A couple of years ago, at a local fest in Carambolim, a young man named Carisio Azavedo was handed a mic to entertain the crowd. What followed took me by surprise – a freestyle Konkani rap performance under the stage name Bongisio. Turns out Bongisio was a Goan rapper, musician and songwriter.  I went home and looked up his music on YouTube and enjoyed what I heard. This was something new for me.

For the uninitiated, here are some tracks to get you going and the music videos, few directed by Carisio himself, have subtitles too. His music videos always open with a short skit that send a social message.

Ketta, takes a dig at politicians who show up with lengthy promises before elections and make a u-turn as soon as they are elected.

After releasing a bunch of singles and an EP titled Soth, Bongisio had something new up his sleeve – a Konkani Gospel Rap album titled Aiz Mhaka Falea Tuka. Now those are three words I never thought I’d see together – Konkani Gospel Rap, but here we are. Jezu Mhozo Bhav is his latest hit from that album and has a catchy tune that’s sure to get stuck in your head. Saibin Mai is another one that took me by surprise – in a good way. Being in Goa, you are so used to hearing devotional music in the form of hymns that pretty much have the same essence. Bongisio’s take is not like anything done before.

Fast forward to February 2026, and I was stoked to see Bongisio on the line-up at the Goa Open Arts Festival. This time, he wasn’t alone. Backed by a live band, Goan by Blood, their set brought together guitars, keys, drums, saxophone, and even CDJs. What unfolded on stage was something I hadn’t seen before. Free-flowing Konkani rap weaving through guitar riffs and saxophone solos, building a raw, electrifying energy that held the audience’s attention. Even those who didn’t understand the language were locked in, feeding off his stage presence and responding to the sheer force of the performance. While the space in front of the stage was empty when the set started, halfway through it was packed. Everyone at the Old GMC complex had made their way to this loud corner.

At that moment, language didn’t matter. The music carried it all. What transpired that evening felt like more than just a gig. It was a cultural moment. Every artist on stage brought their craft together to create something unique. If you had to take out even one person, it would not have been the same. I knew I had to learn more about the man behind it and bring this story to a wider audience. So one Sunday in Merces, we sat down to talk and what followed was a long conversation about music, fame, social work, village life, AI and everything in between. As it turned out, we were alumni of the same school and that made the conversation feel all the more personal. 

Read on for some excerpts of the interview. 

Leaxan: Thanks for meeting with me. So tell me about yourself,  where did you grow up, Merces?

Carisio: I was born and brought up here in Merces and we shifted for some time to Vasco because my mom was working for Salgaonkar. That was not for too long, I think just a year, some months, but I was schooling in Panjim. I did my kindergarten in Tiny Tots, it’s a small school near Patto. Then I went to Effigy in Santa Cruz and then I was a Bosco boy. From my fifth till my graduation and my masters, I was in Bosco’s. Basically growing up I was in Merces itself. I am a typical Merxecho burgo. I have a song also and you must have heard or you can hear it to just get a vibe. See, my songs will tell you everything about my life because there is no fake flex in it. I speak whatever happens in my life throughout. So my journey, I put it in songs. In my songs you’ll never hear something that I’m faking it. Even if it’s gonna embarrass me I’m gonna say it because that’s what I’ve gone through. About my mess ups, about some successes. So yeah, Merces has always been very close to my heart and that’s why I’ve never moved out even though this Portuguese passport is something very common in Goa. I had a lot of opportunities as I have done my Master’s in Social Work. I could get a good job in the UK or US but nothing better than my own village. Trying to save it from this development but cannot. You know our voices are too soft right now and coming out very harsh will affect a lot of youth also to open up and do whatever they want to do. So it will take time but it will have to be streamlined. That’s how you can do something about the village.

So you mentioned you studied at Don Bosco’s. Even I was at Bosco’s. In videos for Sangta Te Aik, I remember spotting a student in a Don Bosco uniform and the yellow Tagore house logo on the pocket.

