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CHAN & CHAN: Jackie sings with Agnes on her new CD.
Courtesy Shore Fire Media |
Asian megastar Agnes
Chan has always had a passion for children. Now America is hearing
about it. On Valentine’s Day, Chan, PhD ’94, released her first
stateside CD, Forget Yourself (Bungalo Records), with proceeds
going to UNICEF. The Tokyo-based singer, author, activist and education
professor is also the first ambassador of the Japan Committee for the
United Nations children’s fund.
Chan’s U.S.
debut works “dance, rock, world music and hip-hop into its broad-eared
pop sensibility,” according to her publicity. The upbeat, amiable star
has attracted allies on her American mission. JR Richards from the
platinum recording group Dishwalla, Santana’s Andy Vargas, the
singer/songwriter duo Dilettantes, and martial arts star Jackie Chan
perform guest spots on the album. A bonus track features Chan’s new
rendition of Stevie Nicks’s “Beautiful Child,” originally recorded with
Fleetwood Mac in 1979.
Forget Yourself
evokes children Chan has met on her international travels. “Thirteen”
shows the plight of a child prostitute in the Philippines; “Sorrow
Lives in this Village” describes black Christian Sudanese children and
young men being conscripted or enslaved by the northern, Arab-Sudanese
militias; “You Are Loved” has a message for Hindu “untouchables” going
blind from malnutrition; and in the poignant “One Step at a Time,”
orphans befriend each other in Ethiopian refugee camps.
Why
an American entry now, after more than 20 hit albums over a long career
in Asia? Says Michael Carey, an award-winning Los Angeles
composer/producer who collaborated with Chan, “In terms of pop music,
the U.S. is the holy grail. She’s done a lot of things she’s wanted to
do where she lives. It’s less about Agnes, and more about her being a
messenger of something important.”
American
label Bungalo Records is primarily known for hip-hop and R&B acts,
not what Carey describes as “big, beautiful, world-oriented pop with a
powerful lyrical content.” Bungalo president Paul Ring says working
with Chan was an opportunity to get involved with her music and the
causes she supports, pointing out that she’s sold “millions of records
everywhere but here.”
Nevertheless, the
American market can be a hard one to break into. Chan has already
surmounted a few obstacles, including a release date that was pushed
back six months. She takes it in stride: “I’m cool because I’ve been in
the business so long and I know the mentality.”
Does
anything faze her? “From everything I know about Agnes, she doesn’t
operate in a fear-based manner,” Carey says. “She goes with her
instincts and has a tremendous faith in herself. She has a strong faith
that the content of the album is important, and it really needs to be
heard.”
Chan’s self-confidence has sustained
a 35-year career in the limelight, since she became a singing star in
her native Hong Kong at age 14—and it’s helped her carry out a bruising
schedule of charitable work. In recent years, she’s visited children in
Darfur, Iraq, Moldova and other trouble spots. In Japan, she worked to
pass legislation to protect children. Now she’s publicizing the plight
of teens shanghaied from Moldova and Romania to be sex workers in
Russia. About 1.2 million children are trafficked worldwide for sexual
exploitation, she reminds her audiences.
How
does she cope in the face of such intractable problems? “I take it one
day at a time,” she said on a recent visit to Stanford. “One child safe
is one child safe. One happy day for a child is one happy day for a
child. I’m happy to collect one more dime. No effort is...” she pauses.
Muda, she says, looking for the English equivalent to the
Japanese word, although her native language is English. She tries
“worthless” and finally settles for “wasted.”
“Every
effort you make will somehow add up; it will help somebody somewhere. I
think every single step counts.” It seems to: since she was named to
the post in 1998, Japan’s committee has become UNICEF’s No. 1 fund
raiser worldwide despite a period of economic decline, collecting $130
million last year.
Months before the
release of the new CD, Chan had already attracted cameras on American
soil—but for another reason. Japanese TV crews were on hand last fall
to film Chan dropping her oldest son, Arthur, off at FloMo, where he’s
sharing a dorm room with three other freshmen. |