Jazz Live Festival 2014, this November. Audiences, sponsors and, of course, live artistes are possibly in the best space for this kind of work compared to the last two decades.
