Remo Fernandes
Encyclopedia
Luís Remo de Maria Bernardo Fernandes, more popularly known as Remo Fernandes (born 8 May 1953) is a pop
/rock
/Indian fusion
artist and playback singer
from the state of Goa
, India. His musical work is a fusion of many different cultures and styles he's been exposed to as a child in Goa and in his later travels around the world. Such influences include Goan
and Portuguese music, Sega music
from Mauritius
and Seychelles
, African music, Latin music from Cuba
and Nicaragua
, the music of erstwhile European communist states, those of the dancehalls from Jamaica
and Soca
from Trinidad
. Writing and singing songs in English made his success more distinctive in the context of the Bollywood
-dominated, Hindi language-based, occasionally even disco
music scene that was popular in the 1980s and 1990s. His music, reflecting life and socio-political happenings in India with which every Indian could identify, became popular largely with the growing, English-educated, Indian middle class
. A popular stage performer in India, he has also taken part in many music festivals around the world. He now writes and sings his songs in five different languages, English, Hindi, French, Portuguese, and Konkani
.
was at the age of seven, when a cousin returned from London with "Rock Around The Clock", a record by Bill Hayley and The Comets. He claims that it changed his life forever. He spent the next decade of his childhood listening to music of that era's most popular icons:
In school Remo developed natural guitar playing skills and along with a talented peer group friends, Alexandre Rosario,Rex Fernandes, Nandino Lobato Faria, and Caetano de Abreu; formed a school band named the Beat 4. After graduating from school Remo went on to earn a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the city of Bombay (now called Mumbai
). His love affair with music continued, often bunking classes to work on his guitar technique. He began writing his own songs, playing solo or playing with different bands including one called 'The Savages' led by Bashir Sheikh.
Being one of the few cities in India at that time with a niche audience for Rock Music, he played in concerts and venues such as Shanmukhnanda Hall, Rang Bhavan, and in all the major college campuses of Bombay. He tried to bring an Indian element to the music he played tuning his guitar to make it sound like a Sitar
and taught himself to play the Indian flute
.
After graduation, Remo came back to Goa and immersed himself in its once famous Hippie
culture. He met a group of traveling European artists who named themselves the Amsterdam Balloon Company, playing in their parties at Baga
and helping organize concerts for them. Much Later in his life, Remo would team up in Amsterdam with Lucas Amor, one of the violinist in this group, and cut a song called Venus And The Moon. He formed a fusion band Indiana with two others around this time.
Between 1977 and 1980, Remo traveled to Europe and North Africa, hitch-hiking around eight countries during a span of two-and-a-half years, often singing and passing a hat around in underground stations and pedestrian streets to get by.
He performed in shows with fusion rock bands, such as playing an electric guitar with Rock Synergie in Paris. Almost settling in the West for good, he changed his mind and returned to India.
Remo Fernandes recorded his first maiden album Goan Crazy and a subsequent album Old Goan Gold
, on a four-track cassette Portastudio
recorder in his home. In these albums he played all the instruments, sang all voices, and was the only composer of its music and lyrics. He engineered the recording and mixing and designed the album covers. He had cassettes produced in Bombay and personally went about distributing the cassettes from shop to shop on a yellow scooter
along with an illustrated book of poems he wrote, postcards and t-shirts he designed to promote his albums.
1986 was a turning point in his career when three things happened. First was being invited to play at an official government function in Goa for the then visiting Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
. There he sang a song titled 'Hello Rajiv Gandhi' causing a controversy in the local press and then in the national one. But on mailing a press clipping to the Prime Minister and getting a reply back from him saying he'd loved the song and found nothing objectionable in it, this letter, together with the whole story with pictures, was carried in countless national publications.
Second was singing to an audience in Bombay at a concert called Aid Bhopal, held to raise funds for victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy, in which he sang two songs 'Pack that Smack' and 'Ode to Graham Bell'. To his surprise, the concert with both his songs, were televised by Doordarshan
on four successive Sundays at prime time. In a country with just one monopolistic television channel at the time, that was a tremendous exposure.
Third was composing and performing the title song for the hit movie Jalwa, which was released the next year, this last event made him instantly famous due to the popularity of Bollywood
cinema and of the Hindi
language.
