Pitching Higher- Jose Neil Gomes

Pitching higher   

January 14, 2015

Multi-instrumentalist Jose Neil Gomes from Benaulim is in demand in the music scene in Mumbai. Choosing not to get too comfortable with the commercial music scene, he will soon be releasing his first in a series of nine albums.

LISA ANN MONTEIRO  

Jose Neil Gomes plays the violin, guitar, cello, saxophone, flute, clarinet, and piano -among other 20-odd instruments -with equal ease and élan. All of 27, he is much in demand in the commercial music scene in Mumbai. The youngest member of Sufi artist Kailash Kher’s band Kailasa, Gomes is also part of vocalist Sunidhi Chauhan’s troupe travelling from Australia and Auckland to Trinidad and Tobago for shows.

It’s difficult then to believe that Gomes born and brought up in Benaulim didn’t particularly enjoy learning the violin as a young boy and never saw music shaping his future. He left home at 13 to be a priest, joining the seminary in Saligao and then Rachol. When it was time to decide on a college he enrolled at St Xaviers in Mumbai choosing to study journalism. It was here that he was exposed to different genres of music and musicians. He picked up the violin again, this time willingly, learnt a few horn instruments too, played for the college band and was hooked. Before he knew it he was receiving offers to play jingles, background scores and accompany musicians including Sidd Couto, Jazzy Joe, A R Rahman, Hitesh Sonik, Vasudha Sharma, Sherrin Varghese and Imaad Shah. He realised that priesthood wasn’t his calling. Music was.

But he isn’t cut out for the commercial scene, a firm believer in the art of music. “If the producer tells you what to do then that’s not songwriting. When doing jingles you’re already given a situation and this for me is the most crude form of art because you’re just collecting the energy that is around you and converting it into something tangible. Some good work may come out of it but it’s not art at all. It’s all about copy pasting,” he says.  

In the past he says there would be a single man handling the scene between the musicians and the ad film director. Today even for a thirty second jingle there will be not less than five people from the media company and another five from the client’s company who don’t have the slightest clue about  music and have heard little else beyond Bollywood music, telling the musicians what and what not to do. “It’s like taking human boredom and making it sound flowery,” Gomes vents.  

The commercial scene has allowed him to earn very well and travel the world and it’s very easy to get comfortable with that kind of life he says. “There’s a lot of work coming for me and it’s up to me to say this is not the work I want to do.” He owes this drive within him to his formation in the seminary. “It kept me on my toes all the time and this has helped in my song writing. It’s quite a deal to arrange 63 songs at one go and it has come because of that constant pushing and striving to be better,” he says talking of his latest songwriting project Grass is Green. He has plans to launch a series of nine albums with nine songs each, titled ‘A Stitch in Nine’. Of the 81 songs, he has 63 ready with arrangements a few of which he has already recorded. His first album is on the eclectic side with a mix of instrumental, lyrical and choral music. He began working on his project four years ago and decided to take it slow until he found the right people to work with. Guitar maestro Sanjay Divecha will be producing his first album and he hopes to have a worldwide release too. 

The independent music scene in the country depresses him. There’s no money and no crowd for good independent music. “When there’s crappy music playing there are crowds and crowds. I’ve had friends playing at the Royal Albert Hall in UK and the Nokia Theatre in LA and in Moscow too where wealthy Indians can afford to spend and are big fans of this type of music. In Bombay where you’d think people would come out and support you, the independent scene is dead. It’s the talented musicians who work hard who don’t get work. It’s very commercial. I’ve been looking at commercial music as paid rehearsals for me.”

Indian songwriting tends to be stale and he says it is his prerogative to bring in fresh new sounds. “Mediocrity has permeated through all genres of music. Even our electronic music is stale where it is only the hardcore commercial guys who play other people’s songs and mix them sometimes using melodies from traditional music. Electronic music can be really very beautiful because you have so many more options. In Berlin and Amsterdam the quality of electronic music is so progressive and futuristic, years ahead in time.”

He wants to follow the traditional method of recording his songs- writing them first and then going to the studio to record them instead of fidgeting on a computer where so many changes are possible and there are no time constraints. “If it is a three minute song I want to be able to nail it in three minutes where there’s no second chance. The computer has made recording it so lax giving one so many options. It has slowed down the process of song writing. I believe in the traditional method.”  

Gomes still yearns for Goa and is trying to record traditional Goan music before it is lost. He has played at Goa Chitra’s Retro-spective nites and hopes to visit his State more often should the independent music scene improve.