Manufacturing and Consuming

Culture: Fakesong in Singapore

Shzr Ee Tan
Sing Singapore is a biennial, government-sponsored, mass-song competition held in this
young island-state (est. 1965) in celebration of its national day with a view to fostering a
pan-national identity among its multi-racial citizens of Chinese, Malay, Indian and
Eurasian origins. Through press reports, personal experience and interviews with former
participants of the competition-festival, this paper tracks the history and evolution of the
music competitions aims over 14 years of its existence. Beginning as a propaganda
campaign re-inventing ideas of modern Singapore through music in 1988, it has evolved
from assembling / through essentializing attributes of folksongs or local songs / an
artificial mosaic of the republics individual ethnic groups, into an art-song choral
competition and, eventually, a slick pop festival reminiscent of the Eurovision song
contest. The trajectories taken by the song campaign reflect changing social-political
beliefs on the engineering of race issues in multi-cultural Singapore. Reception of the
campaign by its intended mass audience has been largely successful / if, however,
successful beyond its intended aims. In the 1990s, the surfacing of alternative versions of
official songs on the Internet featuring whimsical, ironic and self-deprecatory parodies
show that Singaporeans had begun to appropriate the campaign for their own ideas of
officially unacknowledged local identity / facets of which include government bashing. In
recent years, in the hands of another generation of celebrants, the campaign has, through
private and official singing events, moved beyond simple anti-government cynicism into
the postmodern realm of embracing the anti-cool: propaganda-style forging of national
identity through song has been embraced and celebrated for its sheer kitsch value.
Keywords: Singapore; Fakesong; Propaganda; Cultural Engineering; Music; Identity;
Postmodernism; Anti-hype; Parody
Shzr Ee Tan is a research student fellow at the School of Oriental & African Studies in the University of London.
She has just embarked on her first year of PhD work on folksong of the Taiwanese Aborigines. Prior to joining
SOAS, she spent six years at The Straits Times in Singapore as an arts correspondent. She is also trained as a
classical pianist, and holds BMus and MMus qualifications in music and ethnomusicology from Kings College
London and SOAS. Correspondence to: shzree@soas.ac.uk
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online) # 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/17411910500096745
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 14, No. 1, June 2005, pp. 83/106
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Concert or Propaganda?
On 26 August 2002 in Singapore, in the euphoric aftermath of National Day
celebrations, 800 citizens assembled at the national broadcast companys TV theatre
to watch a song contest hosted by local showbiz personalities. Thousands more
caught a telecast of the event in their own homes. It was a gala night for everyone,
cheered on by a flag-waving crowd. The competitors are ordinary Singaporeans,
including a cappella community ensembles and school choirs whose members
represent the official Chinese, Indian and Malay communities making up the island-
nations population. They sing of standing side by side/I knew wed build a new
world/ a world of hope ever after
1
and homes about its people too/So well build
our dreams together.
2
It is a perfect picture of a showbiz set: impeccable hair, snazzy dance sequences,
glitzy costumes and polished voices. Every two years, the televised evening is the
climax of a biennial song festival/competition, called the Sing Singapore campaign.
Conceived in 1988 by the Ministry of Information and the Arts, it is a project that
encourages singing and seeks to develop a strong sense of belonging to Singapore
(NAC 1998, 2). It pits solo performers, school choirs, plus choral groups from grass-
roots organizations and private companies, against each other for cash prizes of up to
S$5000 (2000) and the glory of getting on national TV or receiving national
accolades.
3
Activity gears up in the start of an even-numbered year as early as February.
Notices of the competition are sent out by the government to schools and community
clubs. Individual singers and choirs begin to rehearse at home, in classrooms and in
public halls, assembling song routines from an official list of anything from ten to
thirty pieces. Each year that the competition is held, a new song, commissioned by
the arts and information ministry, is included. The performers sing to pre-recorded
synthesizer arrangements and often dance to choreographed movements. They wear
specially designed costumes in the Singapore flag colours of red and white or patterns
reflecting the ethnic background of Singapores Chinese, Malay and Indian
communities. Contesting groups participate in heats, held in schools or community
clubs. Following several rounds of competition and elimination, things come to a
head in August on a designated evening when anything from five to ten finalists
compete against each in a televised extravaganza featuring local guest-star hosts.
Like many government campaigns in Singapore,
4
the festival boasts its own
appendix of spin-offs. There are songbooks (Figure 1), tapes, interactive websites,
karaoke tracks, CDs, guess-the-winner contests and music videos aired over
national television. There are also road shows led by pop-star campaign representa-
tives (known as Singing Ambassadors) or prominent figures in the political and
corporate world. All of this activity occurs as early as five months before the August
concert. As part of the festivals fringe activity, sing-along sessions are held in schools
and institutions, and Sing Singapore buses promoting the songs circulate the island.
84 S. E. Tan
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More recently, MP3s have also been made available for downloading from the
Internet (www.singsingapore.org.sg).
The sheer bombardment of the listener with these songs bespeaks the budget
5
allocated by the government to the campaign. The slickness of presentation is the
result of subcontracting to professionals in the local and foreign entertainment
industries. But often cries of nationalist overkill or cheese can be heard from
cultural practitioners and music industry specialists commenting on the content and
politics behind this campaign of muddled and sometimes seemingly contradictory
aesthetics. Is this a concert or is it propaganda?
An example of expensive cheese can be found in the 1998 music video,
Together, fronted by the popular Singaporean actress Evelyn Tan and produced by
Hong Kong action-movie guru Tsui Hark. It telescopes footage of a European chef
rushing from a restaurant to a hospital bed, ready to clasp the hands of his new son,
born to a Chinese Singaporean wife. This video was a literal reflection of the then-
headlining government policy of attracting foreign talent. Equally literal depiction of
social engineering and national/multi-cultural identity can be found in other music
videos, with titles and lyrics like Stand up for Singapore, Five stars arising and
We are Singapore. These videos feature nostalgic scenes of old Chinatown nestling
against the backdrop of the financial district, or smiling youths congregating by
Housing Board flats,
6
or representatives of the official Chinese, Malay, Indian and
Others (CMIO) racial groups, taking their national pledge in quiet solemnity.
