AJCO ~ Transcending Ethnic Boundaries...

Chinese orchestra literally means 华族乐团. In Singapore, most COs (whether professional or grassroots orchestra) comprises of pure Chinese ethnic individuals as the performers. However, AJCO is proud to have two Indian Chinese musicians. This blog entry, thus, showcases two lovely Indian Chinese student musicians - Haridrani Dananka Peiris and Asha D/O Sasangan - Dananka and Asha in short.

Dananka was the Gaoyin Sheng player of the 15th batch AJCO (Oh man... that was so long long long ago in the ancient times). She played a Sheng and Orchestra piece (高音笙独奏，乐队伴奏) - 火车进侗乡 for their batch SYF. Despite clinching only a silver award for SYF, she received wonderful remarks on how she has demonstrated that Chinese orchestra can transcend beyond ethnic boundaries. Dananka was a very funny person (I am using past tense because we have since lost contact ever since she has graduated). She used to joke around a lot and crapped a lot of lame jokes with the rest of us (for e.g. how she played her Sheng like a Chicken flapping its wings). I still remember she was famous in AJ for skipping PE classes and got into quite a bit of trouble with her PE teachers. HAHA. OMG... And when I did a search for Dananka on Yahoo, I realise Junyang is her secondary school classmate from Nan Hua Secondary School (http://4e1.cloudie.net/gallery/formal.html). Here is a photo of Dananka playing 火车进侗乡 in the hot AJCO hall (15th and 16th batch AJCO concert):

(Top:) Apologies for the quality of this photo. It is actually taken from
the video of Dananka's performance from my laptop using a camera

Asha, on the other hand, is from the modern contemporary era. She plays the pipa in the 23rd batch AJCO. Pipa is quintessentially a Chinese musical instrument (though derived from Persian) and we are proud of her, as an Indian Chinese, for taking up that instrument for her CCA. She only starts learning pipa since JC1 and I hope she can continue learning pipa even when she has graduated. She was supposed to be featured in the previous entry on interesting names because her name "A sha" can be interpreted as "a 沙" (That is what some of her AJCO friends called her). And here is a 沙 holding a 琵琶.

(Top): Asha posing in AJCO room with her pipa

(Top): Asha, Me and her Pipa Friends (Shufen, Hejing, Huiling, Felicia, Shirley)

AJCO ~ Transcending Ethnic Boundaries
*Ah Liang*