KUALA LUMPUR, May 11 — At age 14, she had such a bad bout of stage fright she vowed never to sing in public again. Today, 26-year-old Dasha Logan has serenaded thousands; from weddings to funerals and at various  jazz clubs. In July, she will have her own concert.

So what was the turning point? When she won RM500 cash and RM500 worth of chewing gum in a radio talent contest two years after the stage fright trauma, she knew she had to keep on singing.

The petite and bubbly songbird burst into the singing scene here about five years ago. One of her first few gigs in KL was a duet with fellow Penangite Adil Johan at No Black Tie, and the performance left the audience craving for more.

Fast forward five years, she is now working on her first album and hopes to have it out by the end of the year.

Of course, she didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Her late father Loganathan Arumugam and uncle, David, were the founding members of that pop sensation of the 70s, Alleycats.

Dasha talks about how her links to the legendary band is a blessing and a curse at the same time.

In her own words:

Everybody sees me as Loga’s daughter, that is my biggest selling point. I can’t run from that, I wouldn’t want to anyway.

People don’t take me seriously sometimes. I get so many comments, “Oh you sound nothing like your dad.” I’m like “I’m not supposed to sound like my dad.”

In school, I just wanted to finish school, finish college, so that I could start singing.

Everyone was like “You have to do well in your studies so that you can become a doctor, a lawyer” but I was like “Nah, I’m going to be a singer.”

I was the singing jukebox in school.

My dad was always in KL and my family was based in Penang so I hardly saw him… I saw him probably once a month for a day or we’d come down to KL… and during school holidays I saw him more.

I wonder what it would have been like to have a father around the whole time… wake up and go to bed and he’s there but I wouldn’t change it.

I wish someone had told me to pick up an instrument. But wait that’s not true because my dad did advise me but I was just too lazy to do it... I didn’t want to.

The only perk of being a musician is we don’t have to wake up so early in the morning. Other than that, schedules are insane because there are rehearsals, there are sound checks.

The end goal since I was young was always go international.