Ever since I started singing, I've been asked repeatedly about one particular colleague of mine on whether or not she is Vietnamese. I'm talking about Dalena, of course. I'm sure many of you out there had similar reactions the first time you heard Dalena sing in Vietnamese. For me, it was actually during her first live performance here in Orange County at the Ritz in Anaheim. I was actually in the audience that night. I was about 19 at the time. Somehow I was able to sneak into the Ritz nightclub that night. When the emcee introduced her name on stage along with a brief description of her being this Anglo-American gal who could sing in Vietnamese, I was a bit skeptical at first. Prior to that I had already seen the likes of Rick Murphy whose performances were pretty much parodies of a White man trying to sing in butchered Vietnamese. There had been one other act known as Cong Thanh & Lynn, the Vietnamese-Australian married couple. Lynn was this beautiful blonde Australian who was able to sing in Vietnamese, and although she had rightfully earned the respect from Vietnamese audiences as a serious singer, one could easily tell when listening to her sing in Vietnamese that she was not a native speaker. Dalena, on the other hand, really took me by surprise that night. Her performance of Nguoi Yeu Co Don was nothing short of flawless. She sounded completely like a native Vietnamese speaker when she sang that song. I couldn't get over it. I even had doubts that she was not Vietnamese, despite how she had blonde hair, looked all-American and sounded every bit like a native when she spoke in English. Well, of course, she should. Why shouldn't she?
The following week, Dalena's performance at the Ritz which had blown everyone in the audience away, aired on Vietnam Performing Arts Television on channel 18. For everyone who hadn't been in the audience that night at the Ritz, they would be in for quite a shock once they saw the live coverage aired on television the following week. It wouldn't be long from the television airing date of that performance of Dalena at the Ritz before she would become a major star among Vietnamese communities worldwide. The more famous she got, it seemed the more her Vietnamese fans would be buzzing about raising quite a bit of controversy which had everyone asking a certain question about Dalena: Is she or isn't she really Vietnamese? Even after an interview she had done on Little Saigon Television where Quynh Trang flat out asked her the question, "Dalena, are you Amerasian?" and she answered with a no explaining how both her parents are Anglo-American, the general public was still not satisfied. Some people went as far as to the extremes of claiming that Dalena looked Amerasian, and even had more Vietnamese features than Thanh Ha, who is Amerasian and for a number of years, also had blonde hair. I never saw that in Dalena. To me, she looked all-American. But as these rumors persisted, it even got me to wonder if there was any truth behind them at all.
Sometime in the late 1990s, I finally got a chance to meet Dalena through a couple of shows where we worked together. I must say, I found her to be quite delightful as a co-worker. She was always very polite and always smiled at everyone. During an engagement on New Year's Eve back in 2000 at the San Pablo Casino right outside of San Jose, California, I had the pleasure of working once again with Dalena along with Henry Chuc, Thanh Tuyen, Ha Vy, Thanh Truc and Margaret Yang of the Tranz band. During this booking, I got the chance to spend some time with Dalena. We talked about our lives, shared information about our upbringings and a mutual friendship we had both had with makeup artist/ fellow performer, the late Perry Zeild. During the midst of our conversation, I couldn't help but ask her what she thought about the rumors from some of her fans about her actually being Amerasian. She laughed, and so did I. Dalena even told me of how her mother who had managed her career for many years had also been the target of rumors, as some fans had believed her to be Dalena's lover rather than mother. Rumors, at times, can be quite ridiculous and even downright vicious. Although I had never doubted that Dalena was all-American, something happened during that San Pablo Casino engagement clearly proved to me that Dalena was indeed who she said she was and not in any way a phony. During the middle of the show, an audience member had come up to me and requested that I do a song called Paroles, Paroles which had originally been recorded by the late Dalida as a duet with Alain Delon. Since no other singer booked on that show had the capability of singing in French, I turned to Dalena to see if she could help. I was aware of Dalena's extraordinary talent of singing verbatim in foreign languages, as she had done so quite well in the Vietnamese language. Therefor, I decided to take a gamble and asked if she would be willing to try singing this song with me as a duet in the French language. To my delight, she readily agreed. As I wrote out the French lyrics, Dalena asked me to sing them aloud so that she could watch carefully the movements of my mouth and hear how each word would be pronounced. After just a few minutes, she sang back the French lyrics to me perfectly. I was beyond amazed just how accurate her pronunciation of each word in French was. I was so impressed, I had to ask her if she did indeed speak French. Unfortunately, the band informed us later on in the show that there simply hadn't been enough time for us to add that duet number onto the program. I was rather bummed, since I'm sure that Dalena and I would have knocked them dead with our duet performance of Paroles, Paroles that night if there was enough time. Dalena's ability to catch on so quickly singing the lyrics of Paroles, Paroles in French just goes to show that she indeed has this unique talent of listening, and copying verbatim perfectly in foreign languages. If she could do that in French, why is it so hard for Vietnamese audiences to accept the fact that that was how she had become able to sing in Vietnamese so well? One other event took place from this particular show gave further proof that Dalena really is who she says she is and that she is not Vietnamese, like how certain rumors had claimed her to be. And that was when I got to briefly meet her mother when we arrived at John Wayne Airport in Orange County flying back from San Jose. Based on what I saw, Dalena's mother is definitely Anglo-American. So there you have it, folks. I can certainly vouch that Dalena is not Vietnamese.
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