Biography

Amancio was born in Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1936 into a Goan family. He had 5 sisters and was the only boy in the family. His father worked in the Accounts department of one of the big cotton mills. His mother looked after the children and their very modest home. Money was scarce and education taken very seriously. Music was part of life and the children often sang Goan folk songs in harmony together. The family spoke Konkani, the Goan language (a mix of Portuguese and Marathi) and English.

Although he loved his local primary school, he was deeply unhappy at his secondary school, Don Bosco High School, run by Salesian priests from Italy. He recounted that as the school building came into sight each morning as he walked to school, his stomach would cramp up.

For a couple of years Amancio’s mum and the children moved back to Goa. For him, this was paradise, playing outside on the water, amongst the luscious vegetation. Even school there was a happy place. Then it was back to Bombay.

Amancio desperately wanted to play guitar and he was thrilled when a wealthy friend persuaded her brother to buy him one. It turned out to be a Les Paul type Framus with a Florentine cutaway – but it was an electric bass – not a guitar! Undefeated, Amancio and his friend Cyril found two plastic keys and converted it into a guitar. He played this guitar professionally for several years.

He played in house bands in Chandigarh, Jaipur and Simla, usually with Connie D’Souza on drums and Anaclet Noronha on piano. He also played many gigs in Bombay, some with the famous Nelly (Battiwalla) and her Dance Band and also with another band leader and pianist, Dorothy Jones, mother of the well-known percussionist/drummer Robin Jones.

Amancio with Connie D’Souza, drummer and friend, playing the lunchtime session at the Rambagh Palace hotel in Jaipur, owned by the Maharani. 1965. Amancio worked the “winter” high season at this hotel in 1964. In 1965 Amancio got married in Jaipur where Connie gave away the bride to be, Joyce.

It was while leading the house band at Davico’s restaurant in Simla in 1964 that he met his future wife Joyce, who had come from Ireland to teach in the Loreto Convent School, Tara Hall. They fell in love and got married in Jan 1965 at the Catholic church in Jaipur, where Amancio was doing a residency at the Rambagh Palace hotel, owned by the then Maharani of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi. She was a great admirer of his playing and brought him a Gibson guitar back from the US. Sadly it was a round-hole, not an electric guitar!

After the season, they moved back to Bombay, where Amancio began to play for the Bollywood film music industry, notably for the famous composers Laxmikant and Pyarelal. He had already composed and played a backing track for an Indian travel film made by the German TV station Nordeutscher Rundfunk.

Their daughter Maria was born in November. Further seasons in Jaipur and Simla led them to New Delhi, where Amancio joined the famous saxophonist Braz Gonsalves playing at the Laguna restaurant. Their son Stephano, now an accomplished guitarist himself, was born in Dec 1966.

Stephano was in and out of hospital and their wonderful paediatrician, Dr Suchil Arya, advised taking him back to the west. Amancio sold the Gibson to help make the fare – the Maharani also contributed to this emergency fund. They planned to go to Ireland, but Stephano was so ill on the plane, that they had to stay in London where they had planned simply to change planes. Gradually he recovered and in 1968 their third child Francesca was born.

Amancio, Joyce and Maria in Davico’s restaurant, Simla 1966

Amancio playing at a party in the flat of Joyce’s sister, Claire, where the D’Silva family lived for the first 3 months when they first came to England.

Amancio playing at a party in the flat of Joyce’s sister, Claire: London late 60’s.

Amancio during a session with brother-in-law Peter Blishem in Claire’s flat

Amancio during a session with brother-in-law Peter Blishen in Claire’s flat.

Amancio got jobs at the famous Prospect of Whitby pub by the river Thames. He cleaned the loos in the mornings and played guitar there in the evenings!

Thanks to personal contact, Amancio met the record producer Denis Preston of Lansdowne Studios and his recording career took off, as well as his collaboration with some great jazz musicians – Don Rendell and Ian Carr, Joe Harriott, Dave Green, Norma Winstone MBE, Trevor Tomkins and Bryan Spring.

