BY DANIEL F DE SOUZA

MANFA MUSIC and Manfa Video have released two Christmas carol albums. While one is an audio album, the other is a video presentation. The audio album is Mistletoe Carollers and the video album is named Christmas at Sea.

The audio album contains ten Christmas carols: ‘Christmas at Sea’, ‘Bhorvanxeachem Ek Kirnn’ (Konkani), ‘Drummer Boy’, ‘Night Before Christmas’, ‘I saw Mama’, ‘God Rest’, ‘Away in the Manger’, ‘Hark the Herald’, ‘Devalem Dennem’ (Konkani) and ‘Oh Holy Night’. Christmas at Sea contains six audio tracks from the audio album. The singing is good and the voices come out very well with pleasing music back up.

The audio album is lively and the children’s voices sound melodious as they sing in voices. It does ring in the spirit of Christmas and the singing is good. Six audio tracks have been filmed in the second video album Christmas at Sea. The videography, however, is mediocre with lots of room and scope for improvement and better presentation with a little more effort. A little more creativity on the part of the director could have made this a great album to watch.

COULD BE BETTER

THE choreography is fine and so are the costumes. The children too put up a fairly good performance. But the visuals could have been still better than just being confined to a scenery backdrop. The sensational Christmas carol ‘Oh Holy Night’ could have been picturised with a little more imagination and creativity. If this carol was filmed under starlit skies, showing a few clips of fog, shepherds and may be a crib, the visual effect could have been captivating and it would have been a great hit. Similarly for the carol ‘I saw Mama’ on the video, this could also have been done in a better way. The video does not complement the melodious voice of the young girl with a cheerful smile. The video is also of a short duration.

Mistletoe Carollers is worth listening and one does get the feel of Christmas. The child singers featured here are Preethi Coutinho, Nezba Fortes, Lyona Fortes, Valenka Fortes, and Deepti Coutinho. The music is by Frazer Music Workz and the children have trained by Filipe Fortes and Luis Coutinho. The album has been recorded by Aurville Rodrigues while Christmas at Sea has been shot by Sebastiao D’Souza and edited by Frezeo Fernandes. Both the above albums are creations of Lulu and Filipe Fortes.

Both the albums are available at all leading music stores in Goa and at Manfa Music in Margao. The albums are reasonable priced at Rs. 100 each. Go get it!