Sabah singer beats doubts to pursue mature themes in new album

 

As she hits her late thirties, singer Velvet Lawrence Aduk has learnt to care less about what other people think.

Her new release “The Darkest Knight”, which is also her debut English album, explores mature themes such as infidelity, betrayal and heartbreak.

Coming after her previous light-hearted “Sumandak Sabah” hit which celebrated her Kadazan Dusun heritage, she was worried that the themes were so personal and even considered releasing the album under a pseudonym to avoid speculation about her own life.

“After thinking about it, I just told myself and my manager that I should use my own name,” she told Malaysiakini.

The title track has her digging deep into life experiences as she attempts to express herself as a woman.

“Our feelings in our 30s are different from when we were in our teens. When you’re older things hit you differently,” she said.

Heartbreak from platonic and romantic relationships as well as other emotional upheavals feel more complex as one ages, she explained.

In the song, she sings “I will leave this crazy world without you/ Won’t you please stay away from me?”, effortlessly switching between her lower register to a soulful falsetto over a dark and melancholic bass.

“This album is - not moving away - but is just me doing something I've never done before,” she added.

When she was younger, Velvet had a deep yearning to make her music conform and be mainstream, but she no longer cares about that.

To be mainstream is to be generic, she said.

“I think I’m at that stage of life where I want to do things I love. I’m trying to be more expressive and I have nothing to lose,” she added.

‘Sumandak Sabah’ smash

In 2018, Velvet scored a great success with “Sumandak Sabah”, a song with fellow Kadazan Dusun singer Marsha Milan Londoh, which has more than 17 million views on YouTube to date.

“Sumandak” is a Kadazan-Dusun word that means “young lady”.

To Velvet, her Kadazan Dusun heritage is an important part of her and she worries about the extinction of her people’s language.

“I have tried to write in the Kadazan Dusun language which is not easy because I don’t speak it fluently but it’s important for me because the language will be gone soon.

“I'm trying to play my part to preserve, if not the language, then some of the culture through music,” she said.

“So when we look back, I feel I actually did something to help this type of music grow,” she added.

Earlier this month, Velvet performed a showcase of “The Darkest Knight” at Jaotim in Kuala Lumpur. She had a grant approved, allowing her to fly her entire team to the peninsula.

Despite the band feeling a little lost in the big city, the performance went well.

“What I told the guys was that we shouldn’t stress out about this because I know you guys are good.

“It’s just that we don’t get the chances that people in peninsular Malaysia do,” she said.

More resources needed

Being based in East Malaysia is what she considers the biggest challenge to her music career.

The opportunities in Kota Kinabalu, where she resides, are not as plentiful and the music community there is much smaller.

“Not only as a woman but as a whole, I feel we don't have that capacity to move forward because of a lack of resources.”

Passion cannot replace a lack of resources, she asserted.

She explained that the centre of the music industry is in the Klang Valley where artists have to go to make themselves known.

“That’s the struggle we have faced for a long time,” she said of East Malaysian musicians.

But moving to the Klang Valley is easier said than done, as she did not know many people when she first moved there earlier in her career.

Velvet began her career in the local entertainment industry by appearing in a reality show on Astro before becoming a top five finalist on Akademi Fantasia 4 in 2006.

She was based in Kuala Lumpur at the time for a few years. However, she got married young and became pregnant at 22 shortly after.

Back then, Velvet didn’t see it as possibly affecting her work as she was occupied with her growing family and the pregnancy which resulted in her first son.

“There was no thought about how now I’m married and I'm at the peak of my career and I don't have a stable job - I never thought of that.

“But when I look back, I recognised it as career suicide,” she said.

However, it wasn’t all bad as the years away from her career gave her time to grow as a person and an artist.

She is partly grateful for it now although she never stopped singing.

There are also some benefits to living in Kota Kinabalu, where she said the lifestyle is much subtler compared to Kuala Lumpur.

She decided to move back to Sabah for the sake of her four children.

“KK is the best place to let them grow up because their cousins are here. In KL, I felt like we were so isolated,” she said.

Now that her children are older, Velvet has more time for herself, which culminated in “The Darkest Knight”.

The album revolves around pop and ballads, with some soul for good measure.

“It’s the type of music I would jive to,” she said.

Velvet spent a year producing the album, a self-imposed time limit that saw her shifting journal entries into song.

A small team of three worked alongside her: all of whom were people from Kupi-Kupi FM, the Sabahan radio station where she is a part-time announcer.

As for her music career, Velvet remains upbeat.

“There are ups and downs. For me, it’s like a fun ride,” she said with a winsome smile. - Mkini