, at a national level. This was an anti-drugs themed album, especially against addiction to Heroin which contained songs such as Down with Brown, Just a Hippie, Mr Minister - a satire on politician who become inactive once elected to power and So Wie Du - a recording of his performance in Dresden. "Bombay City" contained hits such as "Ocean Queen", "Against you/Against me" and a hilarious take on the condition of telephone services in India with the song "Graham Bell".
Around this time, Invited to attend international music festivals and concerts, Remo again started traveling around the world. His first international event was at the Dresden International Song Competition in former East Germany that attracted competitors from socialist and communist countries. There he won three awards, the Press Critics Award, the overall Second Prize, and the Audience Favorite Award. He once represented India, when it was invited, in the Tokyo Music Festival
. He also took part in the Festival of India in the USSR, the MIDEM '96 Music Festival in Hong Kong
, besides Festivals in Germany, Bulgaria
, Macau
, Seychelles
and Mauritius
. As a stage performer he has by now been to every single continent in the world.
Although the 15-minute title song Jalwa for the movie of the same name released in 1987 made him instantly famous in India, he still resisted the urge to join the commercial Hindi film music industry, as he felt that he would have to compromise his artistic values by doing so and because his command in Hindi prevented him from writing good lyrics.
The next album he released was in 1992 with Magnasound titled "Politicians don't know to Rock'n'Roll". Released in the backdrop of communal violence
spreading in India, terrible events such as the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, the album expressed the depression of the times. It included songs such as "Don't kick up the Rao" -a tribute to the then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao
, "A song for India", "How does it feel?" and a song about safe sex titled "Everybody wants to".
In 1995, Remo Fernandes finally moved into Hindi
Pop and film music to become a playback singer, by teaming up with the legendary director Mani Ratnam
and composer A. R. Rahman
. He sang the song "Humma Humma" in the Hindi version of the hit movie they produced - Bombay
. The song went on to earn Remo a Double Platinum.
"Huya Ho" was the next song he composed for the film "Khamoshi: The Musical
" which was released in 1996.
In 1998, along with his newly formed band called the Microwave Papadums. He released his first and only Hindi/pop album to date titled "O, Meri Munni" and in 2000 became the first Indian solo artist to have a song officially released solely on the Internet. The "Cyber Viber" generated 16,000 downloads in 2 weeks. Other artists in India who also released top hit songs on the Internet that same year were both Mumbai based artists, Pentagram
& Dementra.
, and Roger Taylor
, on drums, played with Led Zeppelin
band members, Jimmy Page
and Robert Plant
.
When Pepsi
USA entered Indian markets in the 1990s as Leher Pepsi, they signed up Remo for an endorsement deal and got him to star in their first two launch ad films
, making advertising history in India.
In February 2005, Remo collaborated with Jethro Tull
along with renowned Indian percussionist Sivamani
, for a concert held in Dubai
. They performed tracks such as Mother Goose
, Locomotive Breath
, and Remo's now very famous Flute Kick also informally called "the flute song".
Until recently, remo has participated in, and helped popularise a local festival called the Siolim
Zagor
.
In 2001, Three Microwave Papadums band members; Dharamedra Hirve, Selwyn Pereira and Victor Alvares, and Remo's personal assistant Sunil Redkar were killed in a motorvehicle road accident in Kanpur.
In 2003, on his 50th birthday, Remo held a reunion concert with many of his former band members from The Beat 4, Indiana, and The Savages, besides friends like The Valadares Sisters and Lucio Miranda.
, in Bardez
district of Goa
. He was married to a French lady named Michelle, with whom he has two sons Noah and Jonah.
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
/rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
/Indian fusion
Fusion Music
Fusion Music is a sub genre of Reggaeton. Calle 13 helped introduce this genre, and are the most famous artists to sing it. It's also known as Alternative Reggaeton. Danny Fornaris is the most famous producer in this sub-genre, known as its Luny Tunes...
artist and playback singer
Playback singer
A playback singer is a singer whose singing is prerecorded for use in movies. Playback singers record songs for soundtracks, and actors or actresses lip-sync the songs for cameras, while the actual singer does not appear on screen.-South Asia:...
from the state of Goa
Goa
Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
, India. His musical work is a fusion of many different cultures and styles he's been exposed to as a child in Goa and in his later travels around the world. Such influences include Goan
Music of Goa
Music of Goa refers to the music from the state of Goa, on the west coast of India. It has produced a number of prominent musicians and singers for the world of Indian music ....
and Portuguese music, Sega music
Sega music
Sega music or Séga is the major music of the Mascarene Islands: Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues as well as of the Seychelles. Sega is similar to the Réunionnais music genre maloya. Another form of dance similar to the sega is the Seychellois moutya. Sega music originated among the slave...
from Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
and Seychelles
Seychelles
Seychelles , officially the Republic of Seychelles , is an island country spanning an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, some east of mainland Africa, northeast of the island of Madagascar....