The overtones of propaganda here are apparent. But, while the campaign overtly
exhibits traits of cultural manipulation by governments in the same way that
revolutionary songs were disseminated in the early days of the Chinese Revolution in
the 1940s and 1950s, or as pop music has been put to didactic use in Beijing in the
last two decades (Baranovitch 2003, 197/200), there are several points to raise. First,
there is the old issue of whether music exists as an end in itself or whether it has
extra-musical meaning beyond its aesthetic value. For ethnomusicologists, the
conclusion is foregone: music must necessarily be understood within a broader
social context. The question, however, lies in knowing where to draw the line in
Figure 1 Title page of Sing Singapore songbook, A collection of Singapore songs , 2nd edn
(NAC 2001)
Ethnomusicology Forum 85
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distinguishing the point at which transcendence of this social meaning, through
ideology, becomes propaganda. Perris argues that:
[the] difference is that the content of the musical work is not left to the composers
free choice, nor to the practice of censorship / whether explicit or by prevailing
morality (which may fall behind the advance of the doctrine); nor does the work of
art arise and endure by virtue of the audiences taste (which may include box-office
success). (Perris 1983, 1)
The manipulated origins of the songs and changing social and artistic objectives of
Sing Singapore as a campaign-turned-festival, I hope to show, demonstrate evidence
for and parallel to Perris framework. Second, given that the Sing Singapore campaign
is publicly planned around August, in celebration of National Day festivities, its flag-
waving tones might be seen to be justified under a literalist argument. In much the
same way as the Fourth of July or VE Day celebrations in America and Europe spur
crowds on to sing The star spangled banner or suitably euphoric hymns, there is no
reason why one should not expect patriotic songs to be sung in the period
surrounding National Day celebrations. A third point is the issue of transparency
involved in the campaign itself. Perris (1985, 6/9) has drawn attention to the
effectiveness of musical propaganda when audiences are unaware of its presence, a
scenario which does not for the most part apply to Sing Singapore. Indeed, while the
charge against national folksong movements in socialist countries like North Korea
(Howard 2003, 1/8) and 1950s China is often one of propaganda masquerading as
folk tradition, organizers of the Sing Singapore campaign have, right from its
inception, been unabashed about their motives.
This leads to the question of Singaporean culture. This is best understood through
a framework of the countrys internal cultural politics and external relations with her
neighbours. Founded in 1819 by British seafarer Stamford Raffles, Singapore was to
all intents and purposes a British colony until the end of World War II, after which it
began paving its road towards independence. In 1965, it was officially declared a
republic following a split from the Malay Peninsula (now Malaysia). Present-day
Singapore is a tiny city-state with no natural resources and populated by a largely
assimilated, multi-racial immigrant community of 77.5 per cent Chinese, 14.2 per
cent Malay and 7.1 per cent Indian ethnic groups. Most of its population arrived in
the 19th century as workmen migrants or traders (Pang 1982, 549/51). While the
Chinese community now takes the lions share, in racial demographics, of Singapores
4 million inhabitants, the island itself is surrounded by largely Muslim nations in the
Southeast Asian Malay Archipelago.
Maintenance of a peaceful balance within Singapores multi-cultural society has
been crucial to internal stability. In the 1960s, race riots between hundreds of Malays
and Europeans, and later between Malays and Chinese, led to violence and deaths
(Hong 2000). These riots, sparked off by discontentment with economic and political
inequality between sectors divided by racial fault-lines, are constantly held up today
by the state as the threat of eruptive instability that could ensue again in the event of
86 S. E. Tan
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an upsetting of Singapores delicate cultural balance. Equally worrying for the
government are also the implications of such internal unrest brought to a level of
Southeast Asian regional intervention: the island country is, after all, a red dot in a
sea of green
7
(Lee 2000, 319/20). In view of this, the forging of Singapore identity
has sought to de-emphasize ethnic differences and emphasize homogeneity through
cultural newness, written upon the clean slate of official national history after the
declaration of independence in 1965. At the same time, the making of this identity
has also looked towards acknowledging the countrys individual pockets of multi-
racial representation, if somewhat artificially through essentialist and compartmen-
talizing initiatives. This formulation of national identity has had implications for the
Sing Singapore project in its handling of issues of national musical identity.
The evolution of this state musical identity was partly catalysed by the fact that,
until recent years, a unified Singaporean musical identity / as opposed to a Malayan
one in pre-independence days / has not presented itself prominently. With the
exception of a few ad hoc performances of the bangsawan Malay-Indian opera genre,
musical activity continued to exist, post-independence, within but not across ethnic
divides (e.g. Chinese street opera, drum music at Malay weddings, Carnatic Indian
music in temples). However, this is not to say that the pan-cultural local pop scene
was not growing and giving a platform to ideas of a pan-cultural Singaporean
identity. Performers like Peranakan-born
8
Dick Lee began releasing albums in the
regional patois, Singlish, but these were not officially endorsed by the government or
supported in full financial force by the public. Mainstream and late post-colonial
tastes otherwise leaned towards Western and Mandarin/Canto pop/rock. Sing
Singapore eventually pitched itself against this latter mainstream background.
It also paid some lip service to intra-ethnic traditions and thus began to negotiate
between the divides of folksong versus what Dave Harker has called fakesong.
Harker (1985) posits the original concept, detailing Hosbawmian procedures that
eventually lead to the unconscious and conscious invention of musical tradition. In
particular, he singles out English folksong collector Cecil Sharp for appropriating
stereotypes of folksong from repositories sung by common people in English
villages, and imposing these repertoires upon urban and rural populations alike in
new, altered versions imbued with nationalistic sentiments and middle-class values
(Harker 1985, xv, 172/210).
In the Sing Singapore campaign, this invention of tradition is similarly deliberate,
if slightly different in source, emphasis and objectives from Harkers example. While
most of the Sing Singapore songs are freshly composed, there are always one or two
folksongs, sung in the requisite language, for each of the constituent Malay, Chinese
and Indian ethnic groups. These songs feature melodies, riffs or instruments deemed
characteristic of the appropriate ethnic group, set to functional harmony in pop
arrangements in order to make them accessible to singers of other ethnic groups and
the rest of the populace. Where there are not enough potential folksongs of ethnic
origin to be appropriated and cleaned up through the fakesong treatment, Sing
Singapores team simply invent new melodies / i.e. new folksongs/true fakesongs
Ethnomusicology Forum 87
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with youthful roots that can be traced to their urban and national beginnings after
the independence declaration of 1965.
In some ways the campaign resembles the Landschaftliche Volkslieder folksong
collection campaign of Germany. As Bohlman (2000: 651/3) describes it, this
nationwide project provided a vehicle for remembering and forgetting specific traits
of regional culture as part of a deliberate move to reflect a sense of pan-Germanic
national sentiment even as the political geography of the country changed through
the wars. Bohlman further argues that this process of altering memories through
music eventually led to the re-mapping of local and national history and geography.
Likewise, in the case of Sing Singapore, nationalistic tunes were collected and
celebrated with a view to pulling a carpet over the past and celebrating the future in
musical sentiment. But the past was not so much rewritten as conveniently glossed
over as a period of hardship. Territorial boundaries were not so much reclaimed / in
fact, the opposite appeared to develop as Singapores geographical realignment,
post-1965, into a tiny piece of land became all the more reason for its defensiveness
and national pride in a rally for unity in adversity. The songs urgently sought to
create a new history that had to be consciously written. Indeed, the artificiality of the
cultural-production process / in musical, historical and political terms / became
celebrated in its own right.
