People climb the mountains simply because they’re there. I climb the mountains to get away from my own culture so I can hear myself think. Because the language and the culture have everything to do with the way how musicians compose their music and the way they sound.
LANGUAGE
Unlike most languages on earth, Chinese has no alphabet. The entire language is consisting of characters evolved from drawings; tones in various pitches and is all by memory only. You can not look up a Chinese word in the dictionary if you don’t know how to write it. What’s lacked in rhythm and articulation, we make them up with volume and by stretching the tones in order to be understood. As a result, not all but most Chinese singers have problems with articulation and are singing pitch on pitch making their words hard to understand.
CULTURE
The modern Chinese culture is still very ancient or in plain English, “Narrow Minded”. Almost everything is still done with the whole family or a group rather than with an individual effort. Money, Money, Money is all the Chinese ever care about and not a care for talent (unless of course if you sing only in Chinese). Nevertheless, Chinese are excellent with mathematics and are very successful business people.
HOME GROWN BORDERS
As with most Chinese parents, they want their children to be doctors or lawyers and not a musician because the Chinese community will spread rumours about them not making any money.
I’ve always been treated as “foreign” in the Chinese community because I don’t have to work in the restaurants like most other Chinese do and it’s also because I sing mostly in English.
The worse part of the Chinese mentality is that we alienate each other within our own culture. For example: A Chinese person born outside of China is called a “Bamboo Whip” (not the exact translation but it’s the closest I can come up with) and considered different, foreign and ignorant about their own Chinese roots.
So, before the music, the prejudice and the racism, coming out of my own culture is the first and the most difficult border I have to cross. And this is not a one time thing, it’s a daily struggle!
BARRIERS
In the 70’s, it was unusual to see a Chinese doctor in Montreal, there were no Chinese accountants, dentists or hair dressers etc. and a Chinese singer-musician who sings in English was unheard of at that time.
In fact, one night in 1979 as I was moving my equipment out of the then Lodeo Café in downtown Montreal, I was actually stop by the police who thought I was stealing. I had to explain to the policeman that I was singing there but he laughed and said: a “Chinese” singer-musician?
I constantly had to put up with these worn out cliché such as: “All Chinese know Kung Fu” and “All Chinese Can’t Sing” that seemed as if it’s forever stuck in people’s minds. And of course, the rise of William Hung didn’t help.
Not once but several times in my 25 year career where people would come up to me on stage and said:
• It’s not you singing and playing the guitar. It’s karaoke!
• Chinese are not supposed to sound like that. It’s lip-syncing!
• You are Asian then you must know “Sukiyaki” and “Tiny Bubbles” by Don Ho (a popular Hawaiian singer from the 50’s).
• You live in Quebec, you don’t sing enough in French.
• You are in Chinatown and you don’t have enough Chinese songs in your repertoire.
And then there are those venues where it just didn’t matter if I could sing better than Elvis or play my guitar better than Jimi Hendrix, I was simply a Chinese person who they think didn’t belong in their hood.
ADVANTAGE
However, sometimes being a Chinese singer/musician does have positive circumstances because I’m different (or fresh) from the other acts. In fact, there were times when it was working so well, I actually put the jobs of my competitors (in the same or nearby towns) in jeopardy.
SUMMARY
People either love me or hate me, there’s simply nothing in between.
Nevertheless, my music has taken me to places where no or just a few Chinese have ever been before and I have no regrets.