It is a
meeting point of Indian and western musical traditions. Unique to Goa, the Mando evolved during the 19th and
20th century among Goan Catholics. It has continuously grown in popularity and
now the 53rd edition of the All Goa State Level Mando Festival will be
contested over two days starting December 18.
14 groups have presented their songs on
the first day while 19 will do so tomorrow( Thursday) The contest will be held
across five categories. Children, Teenager, Traditional, Original and Dance. It
will be a confluence of different generations coming together united by their
love for the Mando. The event is organised by the Goa Cultural and Social
Centre in collaboration with Department of Art and Culture and Kala Academy.
Milagres Mil who is involved in the
organisation of the event said the event was started 53 years ago by the then
president of Clube Nacionale, Bernand Fernandes. The Konkani Basha Mandal took
over the organising of the festival two years later. For the last 49 years
however, it has been organised by the Goa Cultural and Social Centre.
The number of groups have witnessed a steady rise over the
years. Earlier it was not unusual for around 12 to 15 groups to participate and
by the time the festival celebrated its golden jubilee edition approximately 53
groups took part in it.
Mando is described as a form of love song and is mostly sung to
express ones feelings. Be it the good or bad aspects pf love, it was expressed
through Mando. The focus behind organising the festival is to keep the state’s
cultural heritage of folk dance and songs alive.
While gauging every performance, attention is paid to the music,
lyrics, singing and dance. Milagres said, the younger generation were very much
taken up with Mando and he was confident the art form would survive.
There will be three winners in each category. The winners will
be given cash prizes and all the participants will be given a memento and
certificate of participation. Besides this, a mando award will be given to the
group who has done well overall.
The
organisers have had to take many aspects into consideration while setting up
the facilities. Each group has 15 participants and their sitting, parking and
sound systems had to be up to par. Then there were those who played
instruments.
