Asian megastar Agnes Chan has always had a passion for children. Now America is hearing about it. On Valentine’s Day, Chan, PhD ’94, released her first stateside CD, Forget Yourself (Bungalo Records), with proceeds going to UNICEF. The Tokyo-based singer, author, activist and education professor is also the first ambassador of the Japan Committee for the United Nations children’s fund.
Chan’s U.S. debut works “dance, rock, world music and hip-hop into its broad-eared pop sensibility,” according to her publicity. The upbeat, amiable star has attracted allies on her American mission. JR Richards from the platinum recording group Dishwalla, Santana’s Andy Vargas, the singer/songwriter duo Dilettantes, and martial arts star Jackie Chan perform guest spots on the album. A bonus track features Chan’s new rendition of Stevie Nicks’s “Beautiful Child,” originally recorded with Fleetwood Mac in 1979.
Forget Yourself evokes children Chan has met on her international travels. “Thirteen” shows the plight of a child prostitute in the Philippines; “Sorrow Lives in this Village” describes black Christian Sudanese children and young men being conscripted or enslaved by the northern, Arab-Sudanese militias; “You Are Loved” has a message for Hindu “untouchables” going blind from malnutrition; and in the poignant “One Step at a Time,” orphans befriend each other in Ethiopian refugee camps.
Why an American entry now, after more than 20 hit albums over a long career in Asia? Says Michael Carey, an award-winning Los Angeles composer/producer who collaborated with Chan, “In terms of pop music, the U.S. is the holy grail. She’s done a lot of things she’s wanted to do where she lives. It’s less about Agnes, and more about her being a messenger of something important.”
American label Bungalo Records is primarily known for hip-hop and R&B acts, not what Carey describes as “big, beautiful, world-oriented pop with a powerful lyrical content.” Bungalo president Paul Ring says working with Chan was an opportunity to get involved with her music and the causes she supports, pointing out that she’s sold “millions of records everywhere but here.”
Nevertheless, the American market can be a hard one to break into. Chan has already surmounted a few obstacles, including a release date that was pushed back six months. She takes it in stride: “I’m cool because I’ve been in the business so long and I know the mentality.”
Does anything faze her? “From everything I know about Agnes, she doesn’t operate in a fear-based manner,” Carey says. “She goes with her instincts and has a tremendous faith in herself. She has a strong faith that the content of the album is important, and it really needs to be heard.”
Chan’s self-confidence has sustained a 35-year career in the limelight, since she became a singing star in her native Hong Kong at age 14—and it’s helped her carry out a bruising schedule of charitable work. In recent years, she’s visited children in Darfur, Iraq, Moldova and other trouble spots. In Japan, she worked to pass legislation to protect children. Now she’s publicizing the plight of teens shanghaied from Moldova and Romania to be sex workers in Russia. About 1.2 million children are trafficked worldwide for sexual exploitation, she reminds her audiences.
How does she cope in the face of such intractable problems? “I take it one day at a time,” she said on a recent visit to Stanford. “One child safe is one child safe. One happy day for a child is one happy day for a child. I’m happy to collect one more dime. No effort is...” she pauses. Muda, she says, looking for the English equivalent to the Japanese word, although her native language is English. She tries “worthless” and finally settles for “wasted.”
“Every effort you make will somehow add up; it will help somebody somewhere. I think every single step counts.” It seems to: since she was named to the post in 1998, Japan’s committee has become UNICEF’s No. 1 fund raiser worldwide despite a period of economic decline, collecting $130 million last year.
Months before the release of the new CD, Chan had already attracted cameras on American soil—but for another reason. Japanese TV crews were on hand last fall to film Chan dropping her oldest son, Arthur, off at FloMo, where he’s sharing a dorm room with three other freshmen.
CYNTHIA HAVEN is a frequent Stanford contributor.
