The Monte Music Festival is enshrined into the cultural calendar as one of the most awaited
cultural programmes in Goa. This year, also celebrating Fundação Oriente’s 25th
anniversary in India, the festival drew to a close with a befitting performance
by acclaimed flautist, Joao Remos Jorge, popularly known as Rão Kyao – the
perfect emissary, who bridges the West and East effortlessly, having learnt to
play the ‘bansuri’ in the Indian classical style as well. This underlay of
western music with Indian classical and Arabic music influence is the unique
style and identity of the maestro.
Kyao, a septuagenarian who believes that
“music is a universal language that brings people together” is the first
musician in Portugal to have a Platinum Record to his credit. His love affair
with India goes back to the 1970s, when he visited India to play at the Yatra
International Jazz Music Festival. Later, he moved to Mumbai to learn the
Indian flute under his guru Raghunath Seth, which resulted in the album ‘Goa’
that was released in 1979. “Goa always felt familiar with a great deal of
commonality yet different in many ways,” he smiles.
Greatly influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, Rão
Kyao accompanied by Carlos Lopes (accordion), Bernardo Couto (guitar), Antonio
Pinto (classical guitar and braguesa) and Belarmino Fernandes or Bondo on
percussion, took the audience through the many defining stages in Gandhi’s life
– paying tribute to his philosophy and spirituality. Original compositions
worked on by ‘rearranging the theme, respecting its integrity and depth but
adding a few Portuguese sonorities’, this was truly a Portuguese man’s homage
to Gandhi.
The quintet touched upon Gandhi’s call to embrace ‘swadeshi’ and
to go back to homespun khadi, which was rendered sonorously through ‘Come Back
to Tradition’. Respecting Gandhi’s deep respectful belief in ecology and
environment through ‘Respect for Nature’ and the musical interpretation of the
‘Salt March’ to Gandhi’s most definitive message to the world in ‘Peace is the
Way’ – they explored every facet in this deeply soothing and stunning recital
that was only elevated by an appreciative audience and a sunset matching their
musical harmony.
The
most evocative of this confluence of the West and East perhaps was most aptly
on display with the emotional hug shared between local percussionist Bondo and
Rão Kyao – both musicians deeply entrenched in their traditional music ethos
yet greatly influenced by the other’s culture. It was a symbolic end to a
festival that is a celebration of a cultural dialogue emphasising our cross
linkages and our stage on this planet as one race, one people.
