With three quick snaps of her fingers and a sharp fling of her
thick black hair, Alice Tong, 22, set the night into motion.
Tong, an ethnomusicology graduate from UCLA and jazz singer
fresh to the L.A. music scene, played last Friday night to a packed
crowd at Café Balcony. While espresso machines whirred away
and a lack of chairs for an unexpected turnout kept almost half the
audience standing, Tong’s rich and syrupy voice kept
listeners engaged long after they had finished their last
latte.
Tong’s working repertoire of over 100 jazz songs allowed
her to treat the audience to a two-hour set of classic tunes made
famous by legends like Billie Holiday and Ella Fitzgerald. Her
large vocal range and apparent intimacy with the driving emotions
of jazz music lent Tong the ability to shift the mood of the room
at will, from the breezy joy of new love, to the blue melancholy of
disappointment.
“We’re gonna get a little sad on you again,”
Tong told the audience just before delving into the first notes of
“Lover Man.” “But this is jazz, so get used to
it.”
Tong thinks her emotional experiences are one of the reasons she
sings. Recently her mother told her that when she was little she
would close the door to her room and start singing whenever her
parents fought.
“When I’m singing everything disappears in a
way,” Tong said. “I’ve been depressed.
Everybody’s gone through hard times. Jazz, or singing, is
using that depression or the happiness and just expressing it.
It’s very therapeutic. It just feels right.”
Tong’s physical appearance does not quite fit the
description of the stereotypical jazz singer. Slender,
light-hearted and Asian American, Tong speaks both Chinese and
English, and lived in Taiwan for six years.
“When I first started singing jazz I was like, “˜Oh
my God, are they going to feel like I’m stealing from their
culture?'” Tong said. “Now I feel like
it’s a good thing that I’m this little Chinese, Asian
girl with a big voice. Because you’ve seen a big African
American woman sing jazz songs. It’s been done. Everyone
knows it’s possible. But hopefully I’ll come as
something more fresh.”
On Friday night, traditional jazz guitarist Isaac Darsche and
stand-up-bassist Miguel Sawaya weren’t the only musicians
backing up Tong’s voice. A beat-boxer, someone who can
imitate hip-hop rhythms using only the mouth, joined in for a few
numbers Friday night, adding a modern twist to old songs. On
previous gigs she has also invited a tabla player. Tong
herself plays the piano, flute and zither, a 21-stringed Chinese
instrument. Currently, she’s working on translating a
Thelonius Monk song, “Round Midnight,” into
Chinese.Â
“Being an ethnomusicology major, that’s my
angle,” Tong said. “I want to incorporate different
sounds from different cultures live, not just through sampling or
DJing. Jazz songs have been done over and over again, and you need
to think of creative ways to do them, so I’m trying to do
that by fusing ideas together.”Â
Tong originally entered school at Washington University in St.
Louis, Mo. with hopes of becoming a veterinarian, an ambition that
quickly fizzled after a course in chemistry. She then spent time
pursuing an art major, which she enjoyed, but soon lost interest in
academically as she felt grading was too subjective. In her second
year, she transferred to UCLA as a theater student in order to
leave a town she felt was too small and too conservative. However,
after finding herself starkly out of place in the extroverted
theater crowd she came to the realization that she just wanted to
sing. She was accepted to the ethnomusicology major by her third
year.
Ironically, though, it was in St. Louis, the city she
transferred to UCLA in order to get away from, that she had first
discovered singing jazz. Her then-boyfriend was a classical
guitarist just beginning to take an interest in jazz music. They
musically clicked, and during her sophomore year they played gigs
around town covering jazz as well Lauryn Hill and Bob Marley songs.
This wasn’t her first experience performing for a crowd,
though.Â
When she was in high school in Taiwan, Tong sang for a rock
band, which she credits with helping her gain confidence in her
voice. Tong also spent many nights going out to karaoke, which
although in the United States has more of a stigma as simply late
night bar entertainment, is huge in Taiwan.
“The karaoke culture there is very different,” Tong
said. “You walk in the lobby and there’s a chandelier
and you get your own room to sing in. Karaoke has been really
cheesed up here in the States. It’s weird, a lot of African
American jazz singers grew up with church, or gospel music. I have
karaoke.”
It wasn’t until this past year that Tong began to
seriously focus on a singing career. After showing up regularly at
Café Balcony to catch the Thursday night act, Billy Harris,
Tong got to know the owners. When the Friday night act left, Tong
took over and has been singing every other Friday there for the
last two months. The café has given her a good place to
experiment with other musicians as well an opportunity to gain a
quickly growing audience.
“Things like who’s going to come in where, or
who’s going to solo, that’s all improvised,” Tong
said. “We just do it and find out and hopefully it will sound
OK. That’s part of jazz, taking chances and risks.
That’s what makes it interesting.”
The Friday night’s toe-tapping crowd would agree. At the
end of the night an ecstatic audience member called out to the
performers, “You guys rock!”
“No,” replied the grinning bassist Miguel Sawaya.
“It’s actually jazz.”Â
Alice Tong’s next performance is April 25. See
http://bpod.org/balcony/calendar.htm for more information.