By Mohua Das
Mumbai, Dec 23, 2019: “And oh, for Christmas dinner/Don’t you think it would be swell/ If by some good luck or fortune/ Or by some magical spell/ We would find ourselves in Goa/ With a bottle of cajel/ And toddy-leavened sannas/ To go with Sorpotel/ Sorpotel sorpotel / There’s nothing like Sorpotel!”
Sorpotel, the piquant and bright pork curry that runs in the blood of almost every East Indian and one of the great many reasons to recommend Christmas season in the Konkan belt is as pleasing to the ears as it is to the taste buds these days, thanks to this cheeky six-stanza song in the tune of a pop ballad which has meat-loving Catholics around the city smacking their lips and humming along.
The ode to the seminal Portuguese dish is known to have been written by the Byculla-based Philip Furtado, son of Goan poet Joseph Furtado, more than four decades ago but owes its current fame to a bunch of Catholic priests in the city who occasionally swap their rosary beads for the microphone and the altar for the stage.
Intrigued much? The video of an all priests band of the Archdiocese of Bombay — Ambassadors for Christ — going into raptures about Sorpotel’s superiority over haggis and Yorkshire pudding has clocked in close to 28,000 views on social media. And it’s hard to tell if it is the mock-seriousness of the song or its singers in clergy collar or perhaps the merry fusion of both that is responsible for the craze.
The band made its beginning almost by chance about seven years ago during a priests meet at St. Pius X College (Archdiocesan Seminary) in Goregaon where instruments had been placed on stage and some of those who knew how to play decided to step up and jam. “We decided to meet more often and rehearse to inspire youngsters into believing that priests can do other things apart from conducting rituals. Gradually we started getting noticed and invited to perform at parish feasts and youth rallies,” says Father Melroy Fernandes, pianist turned drummer for the priest band that has performed around 30 shows till date from Colaba and Dadar to Ghatkopar and Borivli.
Named after the motto of the seminary, Ambassadors For Christ is made up of five priests — Father Melroy who otherwise serves as assistant director of the Catholic Communication Centre and helps at the parish of Our Lady of Health, Cavel; Father Alban D’Souza, the acting parish priest at Immaculate Conception Church, Borivali on vocals and guitar; Father Gavin D’Souza, principal of St Pius Church, Mulund on keyboards; Father Reuben Tellis, the parish priest of Our Lady of Mt Carmel Church as lead vocalist, Bandra and Father Omar Fernandes, assistant at St Francis Xavier Church, Vile Parle on bass.
Music is something that has been a part of their lives since their teens but none had ever imagined taking centre stage as a full-fledged band, long after becoming fully frocked parish priests. Father Melroy who was a pianist with a pop and rock band as a teenager recalls his “love for banging around on the drums” but never being able to take it up “because the sound would have killed people in my housing society!” That was until he found his musical calling at the seminary.
“You don’t find too many priests who are drummers, so I grabbed the opportunity,” he says. Fr Reuben started learning the violin when he was seven and then singing at inter school contests; while Fr Alban who helms the band was nine when used a tiffin box for a snare drum and two lids put together with rubber bands for cymbals and called it his ‘Shiny Band’. Today the erstwhile singer-guitarist helms Fourth Quarter a gospel band and Terranova, an all-girls band in the IC parish when he’s not busy with “jamming” with his fellow priests.
“The reality is that there are many priests who are talented in music, dramatics and other arts. Around 15 years ago as the secretary of the Archbishop of Bombay I wanted to organize a two-day open mic for them and call it ‘Father Act’. For some reason it didn’t take off but given the enthused reaction of people now watching priests don a different garb instead of the usual celebration of sacraments or preaching, maybe it’s time to revive the thought,” beams Fr Reuben as he remembers a show at Ambernath when a 13-year-old boy in awe of the performing priests was ready to join the priesthood. “We were happy to have made that connect but we don’t use this platform to preach the Gospel,” he adds.
It helps too that the priests are genuinely fun. Their humor is light and gentle and they sing originals riffed on styles ranging from pop and rock to covers of Elvis Presley, Queen, The Beatles and One Direction. The result is a mash-up of the old and the new, the sacred and the silly that often surprise those who picture the church as lumbering and anachronistic.
Take Father Reuben’s sequel to Sorpotel, for instance, aptly dedicated to another famous dish in the fabled East Indian cuisine, the fiery Vindaloo. The song titled after the spicy meat curry and set to Harry Belafonte’s calypso tune of ‘Man Smart Woman Smarter’ not just delights in the joys of eating it but takes things up a notch by delving into the curious roots of the Portuguese vinha d’alhos.
“Every time we’d sing Sorpotel, the crowd would shout out ‘what about vindaloo?’ So I did a Google study and figured the diversity of the vinha d’alhos, meaning ‘meat with garlic wine’ that has been reinterpreted with vinegar and even misinterpreted with aloo, as in potato!” laughs Fr Reuben.
While their time is largely spent in mass, confessions, praying, blessing, baptizing, and performing a wide variety of tasks within the church, the men feel fortunate to be able to combine their priestly vocations with their role as performers. “It is a challenge but we do make the time to rehearse and we pick numbers that all of us are comfortable performing,” says Father Reuben.
But the parish always come first, they say, and it isn’t always easy to balance the growing demands of their duties especially during Christmas. “Christmas, a season of song and celebrations is actually a difficult time for the band because we are all busy with our own parish assignments,” he explains.
While this group is among a handful of priest bands in the world and primarily pursues popular music that keeps people on their toes, Father McEnroe Lopes is the only priest in the nine-member gospel band of Don Bosco Matunga called Echoes of Zion who performs mostly liturgical pieces, and sees music as an extension of his pastoral work — expanding into the mainstream of pop music-loving teenagers beyond the reach of conventional religion.