Mona Fong

(Apologies in advance if this artist has already been discussed - searches didn’t turn up anything.)

Just discovered this mid-century Chinese lounge singer and I’m hooked. Her album Mona Fong Meets Carding Cruz hits all the right exotica notes for me, featuring her vocals backed by the fun Latin jazz sounds of Carding Cruz (aka Ricardo Castro, one half of the Filipino comic jazz duo known as the Reycard Duet). I like a little extra Far East influence in my tiki music, and the fact she switches between English and Mandarin (I assume, since she was originally from Shanghai) makes this stick out. Her other stuff seems pretty standard, but this album kind of shocked me with how perfectly it seems to fit the tiki vibe. Anyone else run across her and/or have recs for a similar sound that has stayed under the radar?

It’s on Spotify if anyone wants to give it a listen: https://open.spotify.com/album/1mzN2sYoVIj5i2u0OxuF9w?si=S8MMkLC1SHyXMVhSUcHIvw

This is just wonderful. Love it!

Dang! This is awesome. Her wiki page is pretty interesting! Great stuff. Thank you for sharing. Playing now.

Couple of follow-ups to this topic:

First, I should have given credit where credit was due to the Quiet Village Podcast (https://www.digitiki.com/podcast.html ) and to Kitty and Mr. C’s Enchanted Tiki Hut Show (https://enchantedtikihutshow.com/), both of which featured Mona Fong in shows before I posted. Didn’t realize it until after I made the post, but I should have looked around a little more first.

Second, if you like this vibe and you’re in a holiday mood, check out the 1963 version of “Donde Esta Santa Claus” by Chang Loo/Zhang Lu. It’s on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/track/2OurbHTosLeGlhIvp3TTPZ?si=WLmhfqo1Tj2cdasBpteLsA. Like the Mona Fong record, it features a sort of Caribbean/South American beat, and she switches between English, Spanish and Mandarin over the course of the song. Fun stuff.