Replica for "Festival da Lusofonia 2008"

Portuguese heritage, the Fort Aguada Light house stands manificiently till today guiding the seafares and the destiny of Goa, as it will stand at the "Festival da Lusofonia 2008" in Macau, guiding the visitors to the Goa Damão and Diu pavilion.

Sonia Sirsat

She balances two totally unrelated careers with ease - on one hand Sonia Sirsat is an LLM (post graduate law) student hoping to get into teaching law. On the other hand she plays a more glamorous role as a professional Portuguese Fado singer. ‘Fado’ she explains to me, is a form of Portuguese music more on the classical side (somewhat in the nature of the relationship Ghazals have to Hindi music)
Singing since the age of eight she has won practically every singing competition in Goa. The list is endless and I will name only a few by way of examples. In 2000, she won the French All-Goa singing competition. The same year she was runner-up in the Saregama bands special. In 2001, she won the same at the national level; the prize for which was a free, month-long trip to France. In 2002, she was winner of the Portuguese singing competition.
‘They don’t let me compete anymore’ she laughs. ‘I can only attend competitions now as a judge.’
Her prize winning however isn’t restricted just to singing. Sponsored by the JAYCEES she entered the International Personal Development contest, winning the title first at the national level at Indore and later at the Asia-Pacific level in Thailand, which took her all the way to Hawaii for the finals.
Professionally she sings today for three bands: Status Four, Bhangrallem Goem, and a Portuguese Fado music group. She has also sung for four albums; Jezuk Vakanta, Fulam Fulam, a Christmas Carol Album, and a non stop disco album.aaa. She has sung in eleven languages to date.
And what is most surprising is that she has never had any formal training in singing!

(geocities.com)