Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan on Saturday said musicians should be saluted and admired because they were the people who had made tremendous sacrifices in their own life and taken the risk of embracing music as a career.
Presiding over the Sadas of the 84th Annual Conference and Concerts of The Music Academy and conferring the Sangita Kalanidhi award on Bombay sisters C. Saroja and C. Lalithaa, he said that not many young people were encouraged to pursue music as a profession. “This is because parents worry that their children will have a hard time making a living. They would rather want their children to become accountants or go to management, engineering and medical institutions or do some research in the basic sciences,” he said.
Dr. Ramakrishnan, who grew up listening to music, also touched upon the subject of the link between mathematical science and music. “Many scientists and mathematicians are musically talented. Many musicians are quite mathematically and scientifically talented at high school, till they choose music as a career. Many scientists are very good amateur musicians. It is not entirely clear why this is so, except perhaps both music and mathematical science share something in recognising patterns or synthesising new patterns,” he said. The scientist said that though he visited The Music Academy many times to listen to concerts, it was really a thrill to stand on the dais. N. Murali, president, The Music Academy, said Dr. Ramakrishnan had seamlessly moved from being a silent and ardent rasika, slipping in and out of concerts unnoticed and unannounced, to the chief guest of the Sadas function.
Mr. Murali also referred to the presence of Thomas A. Steitz, scientist, who shared the Nobel Prize with Dr. Ramakrishan. He said it was the first time in its history that The Music Academy honoured a vocalist duo in the same year with the Sangita Kalanidhi award. The Academy also released the first volume of the English translation of the Sangita Sampradaya Prardarsini after a gap of 25 years.
Earlier, Dr. Ramakrishnan conferred the Sangita Kala Acharya awards on vocalist Suguna Varadachari and dance teacher Radha. Vocalists Manakkal Rangarajan and Parassala Ponnamal received the TTK award. R. Sathyanarayana received the musicologist award. Dedicating the award to their parents, the Bombay Sisters announced the constitution of an award in the name of their guru T.K. Govinda Rao.