Yes, I showed a younger version of me where in the 9th standard I failed. So that is the exact scene that I did after coming home from my report. I threw my bag on the exact sofa the same way. And I was thinking that that is it. There was no way I could go beyond that. So that’s where my parents came into the picture where instead of firing me or shouting at me, they told me there’s nothing wrong in failure. Failure for me is the first attempt in learning. After listening to this, like others who have this typical mentality – I failed, I’m screwed, I never got that feeling at home. My parents were very practical. They gave me examples like big scientists who keep failing before succeeding and all of that. That’s what kept me moving and after that I have never stopped. So after that I went all in. I went all in and beyond that I think I understood what it is. Bosco’s, it played a very important role in my life. Don Bosco’s teaching and the way Dominic Savio was, I’ve always tried to follow their footsteps of being with the youth, for the youth.

Sangta Te Aik is based on Bongisio life and the accompanying music video narrates his story.

What did you do after schooling?

I went to Dhempes, I did my Arts there and I came back to study for Mass Media in Bosco’s and then I carried on with my master’s in Social Work. After my master’s I was teaching Mass Media there. So yeah I was an assistant professor first and then the studio in charge over there. So I did that for around six – seven months straight and then I realized that my juniors were my students and it was affecting me. Every time I went clubbing I had my students coming up to me – “Sir so can we dance” . So I decided I will come back to teach when I have some white hair. I was a very good teacher and I got 100% results also.

After the teaching break lockdown hit us I wanted to go back to teaching but there were no options. So slowly slowly in the lockdown you know everybody either found themselves or either totally lost themselves. I feel somewhere down the line I found myself in the lockdown. Where I thought I would make my original music. I thought I would go ahead because nine years I played my music where I was just a drummer. I play the drums and the guitar but I was the drummer for a band called Blue Waves. I was getting the required money but I was not satisfied with the music because I was straight up playing covers and playing someone else’s music. So that was not keeping me happy. So that’s where I switched from a commercial musician to an original artist. So in the lockdown, I found myself. I didn’t make any music in the lockdown, but I found myself – that I could do this. And then I connected with one of my friends, Jayden Monsorate,  2jaym, who is into making beats. Picked up four beats and wrote four songs that night. That was Ketta, Sangta Te Aik,, Fake and Aou Ani Tu. So these four tracks I wrote in just one night. It just came to me. Those were my first four tracks which came very quick to me. I didn’t have to work hard. It was written for me I thought. I think it just came to me. Like how Michael Jackson states, “It should come from the heavens. You don’t know how it’s going to happen. It comes from above. That’s it.” It was just waiting in there for you to just put it out and then the day you decided to put it out it just sort of came out. It just sort of came out. The day I started making original music, I realized all those dreams of mine where I would sit in my room having tears on my bed thinking when I will do solo shows, when I will perform my original song. My ancestors, my dad, everybody is into music. My whole family is into music. My dad plays for Lorna and right now he’s practicing at home. Our whole family is into music. So I knew that I had it in me. When I started it I realized the first song told me that I was meant to do this only. I was sent on this planet to do something different and that is this. So that’s what I realized and it doesn’t affect me if I have not hit fame after six years.

Do you think you’ve not hit fame though?

I mean I would not consider this fame, I would consider this love. You understand what I’m saying? Now the people who are my fans are the people who love me. Who literally support me knowing that he is coming up. But the fame that I’m talking about is that f word. Fame is equal to fake remember this. The fans that you see are just – Oh, I want to take a picture with him. Oh, I know him. They don’t love the artist, remember this. But the fame game is a very risky game according to me and I always tell the Lord that if you’re giving me fame give me fame in such a way that I don’t become like the others where I take it for granted.

Where does the name Bongisio come from? 

