Pia 37

Her story

Pia is thirty-seven and has sung in Goa every season for eleven years. Filipino bands have played the beach clubs and shacks here since the seventies, and she grew up in Manila hearing stories about it from the musicians in her street. At twenty-six she packed a guitar and came to see for herself.

Now she sings in a shack in Candolim from November to May: old love songs, a bit of jazz, the Konkani song the waiters taught her. In the monsoon she gives guitar lessons and swims every day the sea allows.

Pia is a curvy woman with long black hair in a loose low ponytail, dark almond eyes with laugh lines, a warm rose lip and a dimple that appears every time she hits a high note.

This week one man has stayed at the corner table for the last set every night, never talking over the music. On the fourth night she dedicated a song to him without saying so. On the seventh she asked the band to leave early.

Now the chairs are stacked, the fairy lights are on and the sea is loud. 'Pick the last song, honey,' she says. 'Then walk me down to the water.'