Former Kakilang Artistic Director An-Ting 安婷 and writer/performer Daniel York Loh have released the soundtrack to their award-winning multimedia work, every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon.

Juxtaposing the harsh experiences of the impoverished first Chinese settlers in London with the opulent world of privileged, but nevertheless bitter, émigré William Waldorf Astor, An-Ting 安婷 and Daniel York Loh create a powerful lament on the immigrant experience with spoken word and electronic music, taking in myriad reflections on the need for money and status and the right to call ‘home’ a land that can either reject or embrace you. 

An-Ting’s score is a soaring combination of unique ‘Asia beats’, a lonesome tack piano, a jaunty waltz, and elegiac erhu and pipa melody which transports us effortlessly across entire continents, oceans, and winter prairies, into the dark holds of ships, the haunting magnificence of Astor’s very own Xanadu of Two Temple Place, smoke-drenched Victoriana London, even smokier opium dens and the  burgeoning concrete mountain range of Manhattan across centuries and all the way to the present while acclaimed classical actor Daniel York Loh narrates his own epic text described by The Upcoming as ‘striking… his delivery of words portraying an array of emotions that perfectly complement the swell from the music…’

Originally commissioned as a live performance at Two Temple Place (the gothic London mansion William Waldorf Astor designed and had built for himself), but moved online as necessitated by the pandemic, every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon won the 2021 Arts Council Digital Culture Award (Storytelling) and was selected for the prestigious Horizon Showcase at Edinburgh Festival. It was performed live for the first time in Two Temple Place at the 2023 Kakilang Festival.  

“As a concert pianist with a heritage rooted in East culture, the prospect of creating a project that harmoniously integrates traditions from both East and West is incredibly exciting. I embedded the distinctive sounds of Chinese instruments into a contemporary style, conveying a different musical expression” – An-Ting

“I wanted to write about migrant journeys. About loss and loneliness, about what we take with us and what we leave behind, and the legacy we want to impart to the next generation. And what we’ll do to ‘belong’” Daniel York Loh

Originally commissioned by Two Temple Place and Kakilang, every dollar is a soldier/with money you’re a dragon, is part gig-theatre, part spoken word rap, performed by writer and actor Daniel York Loh, set against a thrilling combination of electronic music composed by An-Ting 安婷 accompanied by classical Chinese instrumentation.