East meets West in a fourth-grader’s voice

Tyler Thompson isn’t much different from other fourth-graders in his Oakland neighborhood. He likes basketball and pro wrestling, cartoons and comic books.

But Tyler has a talent that sets him apart from his peers: He performs Chinese opera.

The 9-year-old, growing up in a city more notable for its tough streets than its touches of culture, is bringing crowds to their feet around the San Francisco Bay Area with his uncanny ability to sing in Mandarin Chinese. It’s a language he doesn’t speak but sings like a native.

“It’s shocking for the Chinese. Here’s an African American kid learning an art form that even the Chinese for the most part rejected or misunderstood,” said David Lei, chairman of San Francisco’s Chinese Performing Arts Foundation.

He first saw Tyler perform last year at San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum.

“He had a good voice and was very accurate in his singing,” Lei said. “It wasn’t chop suey. It was the real thing.”

Tyler quickly became one of Northern California’s most popular Chinese-music performers, wowing audiences at Oakland City Hall, the Herbst Theater in San Francisco and HP Pavilion in San Jose.

Today Tyler will be a featured performer at the San Francisco Symphony’s annual Chinese New Year concert, just four days before the Year of the Rooster begins. He will sing a Chinese folk song accompanied by a Chinese instrument ensemble.

“Chinese singing has gotten me this far, so I’m going to stick with it,” Tyler said.

Tyler learned how to sing Chinese songs as a student at Lincoln Elementary, a public school in Oakland’s Chinatown where 90% of students are Asian, mostly children of working-class Chinese immigrants.

It’s one of the nation’s few public schools with a Chinese music program, started 10 years ago by teacher Sherlyn Chew, who was born in Oakland and attended Lincoln as a child.

She teaches students of all backgrounds to sing Chinese songs and play traditional Chinese instruments.

Tyler’s mother, Vanessa Ladson, said she chose Lincoln because of its high academic standards, as well as its proximity to her job at a utility company.

Tyler has always loved music, Ladson said. Not long after he learned to speak, he’d sing with his father when they drove together in his truck. He grew up singing whatever music his mom played at home, including gospel, jazz and R&B.;

“Tyler lives to sing, period,” Ladson said.

Tyler doesn’t speak Mandarin, a tonal language in which the same word spoken with a different tone has a different meaning. But Chew taught him and other students who didn’t speak Chinese by spelling out the words and teaching them how to sing with the correct pronunciation and intonation.

“Each syllable is clear. His tones are very good,” Chew said. “He doesn’t speak the language, but he knows the meaning of the song.

“He knows what he’s trying to convey to the audience.”