A Transparent Campaign
This manufacturing of musical identity can be observed in the public articulation of
Sing Singapores aim of forging national unity. The official reason given for the
launch of the campaign in February 1998 reads as such in a press release: To develop
a strong sense of belonging to Singapore through group singing. [Sing Singapore]
aims to make the enjoyment of singing Singapore songs accessible to Singaporeans,
young and old (National Arts Council 1998, 1).
In 2002, the aims of the enterprise were updated:
To discover and promote original songs written by Singaporeans for Singaporeans,
while developing a love for music and singing and therefore cultivating a greater
sense of togetherness among Singaporeans. With the theme Lift Your Voices, Lift
Your Hearts, SS2002 encourages you to express yourself by singing the songs which
we can call our own. (NAC 2002)
A third piece of evidence for the contrivance of identity articulation can be found in
the official positioning of the campaign as part of the larger Total Defence Campaign.
A bolstering of internal national identity, the government reasoned, would add to
external security. The Total Defence Campaign was a five-pronged national
exhortation formulated in 1980s by taking into account Singapores unique position
as an island state devoid of natural resources, with a multi-racial population and
highly-dependent on global trading for economic survival (Straits Times 1995b).
88 S. E. Tan
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Over the years, explanations of the concept of Total Defence have been
supplemented by activities to ingrain it as a basic Singaporean value. It was for
this reason that the ministries of Information and the Arts, Community
Development, Trade and Industry, Home Affairs and Defence were identified as
the five Total Defence ministries in charge of promoting Psychological, Social,
Economic, Civil and Military Defence respectively. They have achieved a great deal
through the many activities that they organise. Among these are the National Day
Parades, the biennial Sing Singapore contest, the airing of national songs, the
National Day concert entitled Rhythm of the Nation, emergency blood donation
exercises . . . etc. (Straits Times 1995b)
In the 1980s, prior to the launch of the campaign, several nationalistic songs
composed by commercial lyricists and songwriters on behalf of the Ministry of
Information and the Arts were already in general circulation. Some notable songs
include Count on me Singapore and Stand up for Singapore (National Arts
Council 1997), scores or cassette tapes of which were either given out in schools or
made available in the record stores. A contemporary newspaper report attempts to
explain the forging of Singapore identity in no roundabout terms, describing how
tapes of Count on me came to become commercial bestsellers . . . surprising
everyone by setting an all-time record for cassette sales (Straits Times 1986):
There are not many songs that can be said to be Singaporean. A few, however, do
come to mind . . . but there is room for many more. . . . Composers and singers
should apply their creative skills and come up with more songs and tunes with a
distinctive local flavour. Singaporeans can help them along by continuing to be
receptive in local compositions. (Straits Times 1986)
Another telling article on government and government-endorsed attitudes towards
singing national songs can be illustrated by the following excerpt:
Music is an exercise in harmony. Singing in chorus is more difficult than singing
solo, because whereas in the latter the individual is his own master, in a chorus, an
individuals voice must be in total harmony with every others voice. A government
is made up of people who bring exceptional qualities to their office, but it becomes
a government only when these different people believe in, and find, the harmony of
a common ground. When the Prime Minister and his parliamentary colleagues this
week rehearsed songs for National day, they testified to existence of the bond
between music and government: harmony. And when the rest of Singapore join
them, full-throated, on National day, the picture will be complete: harmony, not
just in song, not just among members of the government, but most important
between a people and their government. . . .
Singing is an act of affirmation. . . . Every word, when sincere, is a reminder of that
first awesome breaking of that silence. In singing, these words continue their
creative journey. They go beyond being intellectual statements of affirmation: They
become emotive reiterations of a being in harmony with all else. (Business Times
1987)
Ethnomusicology Forum 89
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Academic literature on the role of group singing and mass identity formation,
predating the above journalistic excerpt, can be found in the fields of musicology,
ethnomusicology, music therapy and politics. Blacking (1967) advances the idea of
collective consciousness in group music-making, relating how the Venda people,
through song, relate more closely to one another and transcend their positions as
individuals to become an integrated group, generating greater human energy. Small
(1990) relates how musical ensemble activity reinforces intra-social relationships and
affirms group identity. Attali (1985, 11, 26) takes the argument furthest, referring to
how music, in its abstract mobility and political nature, moves much faster than
reality and contains thereby the power to simulate, advance and prophesy social-
organizational codes in hegemonic culture.
Such approaches chime with the case of Sing Singapore and are very similar to
sentiments expressed in the Business Times report. But, beyond elaborations on the
socially integrating role of music, as with the Mao-style advocacy of employing music
as a tool of political ideology (Perris 1983, 1/5), there is a transparency in the
articulation of government-endorsed objectives behind this group singing. There is
no deception here as to the use of music. Its public context is admitted and
championed as a vehicle by which concepts of identity, culture and unity can be
fostered. Its ability to excite passions is celebrated as an efficient device in the service
of ideology. Effectively the audience is told that they are being fed propaganda and
that music is the tool of its dissemination. They are thereby invited and encouraged
to partake of it.
The Conscious Invention of Tradition
The transparency of Sing Singapore presents an alternative to Hobsbawm and
Rangers model in The invention of tradition (1992), whereby culture is transformed
into a piece of heritage through economic or political processes, usually for
nationalistic reasons. The cultural invention of Sing Singapore songs pushes the
argument further; it has been officially prized for the sheer artificiality of it all. There
is nothing unconscious or unwitting about it; indeed, Sing Singapore was never
meant to be a historically accurate campaign. If anything, it sought to create new
histories on a would-be clean slate.
Musically speaking this had repercussions. Administrators did not search
Singapores supposed aboriginal or early settlement culture (possibly Malay-
influenced) for answers. Nor did they look deeply into the extended histories and
musics of constituent ethnic groups in the hope of unearthing an original or
authentic folksong. Instead, tokenistic songs superficially connected to each ethnic
group were chosen for each years official list of competition songs. The final array of
each years list reflected a politics of representation that showed up what was
perceived to be an Indian, Chinese or Malay song, as opposed to the more debatable
question of what was an authentic Indian, Chinese or Malay song. For example,
popular tunes that were already well-known throughout Southeast Asia and Taiwan,
90 S. E. Tan
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such as Dayung Sampan
9
and Rasa Sayang
10
were appropriated as songs specific
to Singapores Malay communities.
In writings on pop music in Singapore, the geographer Kong (1996a, 1996b, 1996c)
has highlighted the occurrence of localized lyrics, unconsciously composed to reflect
the heritage, ideology and sense of place of Singapore. I would like to extend her
thesis to posit that the articulation of this sense of place has become deliberate in
the Sing Singapore campaign. In the case of Dayung Sampan, the lyrics have been
altered to reflect local geography with the substitution of the crucial word
Singapura, in parts of the text that would have been sung as Malaysia
11
when
heard outside Singapore:
Malaysian version Singaporean version
Dayung Sampan Dayung Dayung Sampan Dayung Sampan, Dayung Dayung Sampan
Belabur datang Bandar Cina Belabur datang Bandar Cina
Ke Malaysia Ke Singapura
(as heard in the 1999 Sarawak Rainforest
Festival by a Malaysian delegate at a
workshop)
(from Singalong! A collection of Singapore songs ,
NAC 1997)
Multi-cultural or Cultural Orphans?
