Sounds like Remo

When we dial Remo Fernandes on his landline at his Siolim residence we encounter disturbance in the audio ldquoItrsquos been pouring all day Can you hear the pitterpatterrdquo Goarsquos indie music veteran asksWe can But itrsquos the familiar voice at the other end that makes us swing back to the 1980s with a smile On our blackandwhite TV set a Goan musician dressed in funky attire was making the audience groove to ldquoGraham Bell Graham Bell Yoursquore dead and itrsquos just as wellBut if you saw the phones in IndiaYoursquod jump into the wellrdquo Itrsquos serendipitous then that a landline is the connector for this telephonic interviewInfinite Fusion the live band with whom he performed Backstage with celebrated musicians left to right Remo vocals guitar and flute Dinsha Sanjana keyboards Fazal Qureshi tabla Miles Perry bass Rajesh Jhaveri sitar Ranjit Barot drums Dallas Smith saxophone and lyriconOde to Graham Bell was part of a playlist where Indian pop musicians in the early days of the indie music movement performed for the Aid Bhopal concert to raise funds for survivors of the Union Carbide tragedy of December 1984 The grainy transmission courtesy Doordarshan DD hardly mattered to schoolgoers like us It was our first taste of a live gig where Indians sang in English We realised that there could be a musician beyond Michael Jackson Prince and Madonna and he sounded goodldquoWe had some decent programming for music and films on DD back thenrdquo Remo agrees In fact large sections in his justreleased selftitled biography HarperCollins India act as a timeline for Indiarsquos independent music movement Shows like Pop Time introduced Indians to desi pop and rock By the early 1990s satellite TV had arrived Things were looking up ldquoThe music video gave us two thingsmdashexposure to Western artistes and wider accessibility to our own music Before that wersquod be unsure if our music was distributed evenly across India Music videos on Channel V and MTV did the trick It was a golden era for Indipop Then Bollywood got wise and began to rope in the same artistes for films Some of us sang those tunes but kept our identity intact others didnrsquot It was far more lucrativerdquo he reasons Case in point was his jugalbandi with Juhi Chawla for a popular cola brand that took him to unknown corners of India Remo admits that he was lucky to have worked with some of the best minds across art and commercial cinema whether Shyam Benegal Trikal or AR Rahman Humma Humma Bombay ldquoHere all avenues of art appear to have been taken over by Bollywood Some of our finest poets and dancers are working for themrdquo Remo is proud he didnrsquot take the Bollywood route He writes in the book how his father lost his cool just once about his choice of career despite being supportive of the fact that he chose to ditch his architecture degree Sir JJ School of Architecture busk and backpack across Europe and North Africa Later as fame and money came Remorsquos way he admitted to his wife with pride that his son had become rich and successfulPlaying at the Cadbury Amateur Hour for Radio Ceylon in 1963 at age 10In fact Remorsquos childhood seems straight out of Kevin Arnoldrsquos life in The Wonder Yearsmdasha secure happy life surrounded by a loving family friends and music in beautiful Panjim ldquoI feel lucky Even if there was disagreement wersquod never break communicationrdquo he says recalling how on his return from Bombay as a student he told his parents that he had stopped attending Sunday mass ldquoYou read about these episodes where families reunite only at someonersquos funeral That was never the case back then And it wasnrsquot just about family As Panjimites we knew each other and went all out to helprdquo There are instances that reflect the simplicity of the time ldquoI call it the age of innocencerdquo he says referring to when as a teen he brought home marijuana to show his parents who were curious ldquoThere was ignorance about lsquodrugsrsquo At our shows some of them sponsored by Simla Cigarettes after handing over complimentary packs they would tell us that we were too young to smokerdquo he laughs ldquoNow we are suspicious of even the food we eatrdquoHe admits that music has always been riddled with danger ldquoThe owners of venues always offer you a drink before the show I cannot imagine any other profession where this happens You are surrounded by vices Back in the 1970s everybody experimented with drugs In Bombay it was freely available around Colaba and it was a cool thing to try In Goa many from my generation died due to drug overdose It affected our youthrdquo he recalls Years later Remo would become the poster boy for Goarsquos AntiDrugs Campaign composing hardhitting tracks like Pack that smackWith Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull Remo considers this one of his most memorable meetingsAs an architecture student in Bombay Remo admits he tried it allmdashdrugs segwaying between multiple lovers and slumming it in the big bad city He was the hipster musician who got introduced to the Bhagavad Gita from where his discovery of Hinduism began But Bombay wasnrsquot for him Floodprone Love Lane in Mazgaonand the mosquitoinfested hostel in Bandra East crowded buses and local trains were an irritant for the GoenkarBut the next time he came to Mumbai it was as a popular musician ldquoFrom my first visit student to later where I moved around in chauffeurdriven cars and lived in fivestar hotels I saw things differently Bombay is perhaps the only Indian city that exudes industry in every slum and gully I noticed now that beneath a shantyrsquos roof there were people earning money they were industrious This perspective cleared my mindrdquo He paid a hattip to the city in the track Bombay City Bom Bom Bom Bom BombayThey say yoursquore going to blow awayBut I know you wonrsquot I know yoursquoll stayAlive and kicking till Judgment DayHe is glad the book is finally out since he took a sixyear break in between writing He admits that his literary agent Hemali Sodhi wasnrsquot aware of this detail when she received the first few chapters ldquoBut the feedback I received was positive I was relieved that the gap hadnrsquot affected my writing But selfediting was tough How do you fit your life into a hundred thousand wordsrdquo He credits his editors for being accommodatingRemo wrote the final pages in January 2021 bang in the middle of the lockdown ldquoIrsquom leading a peaceful semiretired life with Zenia between Goa and Porto doing the odd show and making music in both studiosrdquo he says Yet there is one production that Remo yearns to complete Itrsquos a precious score for the modern opera Teresa amp The Slum Bum created after an inspired meeting with Mother Teresa in Kolkata ldquoThat might happen in the future but this felt like the right time to end my biographyrdquoWise words from RemoFind your own style Imitation is a great school of learning but after doing that please find your voice Make your own version of the song even if it is a cover If it is a rock song change it to a bluesy one or give it a Latino beat Ensure you tweak the instrumentation otherwise why would someone listen to your music