Records don’t always pay the bills and Amancio began to develop pick-ups for electric guitars. For these he wound the fragile copper wire using a hand drill attached to a chair! His reputation spread and severable notable guitarists came to have their pick-ups adapted by Amancio, in order to achieve a particular sound.

In 1974 the family moved to Coggeshall in Essex, where Amancio worked for a while at Selmer Guitars in Braintree as well as performing many local gigs. Perhaps the best thing to come from Selmers was a lasting friendship with Dave Seville and his wife Christine. (Dave later became a director of Yamaha-Kemble).

Amancio began a lasting teaching career, working at Jenako Arts Multicultural Centre in London, teaching guitar to a wide variety of guitar students.

In 1985, with the three children now finished their schooling, the family moved to Liss in Hampshire. Joyce, who had been teaching in a comprehensive in Witham, Essex, had decided she wanted to work for an animal welfare organisation and got a job with Compassion in World Farming, then based in Petersfield near Liss. Amancio continued to commute to Jenako, until Hackney Education Authority withdrew funding.

Amancio shared Joyce’s concern about the treatment of animals and they both became vegan.

As Amancio and Joyce were both interested in the teaching of Jiddu Krishnamurti, it seemed appropriate that Amancio began to teach guitar at the nearby Krishnamurti school, Brockwood Park. This he continued to do until his stroke in 1992 – and even with a few select pupils, such as Valentin Gerlier, after that. Some of those students are still actively involved in music and remember Amancio’s teaching with affection.

Amancio in the Prospect of Whitby (Samuel Pepys’s pub) with Sam Li and others around 1967, when they had come back to England.

Amancio in Italy 1974 where he and family stayed with their friends Deborah and David Singmaster in Pisa for a holiday.

Amancio teaching a guitar class at Jenako Arts Centre London around 1990. Bruce Pollin, a good friend of Amancio’s on the right

Amancio had had many health problems during his life and had three operations for duodenal and stomach ulcers, as well as blood pressure problems. His stroke, in November 1992, ended his playing career, which was a tragedy for him. For several months he could not even bear the sound of music – a condition which affects some people after a stroke. However gradually his love for music returned – as well as his “perfect pitch” ability. Once again he was able to enjoy his CDs of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Paul Desmond and Bill Evans as well as wonderful Indian musicians like the great flute-player Hariprasad Chaurasia and visits from good friends like Steven Edwards, Bocha di Gamba, Loz Speyer, Bruce Pollin and Alan Gray. Joyce kept her job going and had help from a couple of wonderful carers and from her friend Barbara O’Brien.

$Photo taken by Joyce of Amancio on Omi island near Letterfrack on his last Irish holiday in 1992, just months before his stroke. If you've not been to Omi, it's worth a visit. You walk across at low tide (even drive). Lots of famine victims were buried there apparently. Amancio loved it.$

Photo taken by Joyce of Amancio on Omi island near Letterfrack on his last Irish holiday in 1992, just months before his stroke. If you’ve not been to Omi, it’s worth a visit. You walk across at low tide (even drive). Lots of famine victims were buried there apparently. Amancio loved it.

Amancio died on 17th July 1996. In accord with his wishes, he was buried in a cardboard coffin in the green burial site at Brighton cemetery.

Although Amancio never showed interest in re-playing his old recordings, he might just be pleased that they are now being re-issued on CD for a new generation to enjoy.

Joyce and Amancioc 1977

Photo from the Integration album cover shoot

Amancio D’Silva and Sacha Distell

Musical Biography

Amancio took up guitar in his late teens, at first to the horror of his family who feared for his financial prospects if he took the musician’s path in India. But he was set on it, and very soon he was gigging in local jazz combos and dance bands

Inspiration came largely from American jazz luminaries whom he heard on his Roberts radio at night, on the Voice Of America Jazz Hour: guitar players such as Jim Hall, Barney Kessell, Wes Montgomery, as well as horn players such as Paul Desmond and John Coltrane.

