http://www.thehindu.com/arts/music/article925618.ece
Justin Fernandez, from Alappuzha, spent last New Year's eve singing old Italian and English numbers, for Congress President Sonia Gandhi and family, including her extended family from Italy. “They wanted old songs, mainly from the 60s and seventies. I sang Andy Williams, Dean Martin and Eric Clapton songs and Andrea Bocelli's most popular song,
‘Con de partiro..'.” says Justin. And that's what the guests at Gabriel Restaurant in Germany thought too, when he sang this Andrea Bocelli (a blind Italian classical singer) song for the guests there, strumming his guitar. Justin was sad that all the trouble he took to learn the song, with the proper accent did not pay off. The German lady at the front office had heard him humming this song, which was often played there. She thought he was quite good and wrote out the lyrics for him in English. “Some of the words have a peculiar pronunciation which the English alphabet cannot catch. So I listened to it again and with the help of the English version, wrote the lyrics in Malayalam. It was the opera kind of singing.”
Reward enough
But people asked for encores after a few days and the tables were fully booked because of my song, the chef said. One family asked him to sit with them and sing it. “So, you are from Mexico.” It was more of a statement than a question. When Justin said he is from Kerala, India, they had a shock. And then they showered praises on him. That was reward enough, a Malayali having been mistaken for a Mexican when he sang an Italian song. With his guitar, Justin sings his favourite ‘Gopalaka pahimam...' with the same ease that he sings any western pop number. The hotel management graduate, who gave up that profession to go where his heart lay, narrates an incident when he was working for a mobile service company at Alappuzha. “I was being fired by my boss, left and right for not meeting my target when I saw, through the glass door, Dakshinamoorthy Sir walk by. I just rushed out, touched his feet and asked for his blessings. My boss stopped short, and did not continue his tirade!”
The lad from Alappuzha knew that neither hotel management nor customer relations was his cup of tea. He threw it all up and turned to his passion, music. It was with great difficulty that Justin got a chance to sing in a local band in Kochi. That got him enough exposure to sing in bigger hotels and a stint at Marari got him the break to go overseas. “I was playing and singing in a shack at Marari, when someone came in to listen. I thought he looked familiar, and then it dawned on me that he was Paul McCartney. He told me it was good and I was tongue tied.” I got a chance to perform at a hotel in Sputnik, Russia,for six months. It was another couple who enjoyed my music at Marari who gave me a contract in their hotel in Germany, where I learnt Italian songs.” From there he went to Hungary, Austria and Switzerland. Justin does a different kind of DJing too. He sings instead of playing music, in karaoke mode. Among the old Malayalam songs he likes are ‘O Mridule…' and ‘Arayanname…' And then he breaks into an ‘adipoli' Spanish song, a very rhythmic, foot tapping type. He has an annual contract at a hotel in Zurich, Switzerland, for three months in a year. The family which owns this hotel gave him an Audi which he sold there and built a house for his family at Alappuzha! The guitar he plays now, a super expensive one, he says, is a present from another family in Switzerland. Justin is into voice training now, teaching children in Toc-H school all about voice culture. He was untutored in music when he started out, but now, when he goes to Switzerland every year, he learns music from a pianist called Stevan. For each class, he charges $100, but it is worth it, says Justin, who enjoys this gypsy way of life. The concerts that he could attend are a bonus for him like the Bruce Springsteen one he went to a couple of years ago, worming his way forward till he almost reached the front. He has forgotten all about managing hotels now!
