A strange illness prompted singer-composer Lowell Lo to lend his name to the cause of environmental protection. Ming Yeung meets the 'un-romantic' music star.

Lowell Lo Koon-ting, nicknamed Lo Lo, is a man of many accomplishments - songwriter, singer, actor, environmentalist. As a child he was dyslexic, a learning disorder that can impair reading ability and speech.

Lo had always had full confidence in his abilities and his only real doubt was a kind of identity crisis. He had no idea who his real mother was. A strange story told to him as a lad recounted how his father arrived home one day, bearing the four offspring of his extramarital affairs, presented the infants to his infertile wife, and demanded she pick one to raise as her own. Lowell Lo was chosen - he was the one who didn't cry.

Lo's father is the famed Hong Kong Cantonese Opera actor, Lo Hai-tin. The "family" held together only for a few years. Lo's parents took off one day for the US, leaving the boy's grandmother to raise the "naughty little monkey", as he described himself. He recalled that the teachers in school were unable to handle his antics.

What fascinated him and held his attention was popular music, especially by the Ventures, an American instrumental rock band. He listened to radio attentively, and tried to replicate every chord the group played, on his toy guitar.

Lo was a failure at school, leading to a loss of self-confidence. "It was a time when students with learning disabilities were put together with blind students because they (the teachers) did not know how to handle them," he recalls. He was sent to a primary boarding school. The teachers thought he was lazy - as he often slipped away to play outside when he should have been behaving as the diligent young scholar.

Oddly, his academic failure taught him important life lessons. As he described it, every child with a learning disability is like a computer in need of a little reprogramming - then, with a couple of clicks, any kid can release his or her full potential.

"I had to find out what I wanted to do and do it better than other people. That's how I got my confidence back," Lo said.

He'd go to Shek O a lot, to be mesmerized by the view of a group of fishermen fishing on a distant island. To Lo it seemed a vision of Paradise. "I wanted to go there so badly. I used a basketball, kept pushing and chasing it in the waters until I got there." That's how he taught himself to swim. When he finally got to the island, he saw sea urchins as big as volleyballs. His favorite pastime was snorkeling and watching the colorful fish.

"Setbacks are important to achieving eventual success. To achieve something, you have to cross many hurdles. There is always a way over each hurdle," Lo reckoned.

By the time he was 16, his parents were divorced. Each had filed a separate application to sponsor him to immigrate to the US. One application stated he was born in Macao, the other said Hong Kong. The discrepancies brought his immigration application to a halt. Ruby Chow, the powerful leader of Seattle's Chinese community, intervened on his behalf. Lo finally got the green light to move to the US.

A new kid in Seattle

He believes the move to Seattle proved the critical influence that made him a success in his musical endeavors.

Lo lived in an attic room of Ruby Chow's Chinese restaurant. Bruce Lee had lived there before him - and had worked at Ruby Chow's Chinese restaurant. Lo washed dishes and saved until he had enough to buy his first L5 electric guitar. It cost him $1,500. He set about learning to play.

Lo recalls clearly how his talent for musical composition was discovered during an English lesson at school. When his teacher asked students to recite poems in class, Lo asked, "Can I sing it?" "Why not?" the teacher replied. Soon he had established himself as a popular entertainer, a minor celebrity, entertaining his fellow students.

In 1977, after being awarded the grand prize in an amateur category at the American Song Festival, Lo returned to Hong Kong to start his music career.

The first few years proved to be rough sailing for him. He lost two annual contests to gain an opportunity to perform at World Popular Song Festival organized by Yamaha Music Foundation in Tokyo.

It made him realize that having a talent in music doesn't guarantee success. "Creativity draws from two sources - one's mind and the technical information. Without the latter, it is impossible to reach to the top," Lo said. In Hong Kong, he remarked, only very few musicians have both.

Before releasing his debut album, Lo worked at a few music lounges during a two-year span. He met Susan, who was to become his wife, and also the lyricist of many of his songs. Looking back, he said, it was the hardship during those times that empowered him to overcome the challenges that confronted him.

"This was very good training with four hours of singing every day," Lo said. "Also, you learned how to interact with audiences and control the crowds."

Lo reckons pressure is the greatest motivation for him to push his limits and strive for better. When he was composing a song for Pedicab Driver, the film's deputy director kept turning down his works, saying "not good enough". Refusing to be beaten, Lo worked day and night and came up with the tune that was to become a smash hit, With love.

Never say die

The "never give up" attitude keeps him pushing all the time, always looking for a way out, even in the most difficult situations.

In 1998, he found himself suffering from multiple chemical sensitivities, or loosely called "environmental illness". It was a complete mystery to him and the doctors couldn't tell him what was wrong either.

His limbs went numb and he suffered chest pains. He had to get up every hour during the night, to move his limbs. For four years he couldn't get a good night's sleep. Lo was determined to find an answer, and that led him to a book by green living expert Debra Lynn Dadd who had experienced symptoms very much like Lo's.

He finally concluded that his hypersensitivities came from toxic emissions from his computer room, where he'd sit sealed off for days, composing film scores. He contends that little room, with poor ventilation, gave off more than 50 toxic substances.

It could be linked to asthma and hay fever he suffered when he was young. People with weakened immune systems, such as he, fall easily to new allergies.

The night he tore down the curtains at home, he said he recovered 95 percent. He realized it all came from the particles released from the plastic sunlight shield he mounted on the windows.

The green crusader

Having learned something of the intricate relationship between the environment and health, he began working for social causes aimed at environmental protection and helping to spread the word about the effects of climate change. With a strong conviction that "environmental protection starts with me", he opened a shop selling green products in 2003 in Sai Kung, northeast Hong Kong.

"There are only two types of people, one chooses the easy way and the other chooses the right way. The happiest part of my life is that I can do the right thing."

As to the masses, whom he likens to a group of people running toward a cliff, he says, all he can do is to put up a "caution" sign to warn them. There is too much false information circulating in the media and other platforms, he said. The disinformation is set out to safeguard the interests of big corporations, and so people have to dig deeper to distinguish true from false, good from bad.

Lo has composed more than 100 songs for the movies. He still wants to "compose good music worth leaving to the world." "I will never downgrade my standard to just make money or please the customers," he told China Daily.

A good piece of music, he said, should move people, and maybe make them cry.

He has recently invented the "LKL Re-Harmonization System", a tool to help guitarists and pianists to add depth to basic harmonies.

"Music gives me an opportunity to realize my potentials and works as a channel to release my tension. Being an unromantic person, all my romance has been reflected in music," Lo smiles, looking at Susan.

Susan, who wrote many lyrics for the songs he composed, disagrees and says softly, "He's very sensitive and sentimental. His romance is not the typical kind of expressive romance, but a more implicit one."

Contact the writer at mingyeung@chinadailyhk.com

With a strong conviction that "environmental protection starts with me", Lo Koon-ting runs a shop selling green products since 2003 in Sai Kung, northeast Hong Kong Edmond Tang / China Daily

(HK Edition 12/29/2014 page5)