How often do we associate classical music with drugs? Jazz has a much closer relationship, and rock even more intimate. However, electronic dance music is the zenith, the soul of music-drug culture. Do we really need this kind of destructive money?
Electronic dance music in Goa, especially trance music originated in the 1980s in Goa and is a hippy-born-drug-culture baby, and, in no way, Goan. While the music is now associated with Goa, it was nurtured and thrived on drugs during the last few decades. Electronic dance music and, trance in particular, with its robotic beat is the kind of music to which only dopeheads can dance unstoppably all night.
We Goans have a variety of music of our own, including fusion of various kinds of music. We need to promote all, yes, all kinds of Goan music which we have been playing through the ages in various venues. Tell me, isn’t there a lot in our own musical traditions which we can promote commercially? So, why EDMs and drugs?
We need to find ways to promote on a small scale all over Goa all kinds of our music in restaurants, clubs, and entertainment halls in Goa. Electronic dance music is for mega events and is core social centre of drugs abuse and an invitation for people from all over India to participate in. It is irrelevant who sells the drugs or where the users bought them. It is the drug consumer festival in Goa, for periods of two or three consecutive days, and not something the average Goan can wear on his or her sleeve proudly. The drug revelers need to be shown the door. They can go anywhere beyond the borders of Goa.
The money to be made is huge. Although everyone makes money from the fallout of these events there is a heavy social price to be paid by the people who live in the north of Goa. A restauranteur informed me that he makes the most money during the tourist season in December over a period of twelve days. When, however, the music festival is on, he can make even more over a period of just three days. The stakes are high and the stakeholders cannot or don’t want to see the trees from the forests. Our only hope is that the government can!
When I visited South Korea, and SeouI in particular, I was impressed with how they showcased quality entertainment, talented singers and dancers in social centres similar to Kala Academy. There was dinner and drinks and an entertainment programme. Isn’t it possible to have this type of social centre in every constituency in Goa?
