Pharmacist by profession, musician by passion

MANILA, Philippines — Music and pharmacy are poles apart. Singer-composer Nasser (a.k.a. Jang Amparna), a BS Pharmacy graduate from the University of Santo Tomas (UST), will attest to that.

As early as senior high school, Nasser couldn’t even decide what college course to take up. He applied at UST and simply checked the course BS Pharmacy in his form because “it sounded good to me,” he remembers.

“I wasn’t really sure what to do in college,” Nasser admits. “For my second choice, I simply ticked Conservatory of Music. I passed BS Pharmacy eventually, so I felt music was not good for me.”

However, because of his good voice, Nasser became a resident singer-balladeer of the UST Faculty of Pharmacy. He even got a scholarship. “That really helped me because our family is not well-off,” Nasser allows. “I embraced my college course and it gave me back more than enough.”

For somebody who honestly didn’t see the relevance of music initially, Nasser didn’t also believe that music is a stable career that can sustain him. Especially for somebody who didn’t even take a short music course, Nasser didn’t have any proper musical or voice training.

As early as he can remember, Nasser was prodded to sing on videoke ever since he was a young boy. He was often asked to sing Rain, recorded by Donna Cruz. He would belt out the refrain, “There’ll be no sunshine in my life, until you say you’re mine, oh mine…”

“Even if my voice was still very young, I could already sing Rain at that time,” Nasser recalls. “My parents are not musically-inclined. So, I’m actually clueless up to now how I got into music. I think singing in videoke regularly made me really love music.”

Nasser joined a few singing competitions. His usual contest pieces were Whitney Houston’s One Moment in Time or Regine Velasquez’s Isang Lahi. Fortunately, he bagged the top prize and became the champion.

However, there came a time when Nasser stopped singing because he felt the timber of his voice changed and obviously became different. “I got frustrated when that happened,” he shares. “I hated everything about my voice at that time.”

As his voice evolved into a thicker and more baritone sound, Nasser felt it was time to reinvent himself and find the genre of songs that suits his present voice.

As the platform also evolves, with the strong presence of social media and different digital platforms, Nasser admits he found it hard to take music as a full-time profession.

“Before, when you had an album, you can sell and earn, both for the record label and the artist,” he explains. “Now, it’s really different, because there’s digital selling. You can do everything online.”

Nasser was signed up by Curve Entertainment, which released his cover single, Jim Brickman’s Your Love. Nasser recently recorded Through the Rain, the theme of the newest Thai-novela series, Waves of Life, on GMA 7.

Will he ever give up his present job and go full-time into singing and recording? He is an Overseas Filipino Worker (OFW) in Singapore. “We need to be secure and safe with our lives, but we can weigh things, too,” Nasser reasons. “I’m enjoying my simple life in Singapore, but there is a certain ‘call’ that speaks to you. I’m not closing the possibility of going full-time into music and eventually making it my career.”