The representation of constituent ethnic or diasporic communities in Singapore
culture is a tricky issue that has long been debated by a line of Singapore thinkers and
arts practitioners, quite apart from the makers of the Sing Singapore campaign. The
scholar of intercultural practice Rustom Barucha has pointed out (in a reference to
Singapore theatre) that it is not what cultures are in their pristine states that matters,
but what can be done to them through particular processes of intercultural
investigation that is of primary concern (Barucha 2000). His statement follows
the premise of the late Singaporean pioneer theatre director, Kuo Pao Kun, who
reasoned that multi-culturalism offers too easily a convenient shelter for the idea of a
cultural orphanage, in that all Singaporeans can be bits and pieces of the larger
cultures from where their ancestors had migrated / China, India, Malaya (Kuo 1993,
26). He continues:
With half knowledge or no knowledge of these cultures, the descendants of these
migrants can be described as orphans, who are alienated from any real links to
their cultural traditions. . . . We call ourselves multicultural, but actually none of
the cultures that we have inherited are whole. Its a bit embarrassing. Similarly, we
call ourselves multilingual; actually we only have some vocabulary that we can do
business with, but when you go deeper, you have no language. (Kuo 1993, 26)
Kuo himself advocates, instead, the forging of a utopian open culture, where
Singaporeans should leave the orphanage to start a cultural parentage. This would be
Ethnomusicology Forum 91
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achieved through drawing from and transcending existing cultural background, thus
embracing all the cultures and civilizations of the world (Barucha 2000, 11).
At the level of pure ideology, it may be superficially argued that there are common
objectives to be found between Kuos idealistic brand of trans -culturalism and the
aims of Sing Singapore. The crucial difference is that the latter has telescoped away
the nitty-gritty details and complexities involved in the kind of intercultural processes
envisioned by Kuo, and striven instead to keep the communities peacefully apart
(Kuo 1998, 53). It has de-emphasized and compartmentalized elements of
authentic folksong into consciously manufactured varieties of fakesong. These
cultures are not thrown together in some proverbial melting pot to emerge stewed up
as a pan-Asian dish. Instead, they have been either stereotyped into token
representations, through the employment of Oriental-sounding melodic motifs
or the use of pentatonic modes, or simply swept under the carpet of a much larger
repertoire of new songs articulating national identity not defined by multi-or intra-
culturalism but understood in terms of the building of a goal-oriented, economically
savvy and politically stable society.
I have already mentioned the paying of lip service to the origins of folksongs used in
the campaign: national cultural identity is achieved through the method of
assignation, rather than research into the actual origins or history of a song. In the
case of Dayung Sampan (see above), this involved transplanting and altering place
names to reflect a Singaporean geography. In other instances generic to Sing
Singapore, we find that cultural identity is also assigned through the grafting of
specific musical stereotypes peculiar to the official ethnic groups to pieces of music.
Music videos are made to look more Indian by featuring dancers or singers
imitating physical movements found in Bollywood movies. Synthesized approxima-
tions of the sounds of signature Chinese and Malay instruments, like the erhu
(Chinese two-stringed fiddle), guzheng (Chinese zither) and rebana (Malay frame
drum), are transplanted onto CD tracks of newly composed English-language songs.
It is in the larger category of these new English songs that the true Hobsbawmian
crux of the Sing Singapore campaign lies. Kuo may have bemoaned the lack of a real
language in Singapore. But government officers are also quick to jump upon the
homogenizing, neutral values of English, a language medium used in commercial and
court circles, in addition to being the first language of all Singaporeans.
12
A casual
sweep through three commercially available albums of Sing Singapore songs (see CD
list) will reveal that out of 51 tracks only ten are in Malay, eight in Mandarin and two
in Tamil. Most of the non-English songs are either credited as anonymous folksongs
or are non-English pop songs already disseminated in the market before incorpora-
tion into the Sing Singapore list. Many of these songs feature non-nationalistic lyrics
about flora, fauna, friendship and love. This is because the actual meanings of
individual song lyrics are generally not understood by the singers involved,
13
whose
appreciation of them is largely based upon their tokenistic, exotic value. Even in
official songbooks (e.g. NAC 1997) many translations of non-English songs, which
may number several stanzas, are given only as skimpy three-line explanations.
92 S. E. Tan
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In contrast, the majority of the English songs are newly composed, with lyrics that
deal with nation-building: We built a nation strong and free/Reaching out together
for peace and harmony; defence: Put your heart your mind your skill to our
defence/We have sailors we have airmen; solidarity and unity: Let us be together.
Aspire to achieve; progress: We have a vision for tomorrow/ Just believe; hardship:
We have worked so hard now just to be free/Through all the heartaches and the
pains; and multi-culturalism: Every creed and every race/Has its role and has its
place . . . well be united, hand-in-hand. Western pop synthesizer arrangements, in
their universality and accessibility, predominate as the musical style employed by the
songs, featuring four-square phrases underlined by basic harmonic progressions of I-
IV-V-I chords. The newly composed nature of each song and its text-setting in the
universal language of English is symbolic of the governments exhortation to
Singaporeans to create a new sense of nationhood. Disparate fourth-generation
immigrants are now repeatedly warned not to take their peace, political and
economic stability for granted. As with the transparency of Sing Singapore as a
propaganda campaign, there are no illusions regarding the manufacture of these
fakesongs. Each new songs birth, through the process of conscious creation by the
composer, becomes a metaphorical baptism that necessarily rids each singer of the
cultural, racial and political baggage of previous generations.
In fact, in line with the agenda of new nation-building, ordinary Singaporeans
were urged to contribute their own songs to the National Song Search in 1993. This
was in addition to the increasingly high-profile producers and singers in the pop /
and recently classical and opera / world who were persuaded and engaged to lend
their faces to the project. Tradition, as it were, was deliberately being faked and
invented. Like the shin minyo (new folksongs) of Japan and Korea (Hughes 1985;
Howard 1990), Sing Singapore functioned along the lines of an unusual folksong
preservation society that manufactured fakesong on demand, tailored to the specific
needs of government policy.
Folk, Art and Pop
Folksong, however, was not the only musical commodity that Sing Singapore dealt in.
