THE INFLUENCES AND THE INSPIRATIONS

Remo's music is, of course, a fusion. A fusion of all the different cultures and styles he's been exposed to since childhood. As Goa was a Portuguese colony, he grew up listening to Goan and Portuguese music. The Goan music consisted of rich Dekhnis, Fugdis, Mandos and Dulpods, all sung in Konkani, the mother tongue of Goans. The Portuguese music was the Fado, the Corredinho, the Vira. The Portuguese also brought with them a treasure of Latin music: Brasilian, Spanish, Cuban, Paraguayan, Mexican.

When Remo was around 8 years old, a cousin returned from London with a record called Rock Around The Clock by Bill Haley and the Comets. That was his first taste of Rock 'n' Roll in otherwise Latin-oriented Goa. This new exciting sound filled the room—and life changed forever.

While a teenager, along came the onslaught of The Beatles. They remain to this date Remo's single biggest musical influence. They inspired him not just to sing and play, but to write his own songs—and eventually to find his own individuality in his music.

The psychedelia of the 70s were the most creative and barrier-breaking years that music had seen till then. Rock acted as a giant international melting pot, and into this cauldron of exciting Black American soup there came contributions from all over the world: Santana poured in Latin spices, Jethro Tull added Western Classical, Osibisa added African, Blood Sweat & Tears added Jazz, the contributions were endless—and Rock truly become a global voice of universal youth.

Remo decided he wasn't going to copy his rock heroes no more, but borrow from them and add something to the Great Rock 'n' Roll Soup too: he worked out a way to tune his guitar to a sitar [years before John McLaughlin did], added tablas and the Indian flute to his rock band [years before anyone else in India or abroad did], and a new sound was born. Years before its time, unfortunately. Indians could hardly dream of acquiring a passport or foreign exchange then, leave alone travel to western countries; their voices remained unheard.
The term "World Music" would only be coined 20 years later.

When Remo eventually travelled to Europe and hitch-hiked around eight countries during two-and-a-half years ["I'd met a lot of European hippies in Goa; I wanted to be an Indian hippie in Europe"], he returned home with an even more pronounced resolve to make his music truly Indian. Not only his music, but his lyrics too. That's when his songs became highly topical, scathing but humorous socio-political comments on life in Goa and India, giving birth to albums such as Politicians don't know how to rock 'n' roll, Bombay City and Pack That Smack.

His subsequent travels around the world [this time not as a hitch-hiking hippie, but as a renowned Indian artist invited to international festivals and concerts] added greatly to his influences: be it Sega music from Mauritius and Seychelles or African music from Kenya and Tanzania, Latin music from Cuba and Nicaragua or music from the USSR and the Eastern Block, Dancehall from Jamaica or Soca from Trinidad, it all rubbed off to form a fusion which defied compartmentalisation.

The latest great influence is ambient spacey music by artists such as Karl Jenkins & Adiemus, Vangelis, Paul Oakenfold; again, a couple of years before the Buddha Bar series made ambient music a worldwide commercial success, these influences caused Remo to compose and record albums such as India Beyond and Symphonic Chants.