SONGS OF GOA (No. 2) : Mandos of Union and Lamentation

Konkani Song, of which Goan Song is a preeminent branch, is a treasury of the traditional music of the Indian subcontinent. Its 35 types include the monophonic and harmonic varieties, the former prevalent before the Portuguese brought Western music into India, and the latter, consequent to the Western impact. It was in Goa that Indian musicians first began to compose in Western musical forms, incorporating into them motifs and nuances of their own immemorial tradition. Among the 35 types figures the Mando, a dance song typically of quatrains, often having appended choruses, set in sixfour time. Its main themes are love and events, the latter social and political in nature. But its favorite theme is love, oriented toward marriage, where the lover yearns for union with his beloved, achieves it, or laments his failure to realize it. The melody of the Mando is uniformly melancholic, but the text scintillates with luminous imagery, as of suns, stars, flowers and diamonds. As a dance, the Mando, India`s ballo nobile, was the last aristocratic dance created anywhere.