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From an island in North Borneo, Velvet tries to create songs that would be able to capture hearts.
VELVET ADUK
VELVET ADUK
VELVET ADUK is a music producer, composer, and singer-songwriter from the island of Borneo, Sabah, Malaysia. She started her career in the Malaysian entertainment industry by first joining a reality tv show by Astro and became one of the top 5 finalists of Akademi Fantasia 4 in 2006.
Currently, she is building her music catalog independently by creating and producing more music for herself and others.
Her genres vary from traditional infused world music to soulful, funk, jazz, and ballad. Over the span of 6 years, she has produced over 20 songs.
One of her successful releases is “Sumandak Sabah”, a song that has over 16 million YouTube views. The other songs released are Oi Gaman (6 million YouTube views), and Tiga Kali Satu Hari (1.9 million YouTube views).
In August 2022, she released her first album, Reality, with 9 self-written songs.
This year (2023), she plans to do more music, some of which will focus more on the traditional sounds and styles of Sabah.
Background
Background
Velvet's parents are both members of the Dusun tribe; her father is a Dusun Lotud from the Tuaran district and her mother is a Dusun from the Penampang district.
Velvet is passionate about fostering local empowerment through music, especially in the Sabah, and Borneo music scene, and she expresses this through the music she creates.
She writes music almost exclusively at home, in her private studio, where she can be alone with her thoughts. She frequently uses traditional borneon instruments in her music and strives to convey the vanishing culture via her work. She hopes that by doing so, she may help keep the music and the culture alive.
Velvet is currently a radio presenter for the local radio station Kupi-kupi FM, based in Sabah. She believes she plays a crucial part in encouraging all the local musicians to keep making wonderful material being the sole local radio station in Sabah playing predominantly indigenous songs.
Through her songs...
Through her songs...
Velvet tries to encapsulate elements of her roots in the art (music) that she produces. Coming from a native background called Dusun (A collective name of an indigenous ethnic group in the Malaysian state of Sabah of North Borneo), she produces songs in her native language too.
Onuai Oku Timpu (which means give me some time), was her first song written and produced in the Dusun language.
Sumandak Sabah, a traditional infused song, came a year after that. A song that is not lyrically native perse but she incorporated a native concept in the music and video production.
According to Velvet, Sumandak Sabah is a song that was meant to be fun, engaging, and catchy and the language used in the song was not entirely Dusun but more of the local Sabahan slang.
Soira (which means When), is Velvet's second individual single written in Dusun.
Throughout the years, together, Velvet and Marsha have produced four songs including Sumandak Sabah. The others are Oi Gaman, Insan Tadau, and Aramaitiii.
The dream has always been to try and safeguard and preserve the diminishing language and ethnicity of the Kadazan Dusun tribe. "It's my way of contributing to my community as well as to safe-keep the tradition for generations to come."
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