Over its 13-year history, the campaigns propagandistic aims began to change subtly,
merging with the sub-objectives of promoting local talent, of putting on a Las Vegas-
style display of showmanship and of invoking the ultimate lofty ideal: art. Early in
1988, judging guidelines clarified that the contest was not a talent quest: groups
which inspired audiences to clap their hands and sing along would stand a better
chance of winning than good warblers (Straits Times 1990a). The target
participants in the early days were grass-roots organizations, private companies
and students. If the sheer number of singers involved in each typical year of
the festival were an indicator of success, then some 10,000 choristers from 194
groups, plus 38 schools of easily 1,500 students each, might be considered resounding
indeed. While many participants bought wholesale into the directive of nation-
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building through song, the simultaneous goal of promoting local community spirit
via singing was also significant in the participation of many people.
My own personal experience in one of the campaigns in 1988 with a school that had
mobilized its students for weekly rehearsals for the competition hints that there were
reasons for the large-scale support of the campaign beyond nationalist pride. A large
number of students and choristers joined the 1988 event for the more innocent
pleasure of skipping classes or socializing outside the framework of the school or
office. While some students took the patriotism promoted in each song very seriously,
many viewed Sing Singapore activities as nothing more than leisure activity.
Interviews with 1988 Sing Singapore student participants
14
reveal that many Sing
Singapore songs, when replayed today, bring up associative and nostalgic memories of
schooldays rather than sentiments of nationalistic pride. The popular local actress Zoe
Tay, for example, one-time Sing Singapore ambassador, was interviewed in 2000 for
her thoughts on the campaign. She said, I remember the song [Count on me
Singapore] very well. It reminds me of the 1980s when I was just out of school (Straits
Times 2000b). Such anecdotes recall Stokes (1994, 1/28) relation of the ability of
music to relocate individuals into different times and spaces through memory. To an
extent, this relocation into the nostalgic past speaks for the success of Sing Singapore.
But the success is partial, given that the space-time zone relocation may not have
progressed much beyond personal or schoolgirl/schoolboy nostalgia. Indeed, inter-
views with some participants of early Sing Singapore campaigns, who once did take
the nationalism in them seriously, show that some have revised their attitudes towards
the festival retrospectively and now interpret their one-time enthusiastic endorsement
of the campaign as the product of easily impressionable youth.
Another anecdote provides a clue to the unintended successes and side results of
the campaign. A public Sing Singapore preliminary competition in 1994, at which
local celebrity footballers attended as guest artists, gathered together a huge crowd of
screaming fans. These fans had turned up to support their favourite sportsmen rather
than the singing contest, and had upstaged the competing (and visibly upset) choirs
with their football cheers (Straits Times 1994f). By this time the campaign had taken
a dramatic step forward beyond nation-building, adopting a new fun look. This, of
course, was technically not out-of-line with the secondary objectives of Sing
Singapore, which had gradually begun to lose some of its overtly propagandistic
veneer. That is not to say that Sing Singapore was no longer a campaign that pushed
forward strongly the idea of new, created culture. The development was that
national pride was now tied up with achievements in mass cultural education. The
chairman of the National Arts Council, Tommy Koh, who was appointed to the
campaign in 1994, now christened the event a festival, declaring, we want to
literally fill the city with the sound of music (Straits Times 1994b). He was quoted in
the press as having seen similar large-scale song festivals in Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania and been moved by the stirring experience of seeing 30,000 to 40,000
people participating together as a choir. Not everyone is gifted, but everyone can
participate (Straits Times 1994b). Local pop singers Jimmy Ye and Kit Chan were
94 S. E. Tan
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enlisted to push the project along, as were popular media personalities. Songs in the
official list, for the first time, did not need to be obviously nationalistic or
Singaporean, as long as they upheld positive aspects of life like helping each other
and learning to care for everyone as a family (Straits Times 1994b). This brand of
soft sell is akin to the recent appropriation of pop music by the state in China
(Baranovitch 2003, 197/202). While both Chinese and Singapore campaigns adopted
musical styles and celebrities of the highly accessible pop and advertising genre, in
terms of lyrics the former drew heavily on euphemisms for the state, such as the Great
Wall and Chinas birthday (Baranovitch 2003, 197), while the latter championed
general community-bonding values, focusing on themes like the family and the
student (Straits Times 1994a).
The fun edge to the Sing Singapore campaign, however, was soon to be
subsumed by larger ambitions. In 1995, official directives dictated that song themes
could now be on love, life, family, the environment or even world peace (NAC
1995, 1), although it was preferable that they also have a local flavour. The
campaign began to take on a We are the world, Unesco-style feel, even as it began to
work towards the explicit aim of promoting singing among Singaporeans in 1998.
It was moving away from its patriotic beginnings. The then campaign director, Dr
Bernard Tan, unashamedly pointed out the festivals new tangent in the theme song
of the year, Home, produced by established pop singer Dick Lee and sung by Kit
Chan: It is not your ordinary patriotic song. Such songs are important, but people
dont sing them all the time. Home, on the contrary, is something sentimental. It is
about the warmth and comfort of living in Singapore (Straits Times 1998b).
This subtler approach, peddling a quieter, less chest-thumping brand of
nationalism, continued through to Sing Singapore 2000. For the competition in
that year, local filmmaker Eric Khoo was called in by Tan to produce alternately
sentimental and funky MTV-style videos for new theme songs. He was also hired by
Tans team to remix the oldies Stand up for Singapore and Count on me, now to
be voiced by popular singers and TVactresses. If we look around us, the Malaysians
and Indonesians are more ready to sing spontaneously. The Filipinos can sing very
well too, Tan was quoted as saying in 1998. But Singaporeans were not keen, or not
sure what to sing. . . . We dont want people to sing because we asked them to. We
want them to sing because we have pointed out to them the joy of singing. By 2002,
the effort had turned into a strongly pop-oriented affair with the signing of
Singaporean superstar Stefanie Sun as the voice and face of the new Dick Lee song in
English: We will get there. Sun, a Mandarin-speaking pop singer with a big fan base
in Asia, did not obviously play up nationalist undertones in her delivery of the song.
Telling The Straits Times (2002a) that it was a song about overcoming personal
hardship, she said: I realize that in my 24 years, everything has been smooth for me
and Im very grateful for that. But I feel that there are other obstacles like really
knowing what you want in life. One day you will know what you want so I think its a
very optimistic song. We will get there was also released in a Mandarin version, in
order to capitalize on Suns appeal to the Mandarin pop market.
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Reception: Too Successful?
If the objectives of Sing Singapore may be said to have been blurred through the years
as the campaign took on subtly different guises each time, the same might also be said
of its results. In its inauguration year in 1988, the newness of the campaign itself was
a reason for its success. But no less important was the fact that the primary target
group was students in schools, where dissemination of the songs via the
infrastructure of the education system (through the enforcement of mass singing
lessons) was particularly easy. However, the claim that students / and no doubt many
others in grass-roots organizations / supported the campaign out of national pride
alone might be slightly harder to substantiate, as far as interviews with some past and
current participants of the campaign go.
