Because the summer hit won’t completely go away, and because the conductor of this orchestral/choral version of “Call Me Maybe,” is an APA, of course I’ll share this (saw this on Facebook via a friend). As the linked article by Edwin P. Sallan notes,
What should make this version of particular interest to us is the fact that its conductor, 22-year-old Arianne Abela is actually a Filipina, a niece of noted stage actor Bart Guingona. Arianne’s parents migrated to the US before she was born and she also has a 14-year-old sister named Krista who actually edited the video.
In a 2008 article published by the Daily Hampshire Gazette, Arianne was born with physical disabilities brought about by a rare condition called amniotic banding syndrome, which caused her left leg to be amputated. Some of her fingers on both hands are either missing or fused together and there are toes missing on her right foot.
Thankfully, those physical defects didn’t stop her from pursuing a career in music successfully as she went on to graduate at the Yale School of Music and Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Very cool!
FC shared this interesting item over on Facebook: Rachel L. Swarns writes in the NY Times about how second or third generation Americans try to hold on to their heritage via food. It’s a fascinating and bittersweet article – we want to remember what our grandparents or parents made, but assimilation is hard to fight and maybe we can’t quite get the food to taste the same or it gets Americanized (or we might have even grown up with Americanized versions of the food because of lack of ingredients or whatnot).