Word: guitar
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...greatest musical interpreter of our time performs every weekend at Harry's-an ordinary bar in a Singaporean shopping mall. There, before a half-empty room, while soccer matches are screened and waitresses ferry beer and fries, Paul Ponnudorai sings with astounding virtuosity, accompanied only by his Spanish guitar. His voice swoops and growls with the range and soulfulness of mid-period Stevie Wonder, and his fluid, polyrhythmic style of guitar playing appears to have little precedent. But it is his choice of material, and the inventiveness with which he arranges it, that cloaks Ponnudorai in the aura of genius...
...mining town of Ipoh, the youngest of 10. Ponnudorai's parents were too poor to buy him a metronome: he learned his exquisite sense of timing by playing along to the creak of an old ceiling fan. Naturally left-handed, he taught himself to play on a right-handed guitar because it was cheaper than a model strung for left-handers (and this is how he still plays). A car crash in his early 20s ("we were road racing and I drove my car into a ravine") gave him the limp that he still walks with...
...brine of the Bible," he says. "As Lutherans, we would go to church and sing as a family." His father was a locally famous countertenor, but in fact the entire family was talented and the house never silent. If it wasn't one of the children playing guitar or piano, it was classical Indian music or the Beatles on the turntable, and the Johnny Cash Show on TV. "I used to watch my brothers and sisters and pick things up," says Ponnudorai. "At 6, I was playing guitar...
...family moved to France two decades ago. After two albums in French, she has since mostly recorded in English, and recently celebrated her new self-titled album's European release with a private concert at Le Réservoir, a small club on Paris' Right Bank. After adjusting her guitar and donning a harmonica holder, she launched into the new song "Lay Your Head Down," with her four-man band. As the song's opening steady drumbeat kicked up and the audience's excitement mounted, an insuppressible smile came over her face as she sang and she looked almost giddy...
...However, band members said they enjoyed the battle. Konopka told a fan after the show, “it was fun! People got slimed!” Although OK Go lost the competition—their fate sealed by a rout in a game of “Guitar Hero”—the Grammy-winning group received a consolation trophy depicting a basketball player attempting a slam-dunk, with a plaque that read: “Nicholas D. Kristoff [sic], Pulitzer Prize Winner, Spring 2006.” Meanwhile, vocalist and guitarist Damian Kulash said the audience...