, African music, Latin music from Cuba
Cuba
The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...
and Nicaragua
Nicaragua
Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...
, the music of erstwhile European communist states, those of the dancehalls from Jamaica
Jamaica
Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...
and Soca
Soca music
Soca is a style of music from Trinidad and Tobago. Soca is a musical development of traditional Trinidadian calypso, through loans from the 1960s onwards from predominantly black popular music....
from Trinidad
Trinidad
Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...
. Writing and singing songs in English made his success more distinctive in the context of the Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...
-dominated, Hindi language-based, occasionally even disco
Disco
Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...
music scene that was popular in the 1980s and 1990s. His music, reflecting life and socio-political happenings in India with which every Indian could identify, became popular largely with the growing, English-educated, Indian middle class
Standard of living in India
With one of the fastest growing economies in the world, clocked at a growth rate of 8.3% in 2010, India is fast on its way to becoming a large and globally important consumer economy. The Indian middle class, estimated to be 150 million people, by McKinsey is fast becoming used to Western culture....
. A popular stage performer in India, he has also taken part in many music festivals around the world. He now writes and sings his songs in five different languages, English, Hindi, French, Portuguese, and Konkani
Konkani language
KonkaniKonkani is a name given to a group of several cognate dialects spoken along the narrow strip of land called Konkan, on the west coast of India. This is, however, somewhat an over-generalisation. Geographically, Konkan is defined roughly as the area between the river Damanganga to the north...
.
Early years and musical influences
Remo Fernandes was born to the well-known Panjim family of Bernardo and Luiza Fernandes on 8th May 1953. Although brought up in a Catholic family, Remo says 'When I turned 18, I started thinking for myself; and I realized that god is beyond religion.' Remo's first introduction to rockRock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
was at the age of seven, when a cousin returned from London with "Rock Around The Clock", a record by Bill Hayley and The Comets. He claims that it changed his life forever. He spent the next decade of his childhood listening to music of that era's most popular icons:
In school Remo developed natural guitar playing skills and along with a talented peer group friends, Alexandre Rosario,Rex Fernandes, Nandino Lobato Faria, and Caetano de Abreu; formed a school band named the Beat 4. After graduating from school Remo went on to earn a Bachelor's degree in Architecture from the city of Bombay (now called Mumbai
Mumbai
Mumbai , formerly known as Bombay in English, is the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the most populous city in India, and the fourth most populous city in the world, with a total metropolitan area population of approximately 20.5 million...
). His love affair with music continued, often bunking classes to work on his guitar technique. He began writing his own songs, playing solo or playing with different bands including one called 'The Savages' led by Bashir Sheikh.
Being one of the few cities in India at that time with a niche audience for Rock Music, he played in concerts and venues such as Shanmukhnanda Hall, Rang Bhavan, and in all the major college campuses of Bombay. He tried to bring an Indian element to the music he played tuning his guitar to make it sound like a Sitar
Sitar
The 'Tablaman' is a plucked stringed instrument predominantly used in Hindustani classical music, where it has been ubiquitous since the Middle Ages...
and taught himself to play the Indian flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
.
After graduation, Remo came back to Goa and immersed himself in its once famous Hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
culture. He met a group of traveling European artists who named themselves the Amsterdam Balloon Company, playing in their parties at Baga
Baga, Goa
Baga an extension of Calangute Village in the state of Goa, India. It comes under the jurisdiction of Calangute, which is 2 km south. Baga is known for its popular beach, Baga Beach with is brown sands, and creek, the Baga Creek...
and helping organize concerts for them. Much Later in his life, Remo would team up in Amsterdam with Lucas Amor, one of the violinist in this group, and cut a song called Venus And The Moon. He formed a fusion band Indiana with two others around this time.
Between 1977 and 1980, Remo traveled to Europe and North Africa, hitch-hiking around eight countries during a span of two-and-a-half years, often singing and passing a hat around in underground stations and pedestrian streets to get by.