15
I asked informant B, a participant in the 1988 competition and now a postgraduate
student based in London, how her school made it to the finals of the competition and
about her role in the event. She recalls the campaign as a chance to cut classes more
than an exercise in nation-building. She elaborates:
It was not true that we did not feel a certain bonding or emotion when we sang
those songs. But I think it was more mass hysteria than feelings of real patriotism. If
we did feel patriotic then, its a different patriotism to what we feel now as adults.
The latter is a more complicated issue involving our thoughts on the economic and
social-policy challenges that lie ahead for the current leadership of the country.
(Interview, 1999)
In another interview, informant A, now a music industry professional based in
Singapore, who also sang in the 1988 production, likens the Sing Singapore campaign
and its attendant rehearsals in school to a daytime campfire:
Above everything else, it was something very fun to do. I think we did put up a
show of community and team spirit [she says]. But this had to do with fighting for
our schools reputation and wanting our school to win the competition, as much as
it celebrated nation-building. (Interview, 1999)
If the campaign did not exactly attract genuinely enthusiastic participants, it did
attract a small share of detractors. Quite apart from the participants, there were
sceptics who voiced their disdain of the campaign in public or picked at discrepancies
in its objectives. In 1989, a media professional voiced a distinction between National
songs and Singapore songs / the former being foisted on you from above, the
latter arising from the grassroots (Straits Times 1989). Others saw inherent
problems in articulating Singaporean identity within the campaign ideology. A
commentator pointed out to The Straits Times (1989) that a song like Australias
Waltzing Matilda would have immediate connotations of Aussie slang and Rolf
Harris, simply because the stereotype of Australian identity was possible to pin
down. But the problem of defining a Singapore Song lay in there being no Singapore
identity or long history or periods of great emotional stress that produced genres
such as jazz (Straits Times 1989). The first executive producer of the Sing Singapore
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campaign itself, jazz pianist Jeremy Monteiro, laughed off the search for the
Singapore Song, saying it was easier looking for the Dodo bird. At least it existed.
Singaporean pop singer Clement Chow, voice of the ever-popular Count on me
confessed that he was heartily sick of having to sing the number for the umpteenth
time (Straits Times 1989).
Faking a Piece of Fakesong
With the exception of this small sector of dissenting voices, Sing Singapore is still a
well-attended and successful event / if success is reflected in the healthy distribution
of its spin-off tapes/ CDs/VCDs at bookshops across the island. There is a reason for
this: commercially, Sing Singapore is actually a viable entertainment offering.
Recordings and music videos are made by prominent studio engineers and directors
who employ well-trained and popular entertainers and singers. The finished
products sound is mastered and glossy. Tunes are crafted by professional pop
composers and are catchy, reminiscent of Cantopop and Mandopop melodies. The
majority of the songs are available free, online in MP3 formats or as music video
downloads from official websites (Figure 2/www.singsingapore.org.sg). All these
factors contribute to Sing Singapores public success as a marketing campaign, thanks
also to the support of national media like newspapers and TV stations which feature
articles, music videos and programmes on the project. Ordinary citizens appreciate
Figure 2 The homepage of the ofcial Sing Singapore website is fronted by Singapore
pop artists, including Stefanie Sun, Tanya Chua and Kit Chan.
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(or complain) that you hear the songs all the time on the radio and TV; you cant get
away from them (Interview with Informant E, August 2001).
But, while a sizeable slice of the Singapore population has no doubt bought into
the campaign at face value, a growing group has also been hailing the Sing Singapore
campaign for a quite different reason: irony. Several anonymous fake takes on well-
known songs like Count on me Singapore, Stand up for Singapore and We are
Singapore illustrate the phenomenon. These songs have had their lyrics altered to
suit new titles laced with political sarcasm, such as Count money Singapore,
16
Drink our pee Singapore,
17
We are Chin Kang Kor
18
and Fare up for
Singapore.
19
Take the example of the transformed We are Singapore:
Original Fake
We are Singapore We are Chin Kang Kor
There was a time when people said There was a time when people said
That Singapore wont make it Our bus fares wont increase
But we did But it did
There was a time when troubles seemed There was a time when people thought
Too much for us to take Our CPF
20
wont decrease
But we did But it did
We built a nation, We built a nation,
Strong and free With nothing free
Reaching out together Reaching out together
For peace and harmony To grab all our mo-ney
Chorus 1:
This is my country, this is my flag, This is my country, this is my flat
This is my future, this is my life Is there a future, or am I mad?
This is my family, these are my friends What of my family, what of my friends?
We are Singapore, Singaporeans We are chin kang kor, chin kang kor eh lang
Singapore, our homeland Singapore, our homeland
Is here that we belong Is ruled by one party
All of us, united Theyve just stuck us with some more
One people marching on Bloody GST
21
Weve come so far together We worked so hard together
Our common destiny What have we achieved?
Singapore forever, Singapore forever,
A nation strong and free Stuck with price increase
(Repeat Chorus 1)
(The Official Pledge / Sung)
We, the citizens of Singapore We, the citizens of Singapore
Pledge ourselves as one united people Pledge ourselves as one difficult people
Regardless of race, language or religion Regardless of haze,
22
weather or pollution
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To build a democratic society To complain about it equally
Based on justice and equality Whether statement, law or policy
So as to achieve happiness Because we have much unhappiness
Prosperity and progress for our nations That we cannot express through elections
Chorus 2:
We are Singapore, we are Singapore We are chin kang kor, we are chin kang kor
We will stand together We still stand together
Here for evermore And complain some
We are Singapore, we are Singapore We are chin kang kor, we are chin kang kor
Were a nation strong and free forever more We will kau peh kau bu,
23
then kau peh
some more
(Singalong! A collection of Singapore songs ,
NAC 1997)
(As found on www.talkingcock.com/html/
print.php?sid/864)
The self-mockery and humour in this parody / privately circulated since the late
1980s, beginning in the financial sectors and later more widely / is evident. The
cynical, government-blaming humour of the lyrics reveal another side of Singaporean
identity not sanctioned by the authorities but integral to the fabric of society, perhaps
a response to what many regard as the excessively socialized, politicized and
regimented lives of its citizens. In writing about parody in North Indian film music
and folksongs, Manuel has outlined how:
proletarian and bearers of folk culture, far from being passive, indiscriminate
consumers, are able to absorb and claim dominant-class products (without
compensation) as their own. Through parody, folk performers literally resignify
tunes in a way that they are incorporated seamlessly into the fabric of genres and
performance contexts which affirm community values. (Manuel 1993, 140/1)
The parody-makers of Sing Singapore perhaps strictly speaking do not form a
folk community, but their embracing of the associative aspects of the tune and re-
claiming its identity through a new context on their own terms (through the
referencing of alternative lyrics revealing an underside culture) constitute a clear
parallel to Manuels model of parody and resignification.