I tell you there are two meanings. I’m a mass media student, I understand what clickbait is. So you know what a bong is? But I switched it. You see, my logo was different at first. Now there are bongos on my logo. There is spirituality in my logo. I’ll explain to you. Bong-isio, Car-isio, you understood the second part. When the media asked me for an explanation about Bongisio – I’m a percussionist. I played the bongo. Now this is my logo which I turned to after I see a lot of youngsters coming towards me. So now all these colors that you see, I wear nail paint. White for peace, then green for nature, yellow is for one love, blue is for water and sky, pink is for our stand with feminism and the whole right hand is black because we came from the darkness, the color of the universe. So I do this color representation because life without color would be dark. Now all these colors that I told you are in my logo yellow pink blue green and black. On the G, G stands for God – there’s only one gangster. Understood no? and the white for peace This is the center and these are the bongos. My logos were designed by this guy called Abdul who was my brother’s friend, who’s my friend too, family friend. 

What you have put together is a unique set up, you don’t see it commonly happening with that mix of a DJ, saxophone, guitar and rappers on stage.

I tell you bro, when we go to perform and my requirement goes, they ask me, “Why do you need a DJ when there’s a drummer, when there’s a band?” I’m like, just do what I’ve told you to do and then you’ll listen to what it is. A lot of people laugh. “DJ and band?” Just do it. Y’all listen to Linkin Park. Y’all never questioned Linkin Park why he has a DJ on stage. Half of the work the DJ does there.

I was there at Goa Open Arts for all the three days. I wanted to see how the vibe is, how the artists throw out their energy. The only thing that was rolling in my head and I was talking to my teammates. How can I get the whole crowd that is scattered to one place in front of the stage? And you know what our DJ Scott Braganza said? “You don’t have to do anything”. You remember what happened at Samba Square”? he asked me. “We hit the first cymbal and you saw the crowd walking towards you”. Every show I have done, I have seen the crowd. It is not me. It is the whole band that comes together and makes everybody listen to us. And when I started and when that first cymbal came, boom! I saw the Open Arts Festival crowd that was scattered, coming to one place and it is not Bongisio. It is not Bongisio. They are not coming there for Bongisio. They are coming there for Goan by Blood. Remember that. So, the reason I was asking you if you could have this interview with the band is because the whole band is very important. Bongisio is nothing without Goan by Blood. You put me alone on stage, people are like, throw him out. So when you see me on stage, it is not just Bongisio. It is Goan by Blood. Because they are the people who make the difference and they are the people who put the flavor in my music. And that’s why I push my project with the band. 

How was your experience performing at Goa Open Arts?

I don’t know where they came across my music and when I got a call I was so shocked because I follow Open Arts Festival and I know no band in Goa can perform at it hands down because they don’t entertain any commercial artists straight up. When I got a call and when they said you would be the perfect person and you are going to play on the final day, I realized that my music has a message. My music has something that other bands don’t have. That is why this kind of festival, an indie festival, contacted me. That was an eye opener for me. I was actually fading off. Let me tell you that. I was almost fading off like you know I’ll just do this for fun like let’s see what happens. But when this performance happened, it came at a time when both my guitarists were traveling. My bass guitarist was traveling, my lead guitarist was traveling. But the person who replaced the lead guitar was my guru, you can say. He was someone who I looked up to and thought I would go and make original music and start production. Roque sir. It was a dream come true. Even my mom’s dream came true that day because she wanted to see me perform with sir Roque.

So now other than you being Bongisio and doing your whole rap thing, do you do anything else?

Yeah, I believe in Carisio being a different person and Bongisio being a different person. It’s like an alter ego. As Carisio, people call me Cari, all of them know that I am a giver. I have something called ‘Goan by blood’, it’s our community. So we try to teach anybody who joins that they can’t say it is mine. Even though I have founded it, I can’t say it’s mine. It is ours. So anybody can join and say this is ours. So we do food drives and stuff like that. We don’t go to show off. We go to do it so that the youth watch us and get motivated and do it themselves too. We go around giving food parcels. Till now we have given more than 1800 parcels to the needy.

