Word: musician
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...This is how he may have continued, a jobbing musician in a seedy netherworld, were it not for an epiphanic injury in 1992. His friend fell asleep at the wheel of a car and ran off the road, sending Ponnudorai, a passenger, headfirst through the window. Initially, he appeared miraculously unscathed and was sent home with a head full of stitches. But days later, he was unable to fret guitar chords or walk a straight line. Fresh tests revealed a massive blood clot covering an entire side of his brain, just waiting to rupture, and he was rushed into surgery...
...Marsalis was referring to the buzz Ponnudorai generates among local and overseas musicians. Among the public, it is another matter. If you watch Ponnudorai play, there will typically be a handful of fans near the stage. Everyone else will be at the other end of the room, noisily drinking and making a mockery of Singapore's reputation as a city at the forefront of smoking cessation. The kind of musician that the world produces only a few times in a generation is in the house, but the laity barely notice...
...Ponnudorai was good enough to win a national TV talent contest, playing an instrumental rendition of Killing Me Softly. But despite this early success, he had no thoughts of becoming a professional musician until lack of money stymied his desire to read English literature at university. At a loose end, and with the family having moved to Kuala Lumpur, he persuaded his mother to let him earn a few ringgits by playing a couple of hours a night at a bar where one of the older Ponnudorai boys was a regular. "That was 1979," Ponnudorai says. "I walked into that...
...fame is the man himself. Since his accident, he has been content simply to make a living. "It took me a while to figure it out," he says, "but as long as I can play, I'll be a happy man." And so it happens that this remarkable musician will perform at Harry's this weekend, while most of the drinkers have their backs to the stage. It doesn't matter if 10 people are listening or 10,000. His music ascends like a prayer or a thanksgiving, an end in itself...
...Gordon was the last Cabinet colleague you'd have thought of suggesting a drink with," says Baroness Morris of Yardley, who worked alongside Brown when she was Secretary of State for Education and Skills. Bob Geldof, the musician and Live Aid activist, developed a close relationship with Brown while lobbying him on Africa. Yet he, too, sees limits to their camaraderie. "Would it be easy to spend a night in a bar with him?" asks Geldof. "No, he'd get bored. Not with you, but with that chitchat level." Even Brown's inner circle frets about the friendliness-factor issue...