Prominent Suva lawyer Richard Naidu was deeply touched when his late mother, Ethel Naidu, was awarded the 2022 Outstanding Service to Fijian Music at the FIPRA Music Awards.
Naidu says his mother, who passed away in 2011, was a classically-trained singer.
He adds it was amazing to meet so many people at the awards night whose lives she touched in one way or another.
Naidu says in her 40-year-plus teaching career in Fiji, they worked out that she mostly taught biology and music at more than a dozen schools and at the Fiji National University, but music was her vocation and choirs, choir competitions, and music festivals were the biggest part of her public life.
He adds sadly, he did not inherit any musical genes, but he did get some of his mother's questioning mind and her healthy disrespect for authority.
