PUSHING for a collective responsibility to "bring back the harmony" and our ‘Negaraku’, KLSings and VoxPop Choirs is calling all Malaysians to share the joy of community building through singing.
The ‘Satu Suara: Edisi Hari Merdeka’ is set to take place online via Zoom this August 31st, with participation is open for all.
Choir leader Cheryl Teh shares why the annual Merdeka Day 2021 'Zingalong' (Zoom sing-along) event is an important tradition to carry forward again for its fourth consecutive year.
The Vibes: Hi Cheryl! Thanks for agreeing to share with us more about the motivations behind your event. To start, could you share more on the significance behind continuing to run it again this year? What do you mean when you say you want to bring back harmony?
Chery Teh: It's important to have the event running because the songs featured can bring us together, regardless of our background and present socio-political situation.
I mean, we sang a lot of patriotic and Malaysian folk songs back in school and everything, but I realised that society seems to lose it later in life. Quite honestly, there is a certain sense of nostalgia, a memory, that the songs carry.
When the last general elections came, specifically after watching politician Hannah Yeoh singing ‘Sejahtera Malaysia’ during a ceramah and everyone joined in, the whole situation really moved me and it was the very reason why I started hosting the event as an excuse to celebrate our National Day (and Malaysia Day). If Hannah Yeoh can get people to sing Malaysian patriotic songs, I thought we (as a community) can do it too.
Initially, I was not planning to conduct the event this year to be honest since I’m studying (as a full-stack developer) full-time. Then, I came across this image online of an empty – Negaraku – music score sheet with notes piled at the bottom (responding to present current affairs).
It pulled my heartstrings because I could almost feel our harmony fading. It’s as though we are a tuneless country, which was sad to come to terms with. So, I decided to take time out from studying to do this again because I think it’s important.
TV: How has the response been with every turnout? Has it met your expectations each time?
CT: Usually the turnout would be among my choir group (VoxPop Choirs) where around 50-60 people would participate. But because of the pandemic, we had somewhat of a hybrid setting last year – we managed to do some of it in person, and some joined in online via Zoom, which included the Malaysian diaspora overseas.
This allowed for the number of participants to be higher. It was nice because people could share their experience with their relatives back home as well. I find it beautiful to see how the event has expanded given the circumstances. It doesn't matter whether we are in tune or not, but what’s important instead is we are singing together as a community.
TV: Where does all your inspiration and drive come from?
CT: I was the chairperson of the Philharmonic Society of Selangor (for more than 10 years, up to 2018), which is Malaysia's oldest music society while juggling with some work overseas. But it’s not until 2019, just before the pandemic, when I finished my last project in Singapore and I came back to Malaysia that I had the intention to pursue music full-time as a choir leader/director.
I have had two parallel careers in the past – a job in the corporate sector and as a musician. I did my music training in Canada, specifically on community choir. I also travelled around the (United) States meeting different choirs and deepening my knowledge of what the concept is like because I saw the need to encourage music in our own community, particularly singing.
As Asians, we're not very musically inclined because we don’t grow up being that way. So, when I started introducing the choir sessions, my aim was not only to give a chance for older people to find their voice again but also to get adults in general to say ‘hey, I can sing’ outside of just going for karaoke. There is something magical about singing in a group when you can hear other people harmonised with you.
My mom was a music teacher for secondary school students, and my dad plays the guitar, so I guess I grew up with music at heart.
My mother suffers from dementia, but music remains the only memory that sticks. She might not remember my name, but she still remembers how to play the piano. This deepened my interest and pursuit in music seeing how important it is – it’ll stay with you no matter what.
TV: Do tell us more about the songbook that you keep as reference. How did you come to put it together?
CT: I have been collecting songs since young and have over a thousand of them stored in my cupboard to date. Some are gained with the help of my mom, and some are from scouring the internet. Also, my training has allowed me to be part of a network of choirs (where a lot of the choir leaders overseas that I engage with take part in music activism) and we exchange songs that each of us compose. Personally, I don’t see (or call) myself a singer-songwriter, but the pandemic has led me to get creative.
TV: Are there newer versions of patriotic songs that the group will be singing to this year?
CT: I normally play on the piano stuff that are acoustic and will encourage the choir group to think of the words when singing the songs.
I'm very old school, and because my normal audience are the older members of society, I like to bring back songs from the 60s. A lot of what is on the list are written by the likes of Jimmy Boyle for example.
I also have access to a lot of music from the 70s and 80s that the group can easily sing-along to. Of course, songs like ‘Tanah Pusaka’ or ‘Sejahtera Malaysia’ among them get played a lot since these are what people are mostly familiar with.
Apart from being agelessly poetic, the fact that we experience equal exposure to song(s) introduced back in the days is what makes them compelling. Nowadays, there are so many sources of media and it's like you could miss a song completely because people consume things differently. Old songs freely bring you back to a place in time. New songs, I guess, sort of work your brain a little bit harder.
Some of the modern ones, which come in different languages, are very upbeat (pop-ish) with rap in it, which are difficult to sing together. You can only be a passive listener. That type of experience doesn't do a lot for me, at least not when attempting to instil patriotism. – The Vibes, August 28, 2021
*Join Satu Suara: Edisi Hari Merdeka sing-along via Zoom this National Day. Visit KL Sings Facebook or www.klsings.com for more information.