He performed in shows with fusion rock bands, such as playing an electric guitar with Rock Synergie in Paris. Almost settling in the West for good, he changed his mind and returned to India.
Pre-fame years
After returning, Remo continued to write some of his most memorable socio-political songs, but had to face rejections from Indian record companies. At that time no recording company in India was willing to release his music because it was in English, and did not believe there was a market for such music. Apart from this, in 1980s, there was no air play on radio and television, they were both monopolized by the government, who seem to refuse to accept pop music's existence.Remo Fernandes recorded his first maiden album Goan Crazy and a subsequent album Old Goan Gold
Old Goan Gold
Old Goan Gold is a music album by Remo Fernandes and released in 1985. It consists of songs in Konkani and Portuguese. Alisha Chinai has also performed in the album....
, on a four-track cassette Portastudio
Portastudio
The TASCAM Portastudio was the world's first four track recorder based on a standard compact audio cassette tape.When the original Portastudio 144 made its debut in 1979 it was a revolutionary creative tool...
recorder in his home. In these albums he played all the instruments, sang all voices, and was the only composer of its music and lyrics. He engineered the recording and mixing and designed the album covers. He had cassettes produced in Bombay and personally went about distributing the cassettes from shop to shop on a yellow scooter
Scooter (motorcycle)
A scooter is a motorcycle with step-through frame and a platform for the operator's feet. Elements of scooter design have been present in some of the earliest motorcycles, and motorcycles identifiable as scooters have been made from 1914 or earlier...
along with an illustrated book of poems he wrote, postcards and t-shirts he designed to promote his albums.
1986 was a turning point in his career when three things happened. First was being invited to play at an official government function in Goa for the then visiting Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Gandhi
Rajiv Ratna Gandhi was the sixth Prime Minister of India . He took office after his mother's assassination on 31 October 1984; he himself was assassinated on 21 May 1991. He became the youngest Prime Minister of India when he took office at the age of 40.Rajiv Gandhi was the elder son of Indira...
. There he sang a song titled 'Hello Rajiv Gandhi' causing a controversy in the local press and then in the national one. But on mailing a press clipping to the Prime Minister and getting a reply back from him saying he'd loved the song and found nothing objectionable in it, this letter, together with the whole story with pictures, was carried in countless national publications.
Second was singing to an audience in Bombay at a concert called Aid Bhopal, held to raise funds for victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy, in which he sang two songs 'Pack that Smack' and 'Ode to Graham Bell'. To his surprise, the concert with both his songs, were televised by Doordarshan
DoorDarshan
Doordarshan is an Indian public service broadcaster, a division of Prasar Bharati. It is one of the largest broadcasting organizations in India in terms of the infrastructure of studios and transmitters. Recently, it has also started Digital Terrestrial Transmitters. On September 15, 2009,...
on four successive Sundays at prime time. In a country with just one monopolistic television channel at the time, that was a tremendous exposure.
Third was composing and performing the title song for the hit movie Jalwa, which was released the next year, this last event made him instantly famous due to the popularity of Bollywood
Bollywood
Bollywood is the informal term popularly used for the Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai , Maharashtra, India. The term is often incorrectly used to refer to the whole of Indian cinema; it is only a part of the total Indian film industry, which includes other production centers producing...
cinema and of the Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
language.
Career
After breaking out with his first hit album "Pack That Smack" in 1986 and "Bombay City" the next year, he became the highest-selling English rock musician in India and the only one in the country to be awarded Gold Discs in this category. "Pack That Smack" became his first album to be actually released by a recording studio, CBSCBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
, at a national level. This was an anti-drugs themed album, especially against addiction to Heroin which contained songs such as Down with Brown, Just a Hippie, Mr Minister - a satire on politician who become inactive once elected to power and So Wie Du - a recording of his performance in Dresden. "Bombay City" contained hits such as "Ocean Queen", "Against you/Against me" and a hilarious take on the condition of telephone services in India with the song "Graham Bell".
Around this time, Invited to attend international music festivals and concerts, Remo again started traveling around the world. His first international event was at the Dresden International Song Competition in former East Germany that attracted competitors from socialist and communist countries. There he won three awards, the Press Critics Award, the overall Second Prize, and the Audience Favorite Award. He once represented India, when it was invited, in the Tokyo Music Festival
Tokyo Music Festival
The Tokyo Music Festival was an international music contest that ran from 1972 to 1991. It was organised by the Tokyo Music Festival Association...
