END OF INNOCENCE:
Kismet & Lethal Ethel
Ethel Da Costa, Vijayan Almeida, her partner in this one year affair, and his associates from KISMET, the band that notched second place in the recent "Battle of the Bands" were there to bring home, through music and song the awful reality of child abuse.
I was honored to release their single"The end of innocence" a track with Ethel rapping and singing to the hip-hop rock sounds, riding on top of the rythms of the taaso. THis innovative music blast from KISMET showcased the remarkable poetic and singing talents of our well known writer.
It was an evening of firsts. Ethel has always been a deeply emotional writer with the word "hypocrisy" absent in her personality and therefore everpresent in her searing exposures of the double standards world around her.
Her poem throws back the veils of indifference: "we're guilty of a crime we shrug away" and whatever the NGO's do, the public awareness and support is desperately absent. The "jingle of the money" makes us blind.
"Hypocrisy and pretense" push aside the "cry in the distance", "the whisper of pain" of the fettered hands and battered bodies,"danching feet shackled in chains of sand". It unleashes a warning on the abuse of child innocence and makes us wake up to reality.
Rapping was another step in the right direction. Initially nervous, she agreed to closet herself in a recording studio booth and conquer her fear with outstanding success. And while she was there, she also found her singing voice.
A thunderous ovation after the playing of the CD has launched her into a singing career. She exuberantly informed me that she has written two more songs in one day. Her lethal voice will now be heard on sound systems everywhere.
It was Kismet(turkish for fate) that brought them together. They were two people coming from different corners of creativity and finding they had one mind, one desire to write a song about the burning current issue - Goa-centric, tourism related child abuse. Ethel's poem was impatiently waiting to find a strong Voice and Vijayan was fired by the words to find the sonic parellels to the emotions.
So the song was conceived spontaneously and took one year for a glorious delivery.
In the intervening period the band Kismet has reconstituted itself with fresh blood of young guys who have decided to cast aside their careers in electronics, dentistry, commerce and priesthood to sacrifice themselves on the altar of music. Their passion generates high octane music.
The End of Innocence has laid the foundation stone of an album featuring Kismet and Lethal Ethel in a social issues album. THey have songs in the pipeline waiting to be processed in their creative crucible.
by LES MENEZES
[email protected]
phone: 9850456036/0832- 2462626
(the author is a renowned music critic, and an expert in Corporate Communications and literature, retired Professor of English from University of Canberra, Austrailia)