Miss Faridah Jamal is a pioneer in the field of angklung music-teaching and directing in Singapore, with 42 years of experience behind her. She began as a part-time angklung instructor in her alma mater, Raffles Girls’ Secondary School in 1983, after having been the Chairperson and Student Conductor of the RGS Angklung and Kulintang Orchestra. In the meantime, then, she served as Project Co-ordinator and Children’s Show-Host in Bookworm Club (Far East Services Pte Ltd).
Her interests spread across English language, literature, drama, visual arts (mime), story-telling and music. After graduating with a Bachelor of Education (Teaching of English – Universiti Pertanian Malaysia [now “Universiti Putra Malaysia”] ), she returned to Far East Services which was then re-
named Bookworm Consultants Pte Ltd, as Creative Writer. She was later promoted to Senior Editor and Head of Art and Editorial Department. Meanwhile, she continued to teach angklung part-time at RGS. Her deep passion for music, and angklung, in particular, was too strong to be just a part-time interest. She was agitated by the fact that till then, there was still no professional full-time angklung instructor in Singapore on par with all other performing arts instructors.
This, together with her pride for her Indonesian heritage, pushed her in January 1993 to carve her own profession in full-time angklung-teaching. From RGS, she began reaching out to numerous other schools, including Chaoyang School (Special Needs), Institute of Technical Education (College East) and the National University of Singapore.
As performing arts and angklung thrive on visibility, requests for an angklung instructor grew so tremendously that she had to pass some of the offers to other individual musicians. That triggered a very fresh interest in angklung music teaching as a viable profession, amongst those who had never even heard of angklung before.
In 2004, she formalised her angklung teaching service into a business entity named Ethnique Musique Connections (EMC). In 2008, she engaged an Indonesian couple from Bandung – the home of the angklung – to reach out to even more Singapore schools and to introduce the authentic Sundanese (West Javanese) angklung playing and teaching methodology.
EMC also engaged four freelance and highly-trained / experienced instructors to serve the increasing interests and needs of Singapore educational institutions (pre-primary to tertiary) essentially for angklung as a CCA (Co-Curricular Activity), enrichment (angklung in curriculum) and an adult performers’ team – Angklung Empire – established in 2022. The company also extends services to the private sector for their events, team-building activities, angklung workshops for all ages, community activities for holistic health, as well as to individuals for solo angklung tuition. Their next exciting project is Angklung for The Region and the World.