Early band photo, India at the Sun & Sand Bombay, 1965: Left to Right: Amancio, Cyril Martins, Raymond Albuquerue, Gerry Ferro, and just out of the picture Anacleto Naronha on Piano

Amancio’s first gigging guitar was in fact a bass that he altered himself: cutting a six-string nut and making a bridge for it. An awkward instrument probably, but nevertheless he got cracking on the Bombay jazz scene on this long scale instrument. It probably had much to do with his massive left hand reach.

By his early twenties, Amancio was regularly touring India playing with his quartet (which included Braz Gonzalvez, to this day one of the best known jazz saxophonists out of India, and Anacleto Naronha from above line-up on Piano) in Hotels and Clubs up and down the country (a time from which he had a great many fun tales to tell), often playing, as well as singing, standards from Cole Porter to Frank Sinatra…even the Beatles. All the while, though, his own very individual style was developing….which would incorporate elements of modern Jazz, Sitar-esque nuances and a feel for Indian “time”, culminating in a very flamboyant almost gypsy feel in his soloing and very strong, slightly fado-esque rhythm playing.

It was while playing the restaurant Davico’s in the Raj hill station Simla, that Amancio met his future wife, Joyce, who had come from Ireland and was in Simla teaching at a Catholic convent school.

Amancio in India

Soon after their marriage, Amancio and Joyce found themselves, and their recently born daughter Maria, living in Jaipur, in the grounds of the Maharaja’s palace hotels – the Rambagh Palace (this though, after a season in Bombay in less gorgeous surroundings), where Amancio became an unusual choice of court musician for the Maharani, Gayatri Devi, leading a jazz/dance band at the palace. It was the Maharani who bought Amancio his first quality western-built instrument, a Gibson (apparently a Gibson round hole acoustic), which she picked up for him while on a trip to the U.S.

Fast-foward to 1967, and living in New Delhi, where their second child, Stephano, had recently been born, but was now seriously ill, Amancio and his wife were eager to get to Ireland or England to find him the treatment he needed urgently.

They arrived in London in Spring of 1967.

Early Recordings

Amancio found work doubling as a cleaner and house musician at the famous (or rather notorious…for its gangland regulars) Docklands pub, the Prospect of Whitby (he started as a cleaner). Later work as a guitarist found him playing regularly at the Spanish Garden Club in the West End. By this time their son had recovered to good health. The family lived in South Woodford at first, then Ealing.

It was around this time, somewhere in 1968, soon after the birth of a third child, a daughter, Francesca, that Amancio was introduced to the now legendary producer, Denis Preston.

Denis, who knew immediately that he had found a unique talent, was at that time starting to record albums by cutting edge jazz artists, as well as blues and folk artists, for EMI, at Lansdowne studios in Holland Park. Practically all these recordings are now regarded as engineering masterpieces (credit for which must go to engineer Adrian Kerridge, who worked on most of Amancio’s albums and, is still with the much expanded Lansdowne today, as CEO).

Before long, thanks to Denis’s vision (incidentally the U.S. published Grove Encyclopaedia of Music credits Preston with coining the (soon to be household) term “fusion”), Amancio had been teamed with saxophonist Don Rendell and trumpeter/flugelhorn player Ian Carr, already very well established on the U.K. and European jazz scene with their own quintet, and the superb bassist Dave Green and drummer Trevor Tomkins.

The album that came out of this collaboration was titled simply Integration…introducing Amancio D’Silva, issued on the Columbia label for EMI (Catalogue No. SCX 6322)…now re-released by Universal on CD.

Amancio, early days in London

The album is perhaps Amancio’s most straight- Jazz sounding venture, in large part due to the line-up, though the compositions are often infused with elements of his home country’s sounds.

There’s some wonderful playing from everybody here, including an amazingly beautiful solo from Don Rendell on “Jaipur”.

