Active Ageing Carnival 2009..unk Dicko & friends entertain again

The ACTIVE AGEING CARNIVAL for this year was officailly launched on Saturday 20 June 2009 at Suntec City. It was a 2 day affair that drew huge crowds to that place.
I was invited by the organisers ...the Council of Third Age (C3A) to add buzz to the atmosphere with another public Ukulele Performance.
Despite my heavy responsibilities at the Asian Youth Games Village going on at that same time, this was something unk Dicko had to do.
As I had done previously, I invited my close friend Richard Chee to join me for this event.
In January this year at the Big Expo, also at Suntec City, we had wowed the large crowd over 2 days with solid ukulele music and old time favourites.
You can check out lots of posts and 2 videos in my January 2009 archives.
Photo:
Getting ready by testing our ukuleles on the sound system.
We were to perform at the open air Tropics Atrium on a stage with a raised platform.

The entire hall was packed with a lot of people, mostly seniors and many with kids around. The noise level was deafening mostly coming from the general PA system and many of the booths.

As Richard and I got ready for our gig, I was more than a little apprehensive about the sheer loudness of all the combined noises.

So I approached some support staff to tweak the noise level down a little and to control the PA system better or otherwise no one will be able to hear the sweet sounds of our ukuleles.

We had our own portable amplifier set with us and wired to our ukuleles. When all was ready, I introduced ourselves and Richard to the audience. For this performance, I had prepared a good selection of songs from local favourites, to traditional, Hawaiian, popular evergreens and some "funny" songs for the kids. There will be time for requests by the audience too. What songs did they request for? In my next post I will cover this.

Performing in public is not new to us and we were very comfortable being ourselves as we began to entertain the crowd before us.

We started out with some local favourites that always got them going...Di Tanjong Katong, Dayung Sampan, Chan Mali Chan....etc.

Even as I was performing and entertaining the crowd, I was always observing their faces and body language to gauge their reaction not only to the songs but to the way that we were playing them..

The feedback I received from some of those present were most encouraging. They had thoroughly enjoyed the songs and music and wished there were more. We performed for about 45 minutes.

Singing with combined gusto and a certain " naturalness" got the crowd into an appreciative mood very quickly.

While we entertained, my wife D2 was shooting with the camcorder for the very first time. She is not only new to filming but also new to the working of that camera.

So, I have no real idea how it would be...until I can check it out.

Ps: More posts and interesting things to come still.