He was seven when he joined the children's choir at his Kurla parish Holy Cross High School Church. His mother was part of the adult choir while his grandfather, Ayres Remos Pinto, also a jive dancer, was hooked on to Kenny Rogers and Ray Charles.

Armed with the training in harmony and pitch that singing in a choir can teach you, plus the ear training his mother played a key role in developing, Dwayne Leroy Gamree, at 28, is launching his first original and its video in Andheri this Sunday, with Arko Ganguly (drums), Kamran Raza (bass), Morris Tixeira (keys) and Shannon Ponnoth (guitar). "My mother would make me sing along at home, pointing my mistakes," Gamree quips. The roles reversed soon, when he started doing music full time at 21. "She would ask me if she was singing in the right pitch," he recalls, adding, "I wasn't doing mainstream Bollywood, which isn't great financially."