Music and microphones

Ranau Musik Studio

Music, microphones and singing are a part of Sabah and they definitely seem to have a musical gene in their genetic make-up. At first I was amazed to see preschool children handling microphones with ease and singing with confidence but now I just take it for granted. There are singing competitions in every school and two of my schools have had Malaysian champions. They love any excuse to sing - karaoke being the most popular and quite often people making their own recordings, which of course most of us wouldn't dream about, but here in Sabah it is part of life. Hence, I discovered that one of the teachers I work with is not only a preschool teacher but has a stage name of D' Jay and has released several albums with DVD's. So it is with David that I have embarked on trying to create a CD to play in the Preschool and Year 1, with the aim of helping teachers and exposing the younger children to more English. We tried to make contact with the Bamboo recording studio in Tambunan where the last CD was recorded, but with no luck, and then someone told us of a recording studio in the Ranau area - but where? Fortunately David made contact and off we went to the Ranau Music Studios which is about 5 kms. going up a very potholed road into the mountains. We eventually stopped at a very small concrete room with corrugated iron around and the owner and sound engineer were waiting for us. It wasn't like the last time as there were lots of us and the Bamboo Studio looks more like we imagine recording studios but despite the decor and taking quite a long time we have managed to record 20 songs and the sound engineer was very patient and nice to us.

                                                D'Jay and the sound engineer

  The last time we mentors paid for the recording and then sold the CD at cost price to the parents and schools in our area. Today, however I have received an email to say that if I put a proposal together, the British Council are prepared to pay for all the cost of producing the CD with the object of  giving every primary school in Sabah and Sarawak one! Now I'm really nervous that it isn't up to standard and all those little mistakes we made will be noticed. Should we go back again to record or what......?

The story continues next week....!

P.S. Some of you have wondered how the inspection went. Well they will know the result after a report in a month's time. They think it went ok but a young teacher was inspected and hadn't planned anything because he was too busy painting flags - now that is being very stupid! I will let you know as if they are awarded the "New Deal" it will mean 1000 ringitt per teacher which is a lot of money.