Ian Carr, on the liner notes to Integration, had these words to say of Amancio:

“His melodic flair is Indian but he understands chord sequences (Ed: perhaps an understatement) and he swings like a jazzman…a perpetual inspiration.”

The original cover of Integration, for which the photographer William Holden had Amancio wear a lady's blouse (borrowed from a helpful female assistant, as the story goes) as a neckerchief! But the effect is successful. A classy cover.

Don Locke of Jazz Monthly had this to say of Integration:

“Just as Reinhardt was a gypsy playing his special brand of jazz guitar so D’Silva is an Indian playing his special brand of jazz guitar and in each case the music is distinctive and successful to much the same degree for much the same reasons.”

And from john Lewis in Time Out, on the re-issue of Integration:

“...he reinvents jazz as a music forged in Bombay, not New Orleans. A revelation.”

And Dave Gelly in the Observer on the re-issue:

“Of all the attempts to bring together jazz and Indian music, this must be one of the most successful….They strike a perfect balance between the two idioms, and there is none of that phoney 'Eastern' flavouring, featuring sitars and such like, so fashionable at the time. D'Silva plays electric guitar throughout, and the music swings in a completely natural way.”

The “Integration line-up” gigged extensively in London and other cities, being especially well received in Brighton.

“You’ll kick yourself if you miss D’Silva” was the heading of Jeff Rigby’s article in the Brighton and Hove Herald, June 6 th 1969. And, very shortly after the gig he was referring to :“Although many foreign jazz musicians who have visited this country during the past decade have appeared in Brighton’s modern jazz haunts, I cannot recollect any who have received the ovations and acclaim this supreme guitarist from Goa has done.”

Another album was recorded soon after the release of Integration. Hum Dono (Columbia, EMI SCX 6354), which in Hindi means “we two”, was a collaborative work featuring the Joe Harriot Amancio D’Silva Quartet, Denis Preston having introduced Amancio to the Jamaican born, already much recorded and today fairly legendary, saxophonist Joe Harriot; a musician whose playing Amancio greatly admired. As it turned out, this was to be Harriot’s last album. It is the version of.

Amancio’s song Jaipur from this album (the album features Amancio’s compositions extensively), that has recently featured on the much acclaimed Impressed with Gilles Peterson, a retro of cutting edge British Jazz from the 60’s, compiled by the Radio1 DJ, and released by Universal (064 7492) in early 2003.

Hum Dono made Melody Maker’s highly recommended list in October ’69 (alongside albums from McCoy Tyner, Don Cherry and Elvin Jones ):

“...the teaming of Harriot’s sarcastic, surging alto and D’Silva’s guitar with its Portuguese and Indian undertones is 100 per cent successful.”

Meanwhile in the U.S., Integration earned Amancio a place in Downbeat magazine’s Critics Poll, placing him – to his astonishment and delight - alongside some of his favourite players such as Jim Hall and Kenny Burrell.

And Melody Maker printed this concerning Amancio’s playing on Hum Dono:

...the compositions…reflect his preoccupation with effecting an Indian music/Jazz blend. Since Coltrane, this has been a vogue… D’Silva’s grasp of both styles ensures that his blend is far more authentic than a lot of the jazz/raga which is hawked about. His playing too has an individual stamp.”

Later Recordings

Out of the various experiments in mixing up Indian and Jazz stylings, some more deliberate than others, came the album Dream Sequence by Cosmic Eye, released in 1972 not on Columbia but on the Regal Zonophone label, again by EMI (cat. No.SLR 21030) ( Regal Zonophone: a label that was in fact a joining of two older labels, and that produced a remarkably small catalogue in its few years of operation…but featuring amongst others, albums by Jack Bruce, Procol Harum and T-Rex).

This record with no separate track titles, featuring music “conceived” by Amancio and performed with musicians such as the superb and multi talented Alan Branscombe on flute, Kashev Sathe (of Magic Carpet Band fame) on tabla, and John Mayer (by now synonymous with the term Indo-Jazz for his own collaborations with Joe Harriot) on Violin, brought forth many aspects of Amancio’s musical vision, and his influences. It was certainly not what would be considered a jazz album at that time, perhaps more Avant Garde. This record, and for that matter all Amancio’s records are very sought after collectibles on LP, for those who can find them…and afford them.

