Joanna Dong’s musical career began after she participated in the 2004 Singapore Idol competition. Since then, the local songbird has gone on to carve a niche for herself, often infusing elements of jazz into her tunes, and has gone on to compete in Sing! China (2017) and finished an impressive third. Ahead of her performance at the December Rains concert, we caught up with Joanna Dong to find out more about her music, being a people-pleaser and her journey in life.
I will be performing many songs from the iconic Singapore Mandarin musical December Rains. I have never been part of the musical’s production but I caught both of the runs in 2010 and 2015, and I’ve always loved the music. I’m pleased that I get to sing them this time! In recent years, I’ve also become close personal friends with Jimmy Ye (who was my idol when I was growing up!) — I’m thrilled to celebrate one of the greatest milestones in his career as a composer and look forward to plenty of friendly banter with him on stage.
I’ve been very privileged to be able to make a career out of performance and entertainment, and that includes my work in theatre and television. But music has always been my first love. It is incredibly fulfilling to do what you love for work, but of course, because the work is deeply personal, that can sometimes make it hard to have a healthy detachment between work and personal life.
I’m not sure if it was because of culture, how I was raised, or my own personality — I have always sought to please others, and seek validation. The benefit is that I checked the stereotypical boxes for success earlier in life. However, that came at the cost of not really knowing what exactly I want for myself all through my young adulthood.
In recent years I have become more self-aware, so I practice less self-censorship and also remind myself not to determine my worth solely based on what other people think. Yet at the same time, I am also learning to embrace who I am — if I am fundamentally a people-pleaser, then I shall celebrate it and put it to good use.
I fell in love with swing jazz music in my early ’20s when I saw people spontaneously dancing Lindy Hop to a jazz band at a music festival at CHIJMES. Perhaps because I’ve always been rather “rule-abiding” as a child, expressing creativity completely without rules is very daunting for me. The improvisation element in swing dancing and jazz music was a joyful way for me to find freedom within and around the rules, so that truly captivated me. I don’t think that most of the music I am making nowadays can be classified as “jazz”, but my foundation in jazz is an indelible part of who I am as a musician and finds its way somehow into whatev—er I do.
It is literally the modus operandi for jazz musicians to take a “standard” (a classic song that everyone knows), and make it our own, so I don’t think I will ever stop doing that!
Now that I’ve had some time and distance to think about it, I realise that everything is about context. Not every performance has to be about me or what I want to present. When the event is a television awards ceremony that celebrates what people love about television, perhaps it was unwise of me to detract from audiences’ cherished memories of a beloved TV theme song. However, I am grateful that speaking up has prompted many people to reach out to me to say they really did enjoy my rendition as well. It was a reminder that I cannot please everyone. Whilst public rejection is a painful experience for someone who is a people-pleaser, it is also the brutal reality of putting yourself out there as a performer.
Our domestic market is undeniably very small but there is a lot of good music being made in Singapore and an ever-growing pool of incredible musical talents. However, until the way Singaporeans love and consume music can rival the way we love and consume our food, live gig performers will find it hard to substantially raise their wages and recording artistes have little choice but to set their eyes on finding audiences beyond our shores.
The latter becomes a vicious cycle — music that can resonate with audiences overseas usually has to have a more generic regional or global appeal. Not unlike my personal journey, if Singapore music needs to be “people pleasing”, then it naturally is difficult to discover what our distinct sound or identity is.
The silver lining to that is that many Singaporeans find great success by acting as cultural bridges in music production for other regional and global artistes. It is easy to conflate the success of our industry with the number of singers who “make it big”, but the recording music industry is made up of many other roles such as session musicians, arrangers, producers, and engineers. Singaporean talents have consistently done very well in those capacities across the decades and continue to do so.
I wouldn’t call it an “achievement”, but I am proud that young musicians look to me as a Jie Jie (older sister in Mandarin), and feel safe enough to confide in me or come to me for advice. It is a testament to the value of my experience in the industry, but more importantly the efforts I have put into becoming a good listener.
It is a constant struggle for me to reconcile how I dress and look on stage with what I personally enjoy buying and wearing. For the first decade of my career, I was very mindful of meeting conventional client expectations that a female jazz singer should be dressed in an elegant gown, in spite of the fact that my personal preferences are very diverse. I like everything from black, austere pieces by labels such as Yohji Yamamoto and Max Tan to avant-garde styles such as Comme Des Garçons and Maison Margiela, girly ruffles like Simone Rocha, Molly Goddard, or over-the-top prints by Richard Quinn.
My maternal grandmother was a tailor, so I really appreciate good patternmaking. The common denominator in my style preferences is that I love bold, unusual, structural pieces that break the female silhouette. When I was at Sing! China, we were all asked to bring a variety of our own outfit options for the producers to choose from. They chose a blue short-sleeved day dress from COS, even though I had brought many pieces I would consider more “stylish”. The producers advised: “your music is already not mainstream so you need to look more approachable, otherwise audiences will find it hard to connect with you”. That strategy clearly worked well for me during the contest. But when I returned to Singapore, I decided that I had earned myself at least some negotiating power to dress in a way that felt closer to who I am when doing corporate engagements.
However, my personal concerts are definitely where my style preferences come through more on stage. I was thrilled that for my You Must Believe In Spring concert earlier this year, my stylist Josiah Chua and I were able to showcase pieces from Noir Kei Ninomiya, Tomo Koizumi, and Richard Quinn from our personal collections.
I have many insecurities when it comes to my body, especially my arms, so I like outfits with strong shoulders made from stiffer fabrics that hold their shape well. My go-to ensemble is a structured shirt paired with a voluminous high-waisted skirt. If I need extra oomph, I throw on a cape jacket — I have several!
I am immensely grateful that work has picked up for me. The shows I do typically have larger groups in attendance, so they were among the first to go and last to come back. The pandemic has revealed how fragile our livelihoods are as freelance performers, so right now the challenge for me is not to succumb to the FOMO and risk overworking and damaging my voice.
I’m doing better now, thanks for asking! Going to therapy has helped me to understand myself and what I need, where my triggers are and why I respond differently to situations compared to other people.
For example, exercise is widely considered one of the best things you can do for your mental health, but all my life I’ve struggled to exercise voluntarily. My therapist helped me understand that there is no shame in seeking professional help for something that many others may find easy to do unsupervised, so for the past year I’ve finally committed to regular exercise with help from a trainer who is open to me talking about my mental health needs. That has done a lot of good for both my mental and physical health and now my psychotherapy sessions have been reduced to only once in six to eight weeks.
I will be performing three shows for December Rains 25th Anniversary concert, directing and performing in a closed-door concert at the new Esplanade Singtel Waterfront Theatre, receiving an Artistic Excellence Award at the 25th COMPASS Awards Presentation and flying out with my band for a performance in Montreal — all in the last two weeks of September!
Text: Ho Guo Xiong/ Her World