Singapores Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong himself noted on a National Day rally
Speech how some highly creative Singaporeans had cleverly changed our national
songs to reflect the economic mood and described them as applying their energy to
idle pursuits (Straits Times 2002b). His remark sparked off a discussion, recorded by
the media and the Internet, over the issue of creativity versus cynicism versus
censorship in Singapore society. A lengthy article on political Singapore humour ran
in The Straits Times (2002b), headlined Cannot laugh meh?, debating where one
should draw the line in making nationalism the butt of a joke. In the article, assistant
professor of Chinese literature at the National Institute of Education, Dr Quah Sy
Ren, was quoted as saying: To deem only certain kinds of art or social comment as
acceptable or welcome is to restrict creativity and severely undermine our aim to
become a more cultured, socially-aware and participatory society. I dont think the
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politicians need to reiterate the concept of constructiveness over and over again. In
the same article, associate professor Randolph Kluver from the School of Commu-
nication and Information depicted the parodies as a social safety valve by helping
people express frustration in a non-threatening manner, while Internet project
manager Lee Kin Mun defended the use of humour, political or otherwise (Straits
Times 2002b).
In 1997, Lee Kin Mun launched the site mrbrown.com, which for a while regularly
featured Sing Singapore parodies. He claimed that his site had no message to send
out, no political agenda, no sacred cows to kill, no country to remake. Nothing. Just a
place for me to rant, and to make people laugh. Satirical Internet website Talking
Cocks founder, Colin Goh, was again matter-of-fact about pointing out the obvious
in the mainstream national newspaper (Straits Times 2002b): You know the old
saying: The bigger they come, the harder they fall. Sing Singapore tunes, to him,
were especially vulnerable as they come across as propaganda that aims to make
people feel patriotism on demand. He further upped the stakes of the game of faking
satire by getting one of his writers to pen a spoof of a report on spoofs in general,
quoting imaginary newsmakers:
Wow, I didnt realize that my changing We are Singapore to We are Chin Kang
Kor would be criticized on national TV, said history undergrad Chin Wo Leow,
24
22. I just thought it was funny. But I guess PMs point is that there is officially-
approved funny, and a non-officially approved funny. (Nonya Kway 2002)
In yet another entry (Kway Png 2002), Gohs team attacked the debate on political
humour with a spoof story by a pseudonymous writer on singing politicians. This
game of satirizing a satire eventually settled into a tongue-in-cheek stand-off.
Anti-hype: Its Cool to be Uncool
The cumulative layers of satire surrounding Sing Singapore can appear positively
postmodern, especially where anti-hype comes to be celebrated more than plain
hype. Here, the active endorsement of the ruling governments exhortations or the
singing of nationalist Singaporean songs becomes more than a patriotic act of will. It
embodies the status quo of supporting the ruling party to the extent that it seems
ridiculous and laughable, and thus is truly worthy to be celebrated for its own sake.
This might be termed the cool to be uncool attitude; the meaning is also captured
by the adage its so bad its actually good. Examples in popular culture illustrating
this idea would be the celebration by some members of the bourgeois intelligentsia of
low-brow films or kitsch books on bad hair or ugly furniture: bad taste is worshipped
in its own right. In Sing Singapore, this embracing of anti-hype has been observed in
the holding of National Day club and pub parties in recent years where guests, both
Singaporean and foreigners, turn up in the ruling Peoples Action Party uniforms,
wearing politicians masks or red-and-white flag colours, and sing along boisterously
to nationalistic songs. This celebration of the artificiality of manufactured culture has
100 S. E. Tan
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become a culture in itself. The Singapore governments quick-fix operations on
everything from public housing to the grooming of the arts scene has become
fashionable, and Sing Singapore has come to be celebrated as a backlash response to
backlash: now that it has been scorned by the mainstream intellectual community, it
has also become an underdog worth supporting by the proponents of anti-hype. This
code-switching also appears to have worked its way back to the official sphere, whose
members have apparently cottoned on to the satire. The Sing Singapore parody, Fare
up for Singapore, which might have been officially regarded as sacrilege, eventually
made its way as a joke on to the ruling governments Young Peoples Action Party
Discussion Forum homepage.
In 2000, pop star Tanya Chua, Sing Singapore artist of the year, conceded that the
last thing she ever thought she would get involved in was a government project
(Straits Times 2000a). Chua had up to that point been living up to the image of a
leather-clad rock musician. Her songs and vocal style were deemed to have a harder,
grittier edge than the melodious takes usually found in Canto- or Mandopop. But in
a newspaper article of 2000 (Straits Times 2000a), she was quoted as saying: A lot of
young people wouldnt dare to touch something that has to do with the authorities.
But for them, opening up and giving us an opportunity like this, I think its really
cool. On one level, Chuas position may appear to present a similar case to that of
Chinese artists and media workers co-opted to appear in pro-party TV specials, who
tread the politico-cultural situation with a sophisticated cynicism. In China, most
veer between accepting the official largesse while . . . sneaking subversive messages
into their work and dispensing with the hidden clues, churning out what Barme
describes as mind-numbing humbug (Barme 1999, 116). Chua, however, seems to
have been proud of her credits as songwriter and singer for Sing Singapore, proud
enough, at least, to have highlighted within the first few lines of her official biography
her association with the song and the singing of it at the 2001 National Day Parade.
25
In 2003, at a fund-raising dinner attended by the President and Education
Minister, Sing Singapore made another comeback in the guise of lightweight,
officially sanctioned political humour. Guests, dressed in flag colours of red and
white, assembled to watch a comedic revue of Sing Singapore songs performed by
celebrity thespians in tokenistic costumes. Stage gear worn included the Mandarin
cheongsam, the Malay sarong kebaya, the Indian sari, school uniforms and army
camouflage gear. Performances were delivered with over-the-top theatrics, and
nationalism was championed for the sake of camped-up fun. All the Sing Singapore
songs were received with violent applause, laughter and the frantic, orchestrated
waving of toy flags. This light-hearted attitude towards Sing Singapore denotes a
more subtle style of patriotism, an acceptance of the ideology, while at the same time
being aware of its contrivance and laughing back at it.
The most striking aspect of the Sing Singapore campaign is that it has become so
successful that its reception has flip-flopped not only once, but twice. On one level,
satirists are quick to lampoon the campaigns tub-thumping sentiments in alternative
lyrics telling of Singapores socially engineered society. But, more recently, national
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songs and the messages they deliver have come to be taken at face value for their
kitsch, which is celebrated as a fashionable entity. The writings of Singapore cultural
critic Janadas Devan on the construction of a multi-million dollar arts centre
26
shed
light on the domestic politics behind the Sing Singapore campaign. He muses on the
fabled efficacy of government projects in achieving government directives, in this case
the aspiration to build and run an arts centre for every ethnic, social and political
class in Singapore: The problem is not whether we will have a successful Singapore
Arts Centre. The problem is that youre going to have a successful Arts Centre
(Devan 1993, 146). There is no question that Sing Singapore has been a largely
successful effort / but might it be too successful by its own standards?