. He also took part in the Festival of India in the USSR, the MIDEM '96 Music Festival in Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Hong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
, besides Festivals in Germany, Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...
, Macau
Macau
Macau , also spelled Macao , is, along with Hong Kong, one of the two special administrative regions of the People's Republic of China...
, Seychelles
Seychelles
Seychelles , officially the Republic of Seychelles , is an island country spanning an archipelago of 115 islands in the Indian Ocean, some east of mainland Africa, northeast of the island of Madagascar....
and Mauritius
Mauritius
Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...
. As a stage performer he has by now been to every single continent in the world.
Although the 15-minute title song Jalwa for the movie of the same name released in 1987 made him instantly famous in India, he still resisted the urge to join the commercial Hindi film music industry, as he felt that he would have to compromise his artistic values by doing so and because his command in Hindi prevented him from writing good lyrics.
The next album he released was in 1992 with Magnasound titled "Politicians don't know to Rock'n'Roll". Released in the backdrop of communal violence
Communal violence
Communal violence refers to a situation where violence is perpetrated across ethnic lines, and victims are chosen based upon ethnic group membership...
spreading in India, terrible events such as the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the destruction of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, the album expressed the depression of the times. It included songs such as "Don't kick up the Rao" -a tribute to the then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao
P. V. Narasimha Rao
Pamulaparti Venkata "Narasimha Rao" was the ninth Prime Minister of India . He led an important administration, overseeing a major economic transformation and several home incidents affecting national security of India. Rao accelerated the dismantling of the Licence Raj. He is often referred to as...
, "A song for India", "How does it feel?" and a song about safe sex titled "Everybody wants to".
In 1995, Remo Fernandes finally moved into Hindi
Hindi
Standard Hindi, or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi, also known as Manak Hindi , High Hindi, Nagari Hindi, and Literary Hindi, is a standardized and sanskritized register of the Hindustani language derived from the Khariboli dialect of Delhi...
Pop and film music to become a playback singer, by teaming up with the legendary director Mani Ratnam
Mani Ratnam
Mani Ratnam is an Indian filmmaker, screenwriter and producer. He made his directorial debut with the Kannada film Pallavi Anu Pallavi starring Anil Kapoor in 1983...
and composer A. R. Rahman
A. R. Rahman
Allah Rakha Rahman is an Indian composer, singer-songwriter, record producer, musician, and philanthropist. Described as the world's most prominent and prolific film composer by Time, his works are notable for integrating eastern classical music with electronic music sounds, world music genres and...
. He sang the song "Humma Humma" in the Hindi version of the hit movie they produced - Bombay
Bombay (film)
Bombay is a critically acclaimed and national award-winning 1995 Tamil film directed by Mani Ratnam, starring Arvind Swamy and Manisha Koirala, with music composed by A. R. Rahman...
. The song went on to earn Remo a Double Platinum.
"Huya Ho" was the next song he composed for the film "Khamoshi: The Musical
Khamoshi: The Musical
Khamoshi: The Musical is a critically acclaimed Indian Hindi film which was released on 9 August 1996. The film starred Nana Patekar, Manisha Koirala, Salman Khan, Seema Biswas and Helen, and marked Sanjay Leela Bhansali's directorial debut...
" which was released in 1996.
In 1998, along with his newly formed band called the Microwave Papadums. He released his first and only Hindi/pop album to date titled "O, Meri Munni" and in 2000 became the first Indian solo artist to have a song officially released solely on the Internet. The "Cyber Viber" generated 16,000 downloads in 2 weeks. Other artists in India who also released top hit songs on the Internet that same year were both Mumbai based artists, Pentagram
Pentagram (Indian band)
Pentagram is a four piece Indian rock/electronica band started in 1994 in Mumbai, India. Regarded as one of the pioneers of original Indian independent music, the band has received much recognition and has played in venues around the world including the Glastonbury festival in the UK in...
& Dementra.
Other collaborations and work
In 1995, during the Channel V Music Awards, Remo, on a bass guitarBass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, and Roger Taylor
Roger Meddows-Taylor
Roger Meddows Taylor , known as Roger Taylor, is a British musician, singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He is best known as the drummer, backing vocalist and occasional lead vocalist of British rock band Queen. As a drummer he is known for his "big" unique sound and is considered one of...
