DR. LUIS DIAS
Some months ago, I received a WhatsApp message from a genuine lover of western classical music which read: “There’s been no classical music programme in Goa for some time.”
Being a true discerning listener, the fact that he sent me such a message despite the ongoing flurry of sacred music concerts that keep circulating in churches, chapels, and convents throughout the length and breadth of Goa like some travelling circus proved that he missed classical music concerts of a truly world-class standard.
I wrote back to him the several logistical issues involved in organising western classical music concerts of a decent standard here in Goa.
This month is an anniversary of momentous significance in my life. A year ago, my nonagenarian mother Dr. Elvira Dias suddenly became quite ill. What seemed like a nasty upper respiratory infection (which had affected the whole household by turn) quickly became a pneumonia. Within less than 24 hours of hospital admission, she had passed away in the early hours of April 10, 2024.
The rapid pace of events was hard to take in. The earliest date at which I could schedule the funeral allowing sufficient time for my only sibling Victor to fly in from the U.S. was April 14, 2024.
Among the mind-numbing tasks of making the funeral arrangements, there was another decision I had to make. We (our music charity Child’s Play India Foundation) had a benefit concert, a piano recital by the award-winning Moroccan-Hungarian concert pianist, arranger, artistic director, teacher at the Liszt Academy Budapest, Marouan Benabdallah on April 13, 2024, just a day before my own mother’s funeral.
Donation passes were already out on sale, and all the other details (hotel booking, flights, performance venue) had been paid for. I had to weigh the pros and cons of either going ahead (“the show must go on”), or of cancelling.
A cancellation, apart from the huge financial loss, would also entail having to post someone at the venue before the scheduled concert start time to inform those who couldn’t be reached through emails and social media, and the headache of refunding purchased passes.
Benabdallah called to offer his condolences as soon as he heard the news and said he was okay either way; it depended on what I decided.
What clinched the decision was what I know what my mother would have wanted. As she aged, she kept telling me that matters to do with her care should never constrain any of our activities. She would have wanted me to go ahead, and so I did. Also, the logistics of just having the concert were less onerous than those of a cancellation.
A Benabdallah recital ought to be something Goa should actively seek out each time he embarks on an India tour. But an organisation with a far more prestigious ambit and more financial resources than our music charity possesses, turned him down. A certain vain conductor and impresario now resident in Goa didn’t even give Benabdallah the courtesy of replying to his emails or messages. Such is the ‘love’ of western classical music in Goa.
This is how and why Child’s Play stepped in for Benabdallah’s concerts in 2023 and 2024, scraping up the money despite knowing we don’t ever recover the costs from donation pass sales because far too few come. Not even from music teachers and students, even of the instrument, barring a depressingly few exceptions.
The April 2024 concert was going to push the boundaries of concert performance, set in a cinema auditorium (Maquinez Palace, Entertainment Society of Goa Panaji), with French Impressionist paintings larger-than-life on screen to complement Benabdallah’s carefully curated concert programme.
Benabdallah’s concert preceded by a few months the celebrity Chinese-born American pianist YujaWang’s much-acclaimed sold-out recitals in September 2024 at the Light Room, King’s Cross, London, where she performed surrounded by giant projections of David Hockney’s art.
But what was the response to Benabdallah’s April 2024 concert in Goa, despite so much publicity? The ‘usual suspects’, perhaps 50 or so.
In the run-up to that concert, I got a message from someone whose family has a friendship with my own going back at least a generation, offering ‘help’ with cancelling the concert. When I told him we were going ahead, any further offer of ‘help’ wasn’t forthcoming, certainly not for the funeral, which actually required far more hands-on help.
He proceeded instead to make an utter nuisance of himself post-concert for over an hour with inane chatter about the aerodynamics of sailing in Dona Paula and endless selfies, delaying an exhausted Benabdallah (who had flown in just an hour earlier and then given a 90-minute lecture-recital), to say nothing of myself, as there was so much left to do at that late hour after the concert and before the funeral, now hours away. In my personal experience, those who pride themselves on their upper-caste ‘pedigree’ and’ breeding’ like show-dogs are the most ill-mannered, egotistical, inconsiderate, boorish and ordinary (ordinário) in their behaviour.
Benabdallah was shocked when he discovered how little (Rs. 200) the concert donation passes had been priced. “Why do you charge so little? Even elsewhere in India they charge four to five times more,” he asked. I explained that raising the donation pass charge would have reduced the turnout even further. As it is, we encounter occasional grumbles about this current amount.
Benabdallah plays to packed concert halls all over the world, even in the rest of India. But the turnout in Goa for any world-class western classical music concert that isn’t free, is disgraceful. Yet Goa still thumps its collective chest over its supposed ‘love’ of western classical music.
Barring a tiny handful of genuine western classical music lovers, the rest that do show up for concerts in Goa only do so if they or their friends, relatives or caste peers are connected to the event either on stage or behind the scenes, and/or the event is free, especially if ‘high-profile’ (“see and be seen”). The throngs that pitch up at the free-of-charge sacred music concerts in chapels, churches and convents are never seen even at very affordably priced western classical music concerts of a far higher standard. Goa’s much-hyped ‘love’ of classical music is just lip service, pure unadulterated hypocrisy.
The sad fallout of this state of affairs is that performing musicians of the calibre of Benabdallah are likely to increasingly drop Goa from their itinerary when planning their India concert tours. In addition to a fickle audience, Goa doesn’t even have a publicly available concert venue with an in-situ concert grand piano.
Given all these hurdles, why even bother with organising high-quality western classical music concerts? Because one lives in hope. Because it is necessary to provide a milieu for at least young minds, hearts and ears to listen to and be inspired by great music performed as it should be, to a world-class standard. It is part of an uphill process of building a discerning audience comprising more people like the person who sent me that WhatsApp message. That should be, and is, its own reward.
