A touch of nostalgia

WHEN it comes to music, old is always gold and singers such as Janet Lee are always sought after because of their gift to not only render these songs beautifully, but also give them a slight contemporary touch.

Lee regularly performs songs from the 1920s to 60s, singing diverse genres that range from the American songbook standards, Broadway show tunes, operatic arias and Shanghai jazz.

Lee is also a theatre performer, having appeared in Dama Asia Productions I Have A Date With Spring and Butterfly Lovers, PAN Productions’ Always In Wonderland? The Musical, M! The Opera by Saidah Rastam, The Magic Flute Concert by KLPac, and The Merry Widow by Lyric Opera Malaysia. She has also appeared in films The Last Communist and Red Street Diner.

Since 2014, Lee was one of the founders of cabaret group, The Shanghai Sisters, with fellow performers Winnie Ho and May Mow. The group performs a trilingual repertoire of Old Shanghai, Grand Malaya and Romantic Hollywood, working closely with renowned Malaysian jazz ensemble WVC.

Lee has two studio albums to date, Restless Heart (2015) and Cinnabar Rouge (2017).

Lee was always attracted to songs of a completely different era.

“When I was in high school, we were talking about New Kids On The Block, Paula Abdul and Martika. I was introduced to vintage and show tunes music when I was finishing school.”

Lee describes that moment as “love at first sight”.

“I did not grow up listening to songs from the American songbook. I grew up listening to my mum and dad’s 1970s popular Mandarin pop song cassettes.

“From Mandarin pop songs I started listening to songs on the American pop chart. And then I took a U-turn, and went for the 1940s and 50s of the American songbook.”

Lee has performed various musical genres over the course of her career.

“Because I can speak and read in Chinese, I started getting Chinese gigs. Clients started looking for me after I was part of Dama Orchestra (now Dama Asia Productions). I was doing more acting roles then.

“Somebody asked me to sing for their parents 70th wedding anniversary. That was in 2007.”

She recalls telling this person that she only sings in a Mandarin musical, and didn’t have a repertoire of classic songs.

“So I went around looking and collecting my repertoire from scratch, and started doing Chinese oldies. I became comfortable with it, getting a hang of the melodies and learning more songs, and getting more creative with the arrangements.”

Oldies are really popular within the Chinese music scene. Tribute concerts to artistes, such as the late Teresa Teng, are very popular.

“The philosophy and the treatment of the music is slightly different. There are people who enjoy the Teresa Teng songbook as is, and there are jazz bands that I worked with who like their rendition.

“So they would rearrange all these favourites by changing the tempo, the groove, injecting a lot of their own personality into [them].”

“Shanghai jazz is a loosely coined term we use so that people understand that it is Chinese oldies with jazz arrangements. Back in the day in Shanghai, elements of jazz were already apparent in their music scene. By the 60s and 70s, it had a more straight-laced pop sound.

“So now when we sing these songs again, we like to give them a fresh and Western arrangement and sound. We loosely coin this as Shanghai jazz. It is a term that is subjective, depending on how you look at it.”

During a time of social distancing, Lee has been busy giving small intimate shows.

“I have done a series of webcasts from by home without live music. Just played some backing tracks and posted it on my Instagram and Facebook accounts.”

She even got roped into doing live shows with her band (but no live audience) that was broadcast over social media.

Viewership was good, but the numbers went down when restrictions were lifted. Lee started doing live shows again, and recently returned from the Mini Jazz Festival in Penang.

As for reflecting on her own life and having some sort of epiphany to do something different, Lee said she never had grand plans to do something vastly different from what she is already doing now.

“My parents have moved to Kuala Lumpur permanently, and they occupy a lot of my time in terms of making myself useful.

“It is no longer about just making money. Keeping myself sane is occupying a big space in my head.

“The thirst to make music is still there. It is a journey I have not gotten tired of.”

She is also considering mentoring younger performers and packaging other artistes and bands, to promote to her corporate clients.

“I enjoy working with people and putting things together. I want to be a fashionista, stylist, kind of a producer thing.”