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The Choir Loft Is India’s Quietest Music School
Ask an Indian singer where they learnt music, and the expected answers are usually a guru, a gharana, a music academy or even YouTube. But for several singers emerging from Goa, Mumbai and the North-East, their earliest training came from somewhere less obvious: the church choir.
Long before recording studios and reality television competitions, choirs were teaching young singers how to read music, harmonise, control their voices and perform alongside others. What began largely as a tradition of religious music gradually developed into a training ground for musicians who would eventually find their way into orchestras, popular music and Bollywood.
It is an old route. When the Portuguese arrived in Goa, Jesuits taught doctrine through song, and by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Goa’s parish schools were giving music more weight than any other subject. Children learnt to read notation alongside the alphabet. Many of those students ended up in orchestras across India, and later in Bollywood’s studios, where Goan musicians helped build the Hindi film sound.
The route is still running. Leon D’Souza, the voice on A. R. Rahman’s Hosanna, trained in the choir at Gloria Church in Byculla. In Shillong, Neil Nongkynrih’s chamber choir went from a hometown ensemble to winning India’s Got Talent in 2010 and singing for Barack Obama at Rashtrapati Bhavan the same year.
Where India’s Choral Tradition Began
India has a long history of collective singing, from devotional bhajans and kirtans to regional folk traditions. However, Western-style choral singing developed a strong institutional presence through Christian missionary education.
Goa became one of its earliest centres. Following the Portuguese conquest in 1510, missionaries established schools where music was an essential part of education. Interestingly, the Jesuits also drew upon existing Indian teaching practices, using songs to communicate religious teachings to children.
In a conversation documented by Sahapedia, Father Joaquim Pereira explains that by the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Goa’s parish schools placed extraordinary emphasis on musical education. Students learnt to read notation, memorise sacred compositions and perform works by European composers such as Mozart and Palestrina.
These schools eventually produced musicians who travelled beyond Goa to perform in royal courts across India. Later, Goan instrumentalists, composers and arrangers became important contributors to the Hindi film industry’s musical development. Although Goa’s parish-school system had largely disappeared by the mid-twentieth century, its musical influence survived through church choirs, seminaries and community ensembles.
For a specific case study, the Shillong Chamber Choir demonstrates how ensemble singing can become a professional career in itself. Founded in 2001 by pianist and conductor Neil Nongkynrih, the choir brought together young musicians from Shillong and trained them in a repertoire that crossed Western classical music, gospel and Bollywood. Their breakthrough came in 2010, when they won the second season of India’s Got Talent. Later that year, they performed for Barack and Michelle Obama at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Nongkynrih passed away on 5 January 2022, but his ensemble continued to develop its musical identity. Members contributed vocal music to Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies, while singers and arrangers such as Riewbankit Lyndem and Ibarisha Lyngdoh expanded into composition for cinema.
The Choir-to-Playback Pipeline
One of the clearest modern examples is Mumbai-based singer Leon D’Souza, whose vocals on A. R. Rahman’s Hosanna, from Ekk Deewana Tha, introduced his voice to a much wider audience.
D’Souza has directly credited the choir at Gloria Church in Byculla for his musical training. In a 2022 interview with Indulge Express, he recalled growing up surrounded by talented singers in the church, describing the choir as the place where his training happened.
His journey illustrates what makes choirs such effective training spaces. Young singers develop an ear for pitch, timing and harmony while learning to blend their voices with an ensemble. Unlike individual lessons, choir rehearsals also demand constant listening, discipline and collaboration.
For aspiring playback singers, these are particularly valuable skills. Studio sessions often require performers to adapt quickly to arrangements, reproduce precise vocal phrases and understand their place within a larger composition.
Not every choir member will become a playback singer, and not every ensemble is designed to produce professional musicians. Yet the skills acquired through collective singing can support careers in recording, arranging, composition, music education and live performance.
From Goa’s centuries-old parish schools to Shillong’s internationally recognised ensemble and Pune’s children’s choirs, the underlying tradition remains remarkably consistent. Generations of singers have learnt to find their own voices by first learning to sing alongside others.
