BIOGRAPHY - Early Years
Amancio was born in Bombay, India, in 1936 to Goan parents, and spent his childhood and teens between Goa and Bombay. He 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 & John Coltrane.
Amancio’s first gigging guitar was in fact a bass that he altered himself: cutting a six-string nut & 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.
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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
(thanks to Felix Flor for info)
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.
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 semi-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 & 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.
