By Selma Carvalho

On the second Sunday of September, 1897, there stood before them St. Joseph’s pro-Cathedral. And the bells tolled for Diogo Sant-Anna de Souza. He had only recently retired from his job and was looking forward to returning to his native country when he’d been struck by ‘chest complaints complicated by fever’. By afternoon, the body was taken to the church where nearly all of Zanzibar’s Goan community had gathered. At 4:30, an imposing procession set out for the Roman Catholic Cemetery, ‘headed by the Sultan’s Goan band in full uniform playing a funeral march.’ Hundreds of Goans followed the procession, ‘showing the great respect in which the deceased was held and the recognition on the part of the Goan community of the position he so long and so well held [in Zanzibar] in one of the most prominent posts open to members of that community.’ Diogo had been for many years the first bandmaster for the Sultan’s band.

Just how had a Goan come to be bandmaster in Zanzibar? The seaport metropolis of Bombay was at the time the centripetal location for Zanzibari society, not just for trade but also for higher education, leisure and recreation. When an ambitious Sayyid Barghash bin Said al-Busaid assumed power in 1870, he embarked on an unprecedented phase of modernising Zanzibar, at times competing with Bombay. Barghash had history with India. In 1859, as a quarrelsome princeling, his brother Majid in connivance with the British, had exiled him to Bombay, where he would spend the next two years. Had he become acquainted with Goans while in exile?

In 1877, urged by the British, Barghash formed an army and it is customary within British military tradition to have a band attached to battalions, in order to perform marching and ceremonial music. What is extraordinary is that in a time of colonial hierarchies defined by race, the intended band for Barghash’s army would comprise almost entirely of Goans from the west coast of India.

The same year as the army came into formation, the palace arranged to have ‘collected by an agent in Bombay,’ forty Goan musicians who would form the military band. On arrival, they were housed in ‘rooms fitted in the English military fashion, with separate sleeping and bathrooms’, and clothed in white suits as uniforms adapted to the climate. No doubt, the men were mostly recruited from Bombay where Goans had already established themselves as musicians playing for British military bands, and where familial and communal ties would have quite easily been able to make up the required numbers. Both, Sant-Anna’s son as well as son-in-law were also members of the band. When in 1896, the palace was bombarded, with band members trapped inside, panic gripped Bombay’s Goan community.

The band, initially directed by a German man, would within a few years have Diogo Sant-Anna de Souza, Camille A. Saldanha and Isaac Caridade de Souza-Khot, as 1st, 2nd and 3rd bandmasters. In 1893, all three were presented with a sword as a mark of appreciation, and of the three, Isaac de Souza-Khot would go on to become the most decorated.

After Diogo, Camillo briefly assumed the position of first bandmaster, retiring in 1900, when Isaac took his place. By then the band had assumed greater prominence, affiliated to the military but also as an essential part of Zanzibar’s social life. Quite apart from accompanying the Sultan on official ceremonies, they held a concert on Wednesdays at Victoria Gardens, attended by large crowds, they performed (provided the Sultan granted permission) at weddings, church functions and funerals of dignitaries. It was a favourite at dinners and dances hosted by the British Consulate. The most familiar sight on the island was that of the band wending its way through its streets. The Zanzibar letters of Edward D. Ropes Jr, an American merchant who diarised his life there between 1882-1892, note: ‘This A.M I saw the Sultan…he went down to call on the English Consul General…First came the band playing… “God save the Queen”…This band is fine. They are all Europeans. Their equipments are fine, their uniform red & gold with white pants, and their playing is really good.’ (Of course, they were not European but Goans were categorised as Portuguese and mistakenly thought to be of biracial descent.)

Isaac de Souza-Khot was born in the village of Saligao, into a musically gifted family. Saligao is a remarkable village in north Goa, having produced many distinguished personalities, particularly in the field of music. Isaac served under Sultan Barghash for twelve years during which time he was presented with a medal for good conduct. More accolades would follow under subsequent sultans including in 1895, the island’s highest honour, the Order of the Brilliant Star of Zanzibar, presented with a gold mounted sword and a gold crown. Not only was he a talented conductor directing marches by Hume and waltzes by Strauss, but a composer as well. Already in 1896 having composed a new version of Zanzibar’s national anthem, in 1901 he composed a waltz titled ‘Binti Unguja’ (daughter Zanzibar).

When Isaac retired in 1906, an entertainment benefit, put together by an English amateur theatre company and largely attended, saw the retiring bandmaster standing at the salute, receiving ‘the plaudits of the people.’ By then he had been in the service of the royal palace for twenty-nine years. The show raised a substantial Rs 722 which was gifted to him. His salary during his tenure, however, had been a rather meagre Rs 150 per month, about what a clerk would have earned at the time.

As the 19th century drew to a close, Goans were an indispensable part of Zanzibar. In Sept 1898, the prime-minister of the Sultan’s government, thanked the Portuguese consul-general on the island for the ‘loyalty of the Goans in Zanzibar who had always supported and assisted His Highness’ Government.’ These Goans having migrated to Zanzibar—an elite band of doctors, musicians, retailers and clerks—thrived on the growing prosperity of the port town, living and operating along Portuguese Street. They contributed richly to hard infrastructure, in the retail stores, medical practices, pharmacies and palatial houses they built, as well as to the cultural life of Zanzibar in terms of the church music they produced, the theatre productions they conducted, the public concerts they played, and the dances they organised at their clubs. The satellite community leads us to interrogate our very concept of ‘whiteness’ which at the height of imperialism was beginning to be interpreted as an expression of European culturalism rather than racial purity.

Goans occupied the liminal space between east and west. Being able to speak in Portuguese and local languages often they acted as translators for the royal palace, they became early cultural brokers engaging with both European and indigenous populations, transacting with, entertaining and officiating across racial barriers. They challenge us also to a granular re-examination of Eurocentric narratives which portray non-white populations as powerless when in fact, Goans subverted racial orthodoxies, occupied positions of power in the sultan’s government which would otherwise have been reserved for white Europeans, and they acted with a great degree of individual agency. The peculiar societal experiment emblematic of late-19th century Zanzibar which brought together diverse races would lay the blueprint for future modern cities, as we know them today.

Selma Carvalho is editor at JRLJ. She is the author of three non-fiction books documenting the Goan presence in colonial East Africa. She was the head of the Oral Histories of British-Goans project funded by the heritage sector UK and deposited at the British library. Her novel Sisterhood of Swans (Speaking Tiger, 2021) was shortlisted for the Women Writers Prize (India) and can be purchased online or at leading bookstores. Her book Baker Butcher, Doctor Diplomat: Goan Pioneers of East Africa is available for purchase here.