Amancio D'Silva c 1972

Around the same time as, or a little after, the release of Dream Sequence, Amancio played the Wigmore Hall in London on a gig conceived as a cultural fusion concert, featuring sitarist Clem Alford and Amancio dueling their Indo-jazz chops, Amancio playing a solid body Gibson L5 …“performing astonishing feats of technique and inventiveness” according to Guitar magazine.

A while after Integration and Hum Dono but before, and in great contrast to, Cosmic Eye, came Reflections…the romantic guitar of Amancio D’Silva (1971, Columbia, EMI SCX 6465): A slightly different sort of outing this one, featuring Amancio’s guitar playing on arrangements of classics from Gershwin, Ellington and Carmichael amongst others, with orchestral arrangements by Leon Young, David Mack and Stan Tracey. An idea (not Amancio’s) perhaps inspired by the Wes Montgomery albums with orchestral backing, and similarly not for the thumping jazz combo enthusiast. Stan Reed said in the London Evening News (Oct’ 23 1971): “The romantic guitar of Amancio D’Silva makes extremely pleasant listening.” It’s probably fair to say this was Denis Preston’s idea, and also fair to say that the results are curiously likeable. “Reflections” does feature some of Amancio’s most sensitive touches as a soloist, and a superbly pure tone. He was playing a guitar he had put together himself simply to save money, that featured a single hand-made single-coil pick-up in the neck position (Amancio later on did some work with musical equipment manufacturer Selmer (as well as for Gibson), and had several designs for pick-ups – he was a single coil fan – and also designed some quite unique amplifiers). Denis and others insisted he used this instrument, very pleased with its tone. Incidentally, a composition from this album, “What Maria Sees” - written for daughter Maria, was recorded again in ’72, but this time in a very different setting, on the album mentioned below.

The last of Amancio’s albums produced by Denis Preston (in ’72), was Konkan Dance. The album featured extensive collaboration from Alan Branscombe amongst others, and Amancio on acoustic guitar (a recording first) as well as electric (incidentally Amancio played acoustically almost exclusively during the early to mid eighties). For reasons unknown the album didn't see a release in its day but was released by Vocalion on CD and Q-Bico (Italy) on Vinyl in 2006. See the Music page to hear samples.

It is a record that features Amancio at his most unique in terms of guitar stylings, and perhaps in some respects his most satisfactory mix of Indian and western settings on record (or not quite on record). There’s fantastic, possibly innovative drumming here from Doug Wright, sitar passages, tabla pulsing through the third track and a very ambient feel often achieved with a very sparse line up. But most of all, the album captures the fantastic rapport between Amancio and Alan Branscombe, these two playing off each other superbly throughout. Alan’s Rhodes playing is knock out. The recordings have been preserved by the D’Silva family, and a track from the album, called A Street in Bombay, was selected by Gilles Peterson for inclusion on the next of his British Jazz compilations, Impressed 2 (released June 18th 2004).

To the enthusiast, this album may just be the essential Indo-Jazz item, though it’s not fair to label it as just that. In fact, Amancio never used the term, himself.

Other Collaborations around the same time that also yielded album releases, included work with the Ghanaian drummer/percussionist Guy Warren. Two albums feature Amancio extensively: Afro Jazz, which features Rendell, Carr, Tomkins, Garrick and others as well and, mixes up very full-on African rhythmical themes with a fairly straight-jazz group sound and not a little humour thrown in…there are insane chuckles between and during some tracks from Warren (“the mixture comes off wonderfully, especially with D’Silva.”…Melody Maker ) and the harder hitting The African Sounds Of Guy Warren, containing the aptly titled “Africa Speaks, India Answers”, perhaps of particular appeal to those interested in crossovers and fusions.

