This story is from July 6, 2020

Goa’s popular tiatr singers jostle for online space

Goa’s popular tiatr singers jostle for online space
A video by Francis de Tuem has garnered almost a lakh views in 3 weeks
Panaji: For those starved of entertainment in these times of Covid-19, Francis de Tuem provided a pleasant surprise last month.
Francis, the Konkani stage’s king of political songs and a perennial nightmare for politicians, started his own official channel on YouTube. His new song, ‘Yes Boss CM’, garnered 99,825 views in just three weeks, and for those without their dose of tiatr and kantaram since the lockdown in March, this was as good as it got.
“I was getting rusty sitting at home.
We have to stay in touch with our fans. If we cannot do shows, this is the next-best thing. It’s important for all of us to make our presence felt online,” said Francis, whose hard-hitting songs get lustily cheered.
It’s not just Francis who is attempting to reach out to fans through YouTube. Realisation has dawned on everyone that it will be quite some time before normalcy returns. Without the popular tiatrs, not just income, but adulation has stopped too.
Lawry Travasso

Lawry Travasso in a recent video
So the cream of Goa’s Konkani singers have now started their own channels.
While Lawry Travasso, Rosario de Benaulim and Edwin D’Costa already had their own channels, they are now being given a run for their reputation by the likes of Olga Vaz, Marcus Vaz, Saby de Divar, Socorro de Santa Cruz, Junior Reagan, Justin de Santa Cruz, and more-recently, PeteRoshan, whose song on Sushant Singh Rajput quickly garnered 61,425 views.

“What hurts us is when people with fake accounts on social media download these videos and upload them on their pages. That’s only done by frauds. You can forward the link and listen to the song on YouTube itself,” said Saby, who has released two new compositions, ‘Seafarers’ and ‘Lockdown Korun, Dilem Borun’.
For most, the online shift is out of compulsion rather than choice. There is no money to earn, at least for now, as channels will need 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watch time within 12 months to start generating revenue. But the tiatrists are here for the long haul, and believe that growing popularity will eventually help them make some money.
“The first aim is to stabilise ourselves online and add subscribers. Making some money out of this will happen only much later,” said Socorro.
Lawry Travasso, possibly a cut above the rest in this business, already has 101 videos on his official channel. While several have been forced to take a backseat, Lawry hasn’t stopped, uploading at least one new song a week. “Lockdown made it all the more important to reach out to our fans,” said Travasso, who has now started an online signing competition called ‘Singer No 1’, where 30 contestants have submitted songs and videos.
The online shift helps not just in satisfying fans across the world, it also aids in documentation. Francis, for example, has lost count of the number of songs he has composed since becoming a professional in the late nineties, and now feels the need to document everything.
“Long after we are gone, hopefully people will talk about us and our songs. There should be something available for a different generation to know what we did. We grew up listening to M Boyer and others on radio. Maybe someone will remember us after watching these videos on YouTube,” said Francis.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA