Has Goa gone commercial with music?
He did infact say sorry and said he should have been asked a spiritual question. However, all he said didn’t quite seem just a tongue-in-cheek talk.
A pioneer of Psychedelic Trance music, Gilbert Levey, better known as Goa Gil, was in a nostalgic mood and he reminisced about Goa of the ’70s and ’80s and how no one is making music like him. According to Gil, the trend of DJs and other artists playing at parties and live sets have led to the apparent downfall of the psychedelic music culture of Goa. He also mentioned that the music scene has now just turned into crowds of teens, drugs and sex.
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His connection with India was established at a young age when his grandfather, who lived in India, showed him pictures of India that caught his attention. He came to India in 1969 and turned 18 in Goa. He remembers the days with Mushroom Jack and Eight-Finger Eddie in Anjuna. Eventually, after a lot of travelling around the country and tapasya, Gil became a Baba and gradually, when he discovered his hidden musical talents by 1977, Gil and his friends started hosting parties in Goa’s forests, or on its beaches where musicians jammed with various instruments.
Goa Gil apparently had a lot to talk to Mid-Day. “Goa has gone commercial. No one plays the kind of music I do,” he claimed, “I am the cutting edge of the underground.”
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“We had something special in Goa. Music was our religion. They [the underground mafia who runs the psychedelic show in Goa now] ended it such that we could not play without paying at parties. They took our religion and turned it into their personal moneymaking machine.”
He had made it very clear that he isn’t a fan of the music scene in Goa today, including the various gigs or festivals. But apparently he also apologized about it later. A little indecisive, aren’t we?