In more ways than one, Sing Singapore is the manufacture and consumption of
Singapore culture and identity. But, while it might have pretended to be something
else at the same time, it has never shied away from being artificial. Writing about an
intercultural reworking of Shakespeares Lear,
27
Barucha commented that the danger
lay not so much in the fact that Singaporeans were consuming Lear as a product, but
in that they were dangerously being consumed by it (Barucha 2000). The same might
be said of the Sing Singapore campaign. Perhaps it is a project that has shown
Singaporeans to be enthusiastic consumers of musical nationalism and manufactured
culture. But Singaporeans have done more than that: they have turned nationalism
into an entertainment industry; they have celebrated it both at face value and also at
the level of self-deprecation, irony and kitsch. The consumption of / and by /
manufactured culture has been allowed to happen with the willing agreement of all
participants.
Notes
[1] From We will get there, theme song for Sing Singapore 2002, lyrics and music by Dick Lee.
[2] From Home, theme song for Sing Singapore 1998, lyrics and music by Dick Lee.
[3] While most of the winning singers hope for the TV experience as a springboard to a future
career in the pop music industry, none of the past winners / whether in the solo or ensemble
categories / has become a successful artist.
[4] For example, Speak Mandarin Campaign, Courtesy Campaign.
[5] In 1995, about $9.9 million (about 4 million then) was spent on TV and newspaper ads
alone by the Singapore government, out of which two-thirds of the budget was apportioned
to the marketing of projects such as the Sing Singapore, Speak Mandarin, Courtesy and Anti-
Smoking Campaigns.
[6] Cheap, government-subsidized housing / the Singapore equivalent of council ats in the
UK.
[7] This term was rst used by former Indonesian President B. J. Habibie in an interview with
the Asian Wall Street Journal on 4 August 1998. He was referring to Singapores Chinese
stronghold in an environment of largely Islamic communities.
[8] An ethnic group referring to the Straits Chinese of Singapore and Malaysia (particularly
Singapore, Malacca and Penang), descended from early Chinese settlers from China in the
Malay Peninsula in the 15th century.
[9] Variations of this tune have been heard in the Malay Peninsula, the Philippines, Borneo and,
most popularly, in a version by the late Taiwanese songstress Teresa Teng, Tian Mi Mi.
102 S. E. Tan
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[10] The exact origin of this tune is uncertain, but a variant of it, heard among the Amis
Aborigines in Eastern Taiwan, is said to have been passed down by Japanese folksong
instructors before World War II, when Taiwan was still under Japanese rule.
[11] Given that the origins of the song are tenuous beyond having its roots in Southeast Asia, the
use of the word Malaysia here could also have been an equally articial insertion.
[12] This is different from the ofcial language, which is Malay.
[13] Interview with Informant A, December 1999.
[14] Interview with Informants A and B, 1999.
[15] Interview with Informants C and D, December 1999.
[16] As found on the following websites, and also circulated via chain emails:
http://www.sfdonline.org/Link%20Pages/Link%20Folders/Other/CountMoney.html
http://www.mrbrown.com/singaporesongs.html
http://www.xanga.com/home.asp?user/Ephrammi
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid/884
http://www.2sobriety.blogspot.com/2002_07_21_2sobriety_archive.html
[17] As found on the website: http://www.talkingcock.com/html/print.php?sid/864. The title
lyrics parody an ongoing government project to recycle sewage into drinking water, in the
light of uncertainties surrounding Malaysias willingness to supply Singapore with water.
[18] As found on the websites:
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/print.php?sid/864
http://trenchancy.blogspot.com/2002_07_01_trenchancy_archive.html
http://www.xanga.com/home.asp?user/Ephrammi
http://ahjaymz.blogspot.com/2002_06_09_ahjaymz_archive.html
http://www.yishunmethodist.org/home/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID/1172
http://www.2sobriety.blogspot.com/2002_07_21_2sobriety_archive.html
The title lyrics We are Chin Kang Kor are in the Chinese Hokkien dialect, and roughly
translate into English as We are suffering hard.
[19] Found on the website: http://www.youngpap.org.sg/board/viewthread.php?FID/1&TID/
2706 The title lyrics refer to a 2002 rise in fares on the bus and the Mass Rapid Transit system
which sparked off an outcry.
[20] Central Provident fund: the state pension fund board, which institutes compulsory savings
with the government for all employed Singaporeans.
[21] Goods and Services Tax.
[22] In reference to hazy weather and smog in the air blown over from forest res in Indonesia.
[23] From the Hokkien, literally cry to the father and cry to the mother, meaning to complain,
nag or cause a row.
[24] A pen-name from Hokkien, roughly translated as Very free; nothing to do.
[25] http://www.musicmovement.com.sg/tanya.html
[26] Esplanade Theatres on the Bay. This S$600-million (200m) project, which was launched in
October 2002 after 30 years of planning, is a large-scale performing arts centre situated in
Singapores Marina Bay.
[27] Conceived by Singaporean director and carator Ong Keng Sen in 1999, this work was one of
the rst attempts by the Singapore company, TheatreWorks, to bring diverse Asian
performing art forms such as Noh and Chinese opera together on the same stage for export.
Interviews
Informant A (student-participant of Sing Singapore 1988, now in mid-20s).
December 1999.
Ethnomusicology Forum 103
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Informant B (student-participant of Sing Singapore 1988, now in mid-20s).
December 1999.
Informant C (teacher-participant of Sing Singapore 1998). December 1999.
Informant D (Singaporean observer of Sing Singapore campaigns 1988/96).
December 1999.
Informant E (Singaporean observer of Sing Singapore campaigns 1988/2000).
August 2001.
CDs/Cassettes
Form Records (n.d.). Sing-along Singapore (with lyrics).
Ministry of Information and the Arts/National Arts Council (1999). Together.
National Arts Council (1998). Sing Singapore 98 Festival of Songs .
Internet Websites
http://www.singsingapore.org.sg/
http://www.singsingapore.org.sg/about.htm
http://www.sfdonline.org/Link%20Pages/Link%20Folders/Other/CountMoney.html
http://www.mrbrown.com/singaporesongs.html
http://www.2sobriety.blogspot.com/2002_07_21_2sobriety_archive.html
http://trenchancy.blogspot.com/2002_07_01_trenchancy_archive.html
http://www.xanga.com/home.asp?user/Ephrammi
http://ahjaymz.blogspot.com/2002_06_09_ahjaymz_archive.html
http://www.yishunmethodist.org/home/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID/1172
http://www.youngpap.org.sg/board/viewthread.php?FID/1&TID/2706
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid/64
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/article.php?sid/884
http://www.talkingcock.com/html/print.php?sid/864
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