In 2007, I decided to go full-time, and I started
teaching classroom music at Cempaka schools.
It was another whole new frontier which demanded
skills in classroom behaviour management, preparing
lesson plans, coordinating stage management
and sound, concert planning etc. During that time,
I encountered Kodály music pedagogy after my
school sent us for a music symposium. I was deeply
inspired by the music education philosophies of Zoltán
Kodály, a Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist,
philosopher and pedagogue. Subsequently, I
attended summer courses to get myself certified
in a methodology that has left a deep impact in my
teaching style and musicianship level. After eight
years of teaching, I took another bold step of leaving
everything behind and went to Hungary to pursue
my Masters, specialising in Kodaly music education
in 2015.
First gamelan
performance with
Rhythm in Bronze’s
production ‘Hari
Jadi’ in 2010 @ Pj
Live Arts Centre
(Picture credit:
Jelyn Wong). ▶
It has been a long journey to reach my musical
dreams and my time in SASS has played a big part
in it. Today, I am still leading two lives. While my day
job is teaching primary school children music in an
international school, I am also involved in various
music projects such as a capella singing and gamelan
playing in the local music scene.
Li Yien graduated with a BA in Communication in
2006. She also holds an Australian Kodaly Certificate
in Music Education (Primary), a Diploma in Kodaly
Music Education, and an MA of Arts in Kodaly Music
Pedagogy from the Kodaly Institute of Liszt Ferenc
Academy of Music, Hungary.
31
Acapella performance
with The Vochale Project
in Moonshine Ninth
Anniversary Malaysia Day
Special @ Laundry,
The Curve in 2014
(Picture credit:
Fauxtography by Udjinn). ▼
Other than teaching, I have been performing actively.
After graduating from MUM, I joined a band called
Colours of Funk that experimented with acid jazz
and funk genres. After the band was disbanded,
I auditioned to join a local Malay gamelan group,
Rhythm in Bronze, after being inspired by their show.
It was a bold move because I had never played the
gamelan before. After I passed their lesson-based
audition in 2009, I started training and performing in
various productions with them. I am glad to have been
part of the group that performed for the Terengganu
World Gamelan festival, MPO happy hour, and various
local productions until today. In 2012, I also ventured
into another new music project led by my friend and
ex-colleague, singing in an all ladies acapella group
called The Vochale Project and have been an active
member since.
Did my studies in SASS go to waste with the change
in career path? Not at all. The philosophies and
social theories learnt in SASS came to a full cycle
when I was in Hungary. While writing my Master’s
thesis, “In Search of Malaysia’s Musical Identity:
Adaptation of Traditional, Syncretic and Folk Music
for the Classroom”, I found myself drawing from the
theories that I had learnt previously. Among others,
these included Stuart Hall’s and Foucault’s theories
on construction of cultural identity colonial discourse,
and Anderson’s “imagined community” in relation to
Kodaly’s philosophy on musical identity and ‘musical
mother-tongue’.