INTERVIEW 029
“We talked about life, about friends, about family and it was probably close to two or three in the morning and I turned to him and said ‘yes I’ll work for you’.”
Singapore, and being too specialised at such an early stage in his career would have been a hindrance. He continued with the DJ work he was familiar with, and having been involved with club and live sound in Australia, he was able to pick up freelance work in these areas easily. Davwinder said: “I was doing a lot of sound design work for theatres, plays and dramas, wherever sound was involved I moulded myself to be able to cater to that. It was not always just studio sound or just live sound, it was a whole variety of areas.” To increase his income he also set up a partnership for an independent record distribution company. Davwinder looked after regional distribution for very niche labels like Peter Gabriel’s Real World, amongst others from the realms of indie, bhangra, new age, and world music labels. This area of the industry was threatened when MP3s, online streaming and music piracy erupted and the need for physical music distribution became somewhat redundant. At this point, Davwinder and his business partner took the decision to go their separate ways, with Davwinder opting for the installed sound route. And what a good decision that turned out to be, as a job in a theatre is where he met his wife. “She was involved in a play, she was the leading actress. I was sitting in the pit doing the sound and the rest is history. It’s interesting that this job has brought my life partner to me, so we know we have that common interest of theatres. It’s something that we still enjoy, we go the theatre and take the kids along too. People have lost that simplicity of taking time out to enjoy things like this. I come across many people who do it because it’s cool to do it but for me it’s because we love it, both she and I have enjoyed it from a young age.” After marriage, Davwinder continued to freelance in the music world, and took up teaching part time. Something which demonstrated his passion to the audio industry, passing on his knowledge to Singaporeans and strengthening the education system for future generations of music enthusiasts. It was 1998 that brought Davwinder his first reward for his commitment to sound. People had been telling him for years to get out of the business, but he stuck with it because his gut feeling told him big things were going to happen. After receiving a tip off from a friend, Davwinder applied for a job an as engineer in China’s first commercial recording facility, which he would first have to build. Davwinder beat 30 other hopefuls from around the globe to the position, even though when he sent his CV he didn’t really think he stood a chance. Ironically,
it was the varied career path that living Singapore virtually forced him to pursue, which made him stand out from the crowd. He discussed the job with his wife and together they decided it was too good an opportunity to miss, so they packed their bags and off they went. Davwinder said: “[The guy who was funding the build] needed someone who was going to be stupid enough to do that, to dive in and commit suicide.” The days of 1998 were pre World Trade Organisation, so doors in China were not as readily open as they are today. Davwinder and his wife were foreigners in the country and it was here that his journey with language really began. Not knowing a word of Mandarin, Davwinder was forced to learn it from the construction team through the everyday activities on the building site just to get by. After picking up the Mandarin language in just six months, Davwinder also managed to teach himself the sub set of Mandarin including Taiwanese, Hockien and Cantonese. He also speaks three flavours of Indian language, Hindi, Punjabi and Tamil, plus Malay and Indonesian and of course English. The languages have been passed down to his children who are now trilingual and able to speak and write in English, Chinese and Punjabi. Davwinder said: “I think you know you’ve mastered a language when you are able to tell a joke to the locals in their native tongue and they laugh. That’s when you’ve cracked it.” The ability to speak nine languages has also offered huge advantages in his career in APAC, and specifically when working for his current employer, Loud Technologies. Davwinder said: “It’s a life skill, you could have the world’s best product but if you can’t crack [the culture] it’s just not worth it.” Although he experienced a lot of resistance from companies not wanting to invest in the Chinese recording facility project, Davwinder was never defeated, only viewing each obstacle as a challenge that could be overcome. It was working on this build that granted one of Davwinder’s wishes, the opportunity to work with well-known Japanese acoustician Sam Toyoshima, and this was the project that made Davwinder the unofficial ‘face of Asia’. He was the guy companies would approach for help or advice within the region. So, the somewhat scary proposal paid off, Davwinder had a piece of history to his name, masterminding the construction of a 15,000 sq ft recording facility and built himself a concrete reputation. After just over seven years in China, Davwinder moved back to Singapore to
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