00:00Talent is God's gift. Either you can sing, or you cannot sing.
00:06The moment when I hear that particular voice,
00:09we all know that's Mona Asyaf.
00:12I don't think there's other singers that can sound like my mum.
00:15It all started from the late Zubia Syed, our national anthem composer.
00:37He used to take my mum under his wings.
00:41He composed one particular song just for my mother.
00:46And the title of the song is called, Chempaka Biru.
00:52Chempaka is a type of flower.
01:01So chempaka is usually yellow.
01:03But the fact that Zubia Syed named it blue chempaka means that it's a very rare chempaka.
01:08And I believe maybe that's how the late Zubia Syed saw my mother through his eyes.
01:15One might say, Mona Asyaf was born to be a star.
01:21She was born into a very artistic family.
01:24Her mother and her father were very well established during the era of Mao Zedong.
01:29Her mother was a prima donna back then, and she continued that tradition.
01:34She started at a very, very young age.
01:37I believe that she didn't go to any school of music, but it's just that it comes naturally to her.
01:45During the Japanese occupation, she was very young, maybe 10 years old, 12 years old.
01:50Survival is very important.
01:53She learned how to speak Japanese.
01:58She used to follow the Japanese soldiers into the forest and used to perform for them the songs.
02:07♪♪♪
02:38They got sugar, they got coffee.
02:41They were not deprived like other people.
02:44For a person at that age to start thinking, doing all those kind of things, to support her whole family, someone was so remarkable.
02:54While her singing talent got her through the war relatively unscathed, it would do much more for her after.
03:03She grew up in a fascinating time when Singapore's priorities were different.
03:08Singapore was the entertainment center in Southeast Asia at that time.
03:13A 16-year-old Asya landed her first paying job at Radio Malaya as a host.
03:19But once she was discovered, her voice was destined for more than the radio.
03:26During the golden era of Singaporean cinema from the 1940s to 70s,
03:31movie studios Shaw Brothers and Cathay Curris were driving a new kind of film that needed a new kind of voice.
03:40During that period when Malay movies were really hot, those actresses, they were lip-synching to her singing actually.
03:50We can hear my mother's voice a lot in those movies.
03:55We used to laugh.
03:56Ah, mummy's voice, mummy's voice.
04:07She sings in Bahasa Baku, she speaks in Bahasa Baku.
04:10That's her character trait, that is really iconic of Luna Asya.
04:14In normal Malay, you would say, apa?
04:18But she would say, apa?
04:20You know, so that's Baku.
04:21She will enunciate it phonetically.
04:36Then the movie of P Ramlee started.
04:39P Ramlee was very, very, very popular.
04:42And when you are actually singing for all these movies, right, that speaks for itself.
04:47People contributed to the spirit of entertainment of the current generation of Malay singers.
04:53You can never bring back that era.
04:55The acting, the song, the way people emote their feelings during that time.
05:00A lot of Malay children grew up with these movies and they've watched it hundreds of times.
05:06We believe that if you cannot carry your name, your life is not going to be smooth.
05:12Her actual name is Asya Binti Aman.
05:15So Zubir Syed said, Asya, you need to have a stage name.
05:20Why don't you put, like the Indonesian, Nona?
05:23Nona is a lady.
05:26When she had that name, Nona Asya, it's like, boom!
05:32She's up there.
05:34Suddenly, everybody recognizes her more.
05:38Her star was on an undeniable rise.
05:41Her voice dominated the airwaves and silver screens across Malaya and Singapore.
05:47From what we know, she has recorded something like about 300 songs.
05:52She has this entire career behind her, which lasted for decades.
05:56She was one of the few Malay women I know that had a career back then.
06:01She is this vocal coach, but she was also the first woman producer.
06:08And one fateful day, her musical career led her to meet a man named Ismail Qasim in a recording studio.
06:17One of the songs that they recorded together was Hasan and Hasna.
06:32That shot them up on a different level.
06:36Sparks flew off, probably.
06:41My mum was still carrying me in her tummy, doing recording, and I'm about to come out into this world.
06:49Halfway through recording, they had to stop.
06:52Ahmad Jafar was the one who actually brought my mum to the hospital to deliver me.
06:57All five of us in the family, we studied music.
07:01We are the musical family.
07:04She sent her eldest son for formal music education overseas, to Berkeley,
07:09at a time when people hardly get to university locally.
07:15All that became very inspiring for me.
07:20During a time when women were entering the workplace in droves,
07:23During a time when women were entering the workplace in droves,
07:27Nona Asya was no housewife.
07:31My mum and dad had been blessed on the financial part.
07:36My late father, he gave half of his retirement money to my mum.
07:40And you know what my mum did? She started investing.
07:43She started buying properties.
07:46When my brother Iskandar wanted to go to Berkeley, that cost him about half a million Singapore dollars.
07:51She sold the house to be able to sponsor him.
07:54She has the best thing that any parents could have given their children.
07:58It's not money, it's education.
08:01I probably started playing the bongo when I was four or five years old.
08:05So after that, I started learning playing the xylophone.
08:10I started playing the drums, the saxophone, obviously the piano.
08:15One thing about my mum, she's someone like the late Margaret Thatcher.
08:20She runs things with an iron fist.
08:22And she has her reasons.
08:24She has a very regimented system.
08:27She's very serious in the studio, but her method works.
08:30She believed that music could contribute to something that was more permanent
08:34in terms of making a career for people who are interested.
08:38They supported me together with my late brother to Berkeley in Boston to learn.
08:43My brother had the opportunity for me to work doing big projects like for example, National Day Parade.
08:49She's very unique in a sense that not only did she produce the Cultural Medallion winner,
08:54but she also got the Cultural Medallion.
08:57I don't know of anyone else who has two persons in their family given the Cultural Medallion.
09:03As her career matured, she took on a new role.
09:07Nona was very much a mentor.
09:10She was also my vocal teacher when I was a child.
09:14And in many ways, she's also a mother figure to me.
09:19My yoyo came in the 80s.
09:21You can say that it was the Malay version of Mickey Mouse Club.
09:25We were the Blues Clues and the Barney of the 80s.
09:29My yoyo brought about this massive interest in the Malay language
09:35because non-Malay children were watching my yoyo.
09:38And a lot of my non-Malay friends, until today when they know that I was a part of my yoyo,
09:44the first thing they'll tell me is,
09:45I know how to speak Malay because I learned it from my yoyo.
09:49She actually is the one that leads the whole thing.
09:53Najib came up to be a very good companion.
09:57Rila Melati, Salimah Mahmud, these are all her students before.
10:01She told me that you cannot lie when you are singing.
10:04For example, if you're singing a happy song,
10:07you cannot be sad and pretend that you're singing a happy song.
10:10I want people to remember Nona Asia as this songbird,
10:15as a visionary songbird who gave Singapore so much
10:19in terms of the songs that she produced in the past for children
10:25and for giving us her own sons to continue the music legacy.
10:33Nowadays, whenever she goes to her doctor for her check-up,
10:36and her doctor, my God,
10:38Madam Asia, can you sing for us something today?
10:42It's things like that to me, I feel that my mum is proud of herself.
10:48Just hope that she'll be happy for the remaining years of her life.
11:06.
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