INTERVIEWS - Goa Hippie Tribe
Goa Hippy Tribe:
The New Generation - Arambol
Director Darius Devas speaks to SBS Documentary about how the project came together.
What was the inspiration behind Goa Hippy Tribe: New Generation video series?
While I was in Goa for the Hippy Tribe reunion I kept hearing people talk about Arambol, so I decided to go there for a week right at the end of my stay. When I found Arambol it was exciting for me because it felt like Anjuna, which was the original gathering place in the '70s. I felt like there was such a strong link to those original times that I thought it would be interesting to document this new generation of people, who still go to Goa. So I went back to Arambol the following year and then shot all the interviews during the Australian summer of 2011/2012.
How did you select the six you interviewed?
Something that makes Arambol really unique is the drumming
circle that happens on the beach. If you want to, you could talk to 50 people each night; there’s just
so much happening and it’s a real meeting point. I talked to many different people so when I was selecting the interviews I wanted to create a cross section of different nationalities and genders. It was a toss-up between needing to be diverse and also trying to find the most interesting characters.
What’s your Goa story?
I lived in Goa from when I was five weeks old until I was three, nearly four. I think spending those really formative, developmental years there established some sort of connection. It sounds weird but it’s like a smell. The smell of Goa is relaxing. It’s kind of crazy because it’s not a very nice smell.
One of the original Goa hippies said, “What is a hippy? Today that word is meaningless”. What’s your take on this?
I feel like the word hippy has become a cliché. Even its original connotations are quite negative. It just got picked up by popular culture as an easily labelled broad movement. There would be individual characters that might associate with the word, but for the most part, people just don’t want to be labelled. I doubt almost any of the characters I interviewed for the New Generation would associate with that word. As they are in Goa and its part of this hippy lineage, a cross-over happened.
The hippies of the ‘70s used to congregate on Anjuna Beach. Do you think people will move on from Arambol like they did with Anjuna?
I think change is really inevitable. I grew up in Byron which used to be a sleepy little hippy town; now it’s different. Arambol is already changing. It will get to a breaking point, then a little seed will spark somewhere else and people will start going there, then that place will expand and probably overpopulate. When a strong cultural place is formed, it draws people in then becomes the snake that bites its own tail, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It becomes a bit tedious listening to expats talk about what Goa used to be. Sure it’s sad when development happens and places get spoilt but there’s not much that can be done to stop progress. Inevitably somewhere else will form down the track.