09 May 2023  |   05:48am IST

The sweet symphonies on a shellac disc

For about half a century prior to 1940, audio was recorded on discs commonly made from shellac resin, until they were replaced by vinyl records. The memories associated with one of the oldest forms of recording will be brought back to life at a presentation by Nalini Elvino de Sousa, as she will be presenting ‘Kantar Goa: a shellac disc study at the intersection of cosmopolitan Bombay and colonial Goa (1910-1961)’ on May 10

Dolcy D’Cruz

‘Kantar Goa: a shellac disc study at the intersection of cosmopolitan Bombay and colonial Goa (1910-1961)’ will be presented by Nalini Elvino de Sousa on May 10 at 6.45 pm at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, Altinho, Panjim.

The presentation focuses on the performance practices from the state of Goa in India, along with the practices that were taken by the Goans to the city of Bombay and developed in other performance practices such as the cantaram, part of the Goan tiatr.

In the early 1900s, the recording industry created commercial discs from resin secreted by female lac bugs for music recording and Goan performance practices thrived in Bombay’s shellac disc industry. Interestingly, shellac is a resin secreted by the female lac bug on trees that are found in the forests of India and Thailand and India was one of the biggest exporters of shellac discs while United States of America was the biggest importer.

Nalini is currently a second year student of Aveiro University, studying in the department of Communication in Arts (DeCA) and part of the Centre of Studies in Music and Dance (INETmd). “In 2021, I received a scholarship to be part of the project Liber|Sound which aims to liberate the musical heritage contained in obsolete media (78rpm and magnetic tapes) by using innovative archiving processes to reactivate memory. The project proposes studying the shared political histories and common languages and musical transits through four different archives located in Portugal, Brazil, Mozambique and Goa. The archive being studied in Goa is that of All India Radio (known previously as Emissora de Goa). The case of Goa in unique because, while the other three archives shared Portuguese as their common language, the performance studies encapsulated in these shellac records are in Konkani. Unfortunately, I have only had access to photographs of the labels,” says Nalini, who directed the award winning documentary film, ‘The Club.’

Research on studying these discs has gained importance in the 21st century, and Nalini Elvino de Sousa is among those following this trend. She is presently one of the grantees of the V M Salgaocar Fellowship Grant. Nalini will highlight the results of her research findings and will express her concerns about preserving Goan performance traditions on shellac discs which is a vital aspect of Goa’s musical legacy. “Shellac discs have to be preserved very carefully. They break very easily and also get scratches. They cannot be stacked as the discs can break with the weight. Unfortunately, with advancement in technology, scratches on the disc can be repaired and the record can be played as new,” says Nalini.

The Gramophone Company which is now known as Saregama India Limited was established in Kolkata in Belliaghat in 1908 and immediately started recording under the label of His Master’s Voice (HMV). “Later, other studios were established namely in Madras, Delhi and Bombay where the Goan community had already settled. Even though there are different performance practices in these shellac discs such as mande, dulpods, decknis, my research is focused on the cantaram. This performance practice is part of the Tiatr to this date. The drama usually has six to seven scenes and in between these scenes two or three cantaram are performed. With the advent of recorded music these cantaram emancipated from the tiatr,” explains Nalini.

While researching at All India Radio, Nalini also came across two shellac discs with speeches by Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. “I had access to discs and covers by many Goans which included Mando, Dehkni and Dulpods but All India Radio had speeches which would not be avaible with private collectors. There were no facilities to record shellac discs in Goa and one would have to travel to Bombay to record their songs,” she says.

She further adds, “My field work has been interviewing people who listened to these performance practices and have kept their own private collection of shellac discs which, at times, coincides with the one present in AIR. I have received support from many individuals such as Justina Costa, Albert Cardoso, William Rodrigues, Savio Rodrigues, Cecil Pinto, Glenis Mendonça, Tomazinho Cardoso and Rafael Fernandes just to mention a few.

The first Konkani shellac disc seems to have been written in 1908 and mentioned in a pamphlet kept in Joao Agostinho’s personal archives. This archive was carefully digitized by the former director of Central Library Carlos Fernandes and two copies have been kept in Tiatr Academy of Goa while the original remains in the Central Library.”

With the subsequent advent of the radio, Goans in Bombay and Goa could listen to these cantaram. “However, it is important to note that between 1908 and 1961 two other emancipations took place: the independence of India in 1947 and the integration of Goa in India in 1961. All these events had an impact on the cantaram being studied, not only the broadcasting of the cantaram through radio but also in the themes they addressed. Analysing the broadcasting of the cantaram in AIR Bombay and Emissora de Goa, the photographed labels, the listening (when possible), will give us information that may not coincide with what is already written in Goan history. That is what makes these discs so appealing.”

Nalini also focussed on songs by C Alvares, Remmie Colaco and Jacinto Vaz in Goa. The labels also provided information on when the record was first broadcasted and the date would be inscribed in pencil. What were the challenges so far in the research? “I spoke to C D’Silva, who is one of the senior most tiatrist in Goa and he informed that he had a gramophone in the house to play these shellac discs because his father was working on the ship and he could afford it. It was a big commodity in those days with the radio being slightly cheaper. All could listen to it at a time and the radio would be on and one had to listen to whatever genre of music was played on the radio,” she informs.

On Wednesday, Nalini will be talking about her research so far and the difficulties she has encountered along the way. The talk will be followed by discussions. As part of the project, she intends to produce a documentary that portrays the sensitive transition of Goa as a Portuguese territory into a state of the Indian Union which is expressed in the musical repertoires performed by Goan tiatrists who lived between the 1920s and the 2000s.