Piyo Chai Suno Kahani

We shall have music

Who singlehandedly changed the country’s Western music retail and education scene, being neither a performer nor a teacher? A young man with extraordinary determination, who dared to dream while growing up in the stables of the Wadia bungalow on Malabar Hill where his father was employed as the butler.

“The only thing my husband played was the gramophone!” his wife Antoinette Gomes laughed. What John Gomes innately possessed, though, was faith in the dignity of labour and a head for enterprise that surprised himself.

At 16, he hawked religious supplies around Dhobi Talao. In a while, he heard that BX Furtado & Sons at Jer Mahal in Dhobi Talao risked being liquidated. Established in 1865 by Goan immigrant Bernard Xavier Furtado, the shop sold Catholic articles and serviced instruments for community members in neighbouring Cavel, Dabul and Khotachiwadi. Next door, Bernard’s brother Luis Manoel set up LM Furtado & Co, stocking print music.

The humble tailors of Dhobi Talao (the transit point where seaman inhabiting native clubs called coors got measured for clothes before boarding ship) pooled in funds for 25-year-old John to win an auction bid for BX Furtado in 1952. “If you’re honest, people back you, my father said,” remembers Anthony Gomes, director of the Furtados group of companies and producer of the annual Con Brio (literally translated as “with spirit and vigour”) piano competition festival introduced in 2010 to honour the legacy of John Gomes.

Working diligently through nights, John turned around Furtados’ fortunes within three months. Besides introducing piano hire, he opened a printing press which came to be considered second busiest only to The Times of India’s, with a wedding card manufacturing arm. In 1959, he boldly ventured to buy LM Furtado.

Dogged perseverance alone kept him going, even when it was near impossible to keep afloat with the 1961 government ban on import of instruments. Three heart attacks later, on a visit to Beirut he met Antoinette Ghaleb, who was bowled over by the sincerity of the self-made man and the ideals he stood for. Eighteen years younger, she married John in 1970s Lebanon. Her husband lived till 2003, gratified to watch the next generation of their four children successfully take Furtados forward.

Today, the legendary firm holding exclusive rights to the most iconic international music brands is India’s largest dealer in music books. Furtados also administers one of the world’s largest centres for Trinity College London’s examination board.       

At the NCPA this weekend (July 24 to 27), “Bel Canto”, celebrating the legacy of Italian composers, is the fifteenth edition of the Con Brio festival. It particularly commemorates the 500th birth anniversary of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina – the master of Renaissance polyphony.

Way to go, Furtados. Thank you for the music.