Every month we increase the number of food parcels that we give. So that is what I do when I’m not Bongisio. But as Carisio I do events, I am a technical head in this company called Latitude Entertainment and we have a sub company called Sonido Technical. I handle the sound, lights, truss. So the decisions are taken by me and I have a whole team under me like the supervisor, the workers, the technical engineer. So that is my hustle. You can say where I make some amount and I push it to my community and that’s where Carisio comes into the picture. I’m more of a village kind of a boy. I will go around meeting people, educating youngsters whenever I have a conversation with them.

You mentioned that your dad performs with Lorna. Any Goan musicians or people that inspired you or that you like listening to?

The main thing in terms of performing on stage, when I perform I’ve seen I move a lot. I have not taken any inspiration from any Goan artist. But there were some guitarists and some people who had showmanship like Alcatrazz’s Cassian. I looked up to him when I was very young. Then there was Sky High, they were a band which I was looking up to, their drummer and their main singer. So in terms of big artists, I have never looked up to them. If you asked me if I looked up to Remo, I looked up to his journey in the sense where Remo broke through the chain and I was like you know a Goan can do this. So I respect him.

With Lorna it’s the range. I would travel with my dad for the shows so looking at the crowd I would go mad thinking it’s crazy. There was this one artist, his name was Elvis Mascarenas. He used to sing but the showmanship was crazy. So I looked at him and thought something like this could happen. Then to be very frank my dad was the biggest inspiration for me. Kept me pushing like you know looking at him. He never appreciated me when I was growing – that my music is good, my drumming is good, never. So that maybe pushed me to do something. Then my fellow artists like Waking Grunt. Even Tsumyoki. He was doing this before me, then Waking Grunt was doing it way before him. So these people have played a role in my life. If I take another artist name that I have looked at him and I have, it is a fact, I don’t want to bluff. So not that I have taken full inspiration, the inspiration was these people are doing it.

What do you think about AI in music and suno, would you incorporate that in your production?

Yes, definitely I’ll tell you why. Because it will give you more room to be more creative elsewhere what AI can’t do. Got it? AI can do anything they say but AI will not talk about my personal life, I have to first write everything which will take so much time to explain to it my own entire journey. So maybe for beat making I can use AI, maybe artwork I can use AI. Not for writing. I know a lot of artists who use AI for writing but I am not. What’s the use then as an artist for me?

On what he listens to

I listen to Linkin Park, Michael Jackson, Russ. Russ is a rapper. He has played a very important role in me making original music. I always thought you needed a big studio to do something but no. For him it was just one laptop and that’s what motivated me to go there. and create music on a laptop. So Russ played a very important role. Then Chris Brown. Lately, I listen to Justin Bieber after he went through all that, after the drug thing and now he’s a new, fresh person and his music is more mature. So now I listen to him. So these five people have played a very important role for me. Besides that I take inspiration. I even listen to Bruno Mars. Justin Timberlake. So if you see they are successors of Michael Jackson. Like you know their style of music and their style of performing is influenced by Michael Jackson. But I’ll say my first influence came from Michael Jackson itself.

On rapping in Konkani

So Bongisio is like a vocation. It is like a fight. I’m fighting for my language, hardcore. My language cannot be attacked. Don’t even try. Because if you attack my language, it’s like you’re attacking every Goan. 

If Bongiso doesn’t take Konkani International, it’s fine. But someone seeing Bongisio and going international because of that fire – that is my thing. Bongisio has been someone who showed this path. There were rappers before me. There was Waking Grunt. There were many rappers before me who were doing it in Konkani. But pushing that language and pushing that cultural thing and being very brutal. I think I pushed it more. And the other artists respect me a lot because they know that this guy is not here just for fame. Rap is rap, there is no language for rap. I am not here to compete, I am here as a brother, I am here to unite everybody together. 

Check out more of Bongisio’s work on YouTube.