Awards matter; they encourage you to work harder, says Purbayan
Sitar player Purbayan Chatterjee is set to perform in Pune, alongside Padma Shri awardee Vijay Ghate, who would accompany him on the tabla. Chatterjee, 46, received the President of India Award for being the best instrumentalist of the country when he was 15. “Music has been an integral part of my life ever since I was a child,” says the sitarist, adding that awards and recognition do bring a sense of accomplishment.
“The journey of a musician is always a long and arduous one. One looks forward to recognition and accolades do bring a sense of accomplishment and encourage you to work harder,” says the musician. He adds, “That being said, as you grow, you begin to get detached from the results and you get more focused on the journey. Personally, I feel failure makes you what you become and success is just incidental.”
The musician adds that it was during the pandemic that he explored himself further as an artiste. Recalling his quarantining days, he says, “I -realised the value of expressing myself musically. Music is a defining factor of my existence now.”
While many musicians are now complaining about Indians losing touch with their culture, Chatterjee believes otherwise. “I strongly feel that music is an emotional response, whether it is Indian, western or from any other part of the world. It is great that there are various forms of music that are slowly penetrating our country and culture,” he says.
Chatterjee adds that “our classical music is a tradition that is thousands of years old and I feel that nothing can ever take it away from our people”. He elaborates, “It is extremely heartening to see that Bollywood still draws their repository from the building blocks of classical music. In fact, our sargam and padhanth are often used internationally to create sounds that appeal to a global audience and I don’t see anything wrong with that.”