Humans of KR: Danny, The Culture Enthusiast

KR is undeniably home to a plethora of talent, especially in the culture scene. One individual who stood out among our culture enthusiasts is Danny from D block. Danny caught the eye of many when he delivered a jaw-dropping performance of Creep by Radiohead for A Cappella during Culture Night, and showed versatility with his melodic strumming of the guitar for Rockers. Since then, Danny has been on a meteoric rise and has undoubtedly established himself as one of KR’s finest vocalists and guitarists. We sat down with Danny to learn more about his experiences in music and aspirations.

Which culture groups are you part of in KR?

Currently, I’m the chairman of KR Rockers and a member of Inspire and A cappella.

What has it been like performing for the various culture groups?

Before coming to KR, I only performed in front of a crowd twice and they weren’t exactly good performances as I was really inexperienced. After joining Rockers, Inspire and A cappella in Y1, I was performing way more and I had practices with each of the culture groups every other day. I’m really thankful to have been given the opportunity to perform for these culture groups as it helped me realise how much I love performing and music in general, along with helping me improve as well. It might be tiring to keep up with school and practices, but I enjoy it so much that I really don’t mind at all.

Performing this much has definitely pushed my passion for music, and I guess it’s because of this greater passion that I’ve decided to try and treat music a little more than just a hobby and to start taking things to the next level with my own band, Superfish.

What drew you into singing and music?

As a kid, my parents would always play music around the house and in the car. They would play stuff from the Beatles, the Police, Bob Marley, Queen, the Eagles. On top of that my dad liked to play guitar and sing with my mom and I guess sparked my interested in music. My dad would also sometimes talk about how he used to be in a band with his friends when he was a teenager and I always thought it was really cool.

Like any other Chinese kid in Singapore, my mom made me learn classical piano when I was 7 and that was when I started learning anything about music, but I quit when I was 16 because I got really bored of it. My brother taught me how to play guitar when I was 14 because he was lazy and he didn’t want to sing and play guitar at the same time, but he only taught me one song so for a really long time that was the only song I could play on guitar. I then started learning the chords and added more songs to my repertoire. As for singing, I only really started singing when I was 15, before that I never really thought I could sing.

Do you have any inspirations in music?

If you’re talking about my guitar inspirations, I would say John Mayer, John Frusciante and B.B. King were pretty big idols for me starting out. As for music in general, I don’t really have any specific inspirations because I like a lot of genres, but I do look up to the individual members of the Beatles, Freddie Mercury, Brendon Urie and Chester Bennington.

You mentioned your band Superfish. What's the origin of that name? Will we get to see you guys perform?

The name Superfish actually came up as a really weird idea. My bandmates, Joshua and Merrick, and I were just chatting on what our band should be called, and one of us had the idea to call ourselves Superfish so that if we ever had fans we could call them Superficial. Come to think of it, I guess that kind of discourages people from being our fans hahaha. Eventually, we decided to stick with the name, and anyways I feel that having a funny name kind of captures our silliness as individuals too. I don’t really think we can pull off a cool band name as we’re all pretty eccentric guys.

We actually just performed at Festival for Good by raiSEsg recently. What we have up next is that we’re in the top 20 for the Rising Star, which is a talent competition held within NUS. We’re in the voting stages right now so we’re trying our best to get as many votes as possible!

What is music to you?

Music is really important to me, I would go so far as to say that I can’t live without music. Listening to music, playing it or learning how to play it just makes me really happy and whenever I’m stressed from school or anything else, music serves as an escape from my troubles. I also feel that music is a great avenue for self-expression and I’m so glad that my parents introduced it to me when I was a kid.

Thanks for the insightful interview, Danny! Check out his acoustic cover of Panic! At The Disco's Say Amen (Saturday Night) here: