I love music. I mean, I looooove music. There’s nothing quite like it, is there? It just sets the tone for pretty much everything. You can perk up a sad day, or drop the mood if things are getting boisterous. And Goa has a very vibrant music culture. We sing; we dance; we create absolute pandemonium. And pandemonium has so many different fronts. It can be of the most wondrous kind, which is undertaken by my dear friend Tony Dias, who has had every band memorise the arrangement, so that he can sing along with them, no matter how sombre the mood; and then you have the disgruntled. And it is in honour of the latter that I write this particular piece.
So as I have already summed up, we have a vibrant culture, one that restaurants in particular endorse and generate plenty of revenue from. The ‘live music’ tag associated with restaurants in Goa is perhaps greater than any other part of the country. There is (broadly speaking) no entry fee, and it accompanies your meal just like any other factor that determines the ambience. I have been blessed with the glorious combination of being amateur chef, writer, musician and an absolute world-class liver of life. As such, these venues could well be where it all comes together for me; where I can see things from every last differing point of view. So what really gets my goat is when people go to a place that has live entertainment, and then complain about it. I have had diners come up to me, or even worse, send a ‘message’ with a steward to turn the volume down.
Can you tell the bad to turn the music down?
No. You cannot tell the band to turn the music down. There are so many factors that go into play into getting their sound just right. So that you, yes you, a grumbling member of the audience, can take the best possible experience away with you. And at the end of the day, there may well be other people who could be there to listen to the same band that you don’t want to; and who want to experience things the band’s way.
But I’m here to eat, not listen to them!
You may well be, but did you miss the sign which advertised for that live music that annoys you so? Did you not hear it over the wall as you walked in? The constant sound of you whining about the band could be as annoying to the diner at the next table.
I think that this is where sensitisation comes into play, and this must come from both ends. As a restaurateur, you need to identify your target audience. Decide what you want to market your establishment as. If you have a small space, which is completely enclosed, the last thing you want to do is have live entertainment, unless it is completely unplugged. The live entertainment module works wonders at certain venues. Wednesday nights at Cohiba in Sinquerim and their Friday counterparts at Cavala in Baga prove that beyond any measure of doubt. However, they have the infrastructure to undertake that kind of endeavour.
Which brings us to the need for sensitisation, from the diner’s point of view. If you know that a venue or any establishment that you may be planning on going to has entertainment that is according to you, playing at an unacceptable volume; don’t go there. And yes, that can quickly be countered by the statement, “I like the food there, why shouldn’t I go?” Well, if you choose to, then take it for better or worse, for its food and the entertainment that comes with it.
At the end of the day, entertainers at restaurants are there to entertain. My father played as a drummer in a band when he was in his teens, and he would often recount tales of how sometimes people would come up to his lead guitarist, Alvito Barreto and would tell him to ‘tone it down’. Alvito’s sole response would be to max his amp out, because he believed, just as I do, that if you’re a musician, sometimes you need to just ‘play it loud and play it proud’.
