Kalam, the musician, to renew ties with city

MUMBAI: President A P J Abdul Kalam, who launched India into the space age, is all set to steal the hearts of music lovers in Mumbai.
On February 25, he will inaugurate the Indian Music Academy (IMA).
The main role of the organisation would be to promote Indian music at the international level. It would also try "to motivate and inspire the younger generation to take up Indian forms of music as a profession, and take pride in carrying on the Indian culture and traditional Indian music which has been deprived of media support for the last 10 years."
Significantly, the venue of the function will be the Homi Bhabha auditorium at Colaba which forms a part of the prestigious Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, where Kalam began his career as a space scientist nearly 40 years ago.Kalam, himself a music lover, spends his spare time playing Carnatic music on the veena.
It is said that he is inspired by the late MS Subbulakshmi.
His colleagues recall that when he was designing rockets and missiles in the ''70s and ''80s, he managed to find time to play the veena. "With one hand he played the veena and with the other he designed a rocket," recalls a colleague.
At the inaugural function of the academy, Kalam will felicitate about 30 musicians. There will also be brief performances of 10 minutes each which will attempt to trace the evolution of Indian music.
Through its programmes the IMA will set up funds to provide medical aid to senior musicians. At the end of the first year, awards will be presented to young musicians. Among those connected with the new institution are eminent Carnatic and Hindustani musicians like Balamurli Krishna, Pandit Jasraj, Lalgudi Jayaraman, Pandit Shivkumar Sharma, L Subramaniam, Ustad Zakir Hussain, Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Javed Akhtar, Louis Banks and Pyarelal.