Another interesting collaboration, and a classic East meets West outing in its time, is the track Mirror Image from the album by the same name, by Sitar player Clem Alford. This was recorded in ’74, and features Amancio uncharacteristically with a fairly overdriven sound and using a wah-wah pedal, but very originally, effecting ambiences and answering phrases from Clem’s electric sitar. The track is near 15 minutes long and features other superb players: again Alan Branscombe (here on electric piano), Tony Campo on Bass (who also played on the Cosmic Eye album) and Dave Heath on flute amongst others. It’s well worth checking out.

Aside from recording extensively, and gigging the above mentioned line-ups too, to support his family of five Amancio also wound individually customized guitar pick-ups for well known rock musicians. And, between his “own” gigs and sessions, he continued to work late nights playing at dinner clubs in town; typically putting the kids to bed with his wife Joyce, and then heading up the road in the dark with his guitar to catch the tube into town.

Jazz Scene at the time

The extensive gigging that accompanied the above mentioned releases is noteworthy in itself, in that music of this kind was getting to large audiences fairly easily. This, it has to be said, had a lot to do with the excitement surrounding British Jazz at the time…a time when artists here were starting to be appreciated for their own sounds and approaches, and being compared less to their American counterparts. The musical climate in London at least was, in this sense, absolutely opportune for someone like Amancio, with his own very unique blend…or integration…of literally where he’d come from and where he was headed (i.e. East to West).

This interest in hearing something new, the eagerness of jazz and non-jazz listeners at the time, coupled with a fair effort on the part of the record companies’ promotional people, made possible concerts like the “Jazz Explosion” at the Mermaid Theatre in Manchester Square…this one featuring the whole Lansdowne gang, as it were: Amancio, Joe, Don Rendell, Ian Carr, Guy Warren and the world renowned pianist and composer Stan Tracy. In fact that concert was promotion for the EMI album of the same name (see discography), intended as an introductory compilation…introducing the artists’ own latest releases. But this was truly a golden age in Jazz here in the U.K. From Joe Harriot’s free-form to Keith Tippet’s fairly Avant Garde works, to Mike Gibbs much renowned compositions and orchestrations to the Rendell-Carr Quintet who had been brewing up quite a storm in clubs for several years by now, and of course pianist/composer Michael Garrick with his much acclaimed Poetry and Jazz concerts (and album) amongst other ventures, Jazz in the U.K., centered around London of course, was undergoing a bit of a mini renaissance.

At the same time, none of the above is to say that times were easy for these musicians. Some still worked full time day jobs and played the clubs by night, and they had to contend with, where top gigs were concerned, the constant stream of big name visiting American artists that tended to be booked into clubs like Ronnie Scotts. Slowly, however, people began to notice the talent on their own doorstep, so to speak, and the British Jazzmen (and women…because there were by now a few) began to find wider audiences, followings even, and to get the more serious bookings. At the same time, it’s probably only in the broadest sense of the term that someone like Amancio can even be categorized as a British Jazzman. If folk music had still been the mainstay on the London scene when Amancio arrived, he’d likely have found his collaborators in the folk clubs. He was never a genre snob.

At Maria’s wedding c.1981 with bassist Roger Curphey.

At the Brockwood Camp to listen to Jiddu Krishnamurti

Session with Bruce Pollin at the Krishnamurti camp at Brockwood Park.

It’s the very energy – the fusions, the crossovers, the daring - of the period described above that Gilles Peterson has so successfully captured on the aforementioned “Impressed” album, which also features cuts from bass player Graham Collier, trumpeter Harry Becket and Sax giant Tubby Hayes (though here on Vibes, his other specialty), alongside Amancio, Joe and others mentioned above.

A much more in depth (and likely more accurate) account of this period in British jazz can be found in Ian Carr’s book Music Outside.

Amancio playing an open air gig at the concert which marked the closing down of the GLC (Greater London Council) by Margaret Thatcher. (She didn't like Ken Livingstone's leftish actions!) Also on stage tap dancer Will Gaines. c.1986