, on drums, played with Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin were an English rock band, active in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. Formed in 1968, they consisted of guitarist Jimmy Page, singer Robert Plant, bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham...
band members, Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page
James Patrick "Jimmy" Page, OBE is an English multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and record producer. He began his career as a studio session guitarist in London and was subsequently a member of The Yardbirds from 1966 to 1968, after which he founded the English rock band Led Zeppelin.Jimmy Page...
and Robert Plant
Robert Plant
Robert Anthony Plant, CBE is an English singer and songwriter best known as the vocalist and lyricist of the iconic rock band Led Zeppelin. He has also had a successful solo career...
.
When Pepsi
Pepsi
Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink that is produced and manufactured by PepsiCo...
USA entered Indian markets in the 1990s as Leher Pepsi, they signed up Remo for an endorsement deal and got him to star in their first two launch ad films
Television advertisement
A television advertisement or television commercial, often just commercial, advert, ad, or ad-film – is a span of television programming produced and paid for by an organization that conveys a message, typically one intended to market a product...
, making advertising history in India.
In February 2005, Remo collaborated with Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull (band)
Jethro Tull are a British rock group formed in 1967. Their music is characterised by the vocals, acoustic guitar, and flute playing of Ian Anderson, who has led the band since its founding, and the guitar work of Martin Barre, who has been with the band since 1969.Initially playing blues rock with...
along with renowned Indian percussionist Sivamani
Sivamani
Anandan Sivamani , popularly known as Sivamani, is a percussionist based in India. He plays many instruments including drums, Octoban, Darbuka, Udukai, and Kanjira, as well as many more. He performed drumming during the IPL Championships in 2008 & 2010. He is affiliated to the Chennai Super Kings...
, for a concert held in Dubai
Dubai
Dubai is a city and emirate in the United Arab Emirates . The emirate is located south of the Persian Gulf on the Arabian Peninsula and has the largest population with the second-largest land territory by area of all the emirates, after Abu Dhabi...
. They performed tracks such as Mother Goose
Mother Goose
The familiar figure of Mother Goose is an imaginary author of a collection of fairy tales and nursery rhymes which are often published as Mother Goose Rhymes. As a character, she appears in one "nursery rhyme". A Christmas pantomime called Mother Goose is often performed in the United Kingdom...
, Locomotive Breath
Locomotive Breath
"Locomotive Breath" is a song by the English progressive rock band Jethro Tull from their 1971 album, Aqualung. It is notable for a long bluesy piano introduction and its flute solo by rock flute virtuoso Ian Anderson...
, and Remo's now very famous Flute Kick also informally called "the flute song".
Until recently, remo has participated in, and helped popularise a local festival called the Siolim
Siolim
Siolim is a village in Bardez taluka, and a census town on the central west coast of India, in the North Goa district of Goa. The 2001 population was 10,311. Siolim is also the name of a constituency in the Goa assembly, which includes Assagao, Anjuna and Oxel, in addition to Siolim. This article...
Zagor
Zagor (festival)
Zagor , mainly celebrated in Siolim, in Bardez taluka of Goa is a festival highlighted by dance, drama and music....
.
In 2001, Three Microwave Papadums band members; Dharamedra Hirve, Selwyn Pereira and Victor Alvares, and Remo's personal assistant Sunil Redkar were killed in a motorvehicle road accident in Kanpur.
In 2003, on his 50th birthday, Remo held a reunion concert with many of his former band members from The Beat 4, Indiana, and The Savages, besides friends like The Valadares Sisters and Lucio Miranda.
Personal life
He currently resides in his ancestral home in the village of SiolimSiolim
Siolim is a village in Bardez taluka, and a census town on the central west coast of India, in the North Goa district of Goa. The 2001 population was 10,311. Siolim is also the name of a constituency in the Goa assembly, which includes Assagao, Anjuna and Oxel, in addition to Siolim. This article...
, in Bardez
Bardez
Bardez is the name of a region and taluka in North Goa. The name is credited to the Brahmin immigrants who migrated to the Konkan via Magadha in Gangetic India from Aryavarta, in the north-western part of the Indian sub-continent. Bardez or more properly Bara desh means "twelve countries"...
district of Goa
Goa
Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...
. He was married to a French lady named Michelle, with whom he has two sons Noah and Jonah.