Goa’s popular popstar Remo Fernandes has come up with a new single on COVID-19 pandemic while in quarantine, taking a dig at the penchant of a section of Goans for discrimination against migrants and religion-based discriminatory trends across the country.
According to Remo, the song released on YouTube on Friday is styled on lines of the late 70’s rock bands playing in garages “using only live rock band instruments (electric, acoustic and bass guitars, and an electric piano), and one-drum track which I programmed”.
“I had decided I would not to do a song about COVID-19. But then this is not a ‘wear your mask/wash your hands/stay at home’ song. It is also not a ‘pray and God will save you’ song. It’s a song about human mentality and behaviour. Before, during and after the pandemic,” Remo says in his introduction to the song.
The song’s lyrics critique the penchant for ‘othering’ commumities and according to the Padmashri awardee, the Chinese currently top the Indian priority list for discrimination. The lyrics go thus:
Before this pandemic,
We screamed Ghannti! Immigrant!
Muslim! Christian! And Hindu!
After this pandemic
We shall scream:
Ghannti! Immigrant!
Muslim! Christian! And Hindu!
But right now we can’t blame any of these Right now we are down on our knees
Right now we dare not even sneeze
So we transfer our hate
To the Chinese!
Remo is considered a cultural icon in the coastal state. And apart from his peppy Bollywood songs, Remo’s songs and music have been part of several popular civil society agitations in Goa in the past.
