大家唱

The Singalong session was an eye-opener for me. The biggest thing which struck me at first was how the facilitator of the singalong session could not sing in tune properly! A little horrified by that considering it was a performance, I soon realized that this may encourage people to sing. I guess if the facilitator could sing really nicely, none of the audience would actually dare to raise their hands to ask for the microphone and sing.

The next thing which struck me is how this group of older generation actually knew all the songs, regardless whether it was in Mandarin or Cantonese or Hokkien, or whether it came from the 1930s or 1960s or 1990s (that is one whole generation of songs!). Also, thinking that Singaporeans are unlikely to offer to sing and the facilitator probably have to force people to sing, I was surprised to see that people raised their hands for the microphones to sing in front of a few hundred people. These people didn’t bother whether they could or could not sing – not like me who will probably be very paisei and not sing in front of everyone knowing that I can’t sing. Well, of course it may be like what someone told me.. “these people have already lived past half a century, still paisei what?”

Audience sang, and as I watched them, I can’t help but feel their memories connected to the various songs. It’s not about the songs and the lyrics presented in front of them, it was about what it brought to their minds. Perhaps their mothers used to listen to the songs on radio in the past, perhaps they used to hear these songs in old Singapore, perhaps these were the songs during their courtship days. Looking around, I can’t help but be fascinated by the thought that there are probably hundreds of long-“packed away” memories surfacing by the bay that night. Even as someone who did not have memories connected to these songs, it was very heart-warming to ‘feel’ the feelings of other people ‘floating by’.

And so, I realized that arts is not all about the ‘high-end’ arts which the masses do not understand. Gone are the days when I was strongly only in favour of artistic works for the minority.. well, I still strongly support the creation of new forms of art with very high artistic values, but I realized that just a simple presentation of old songs can also be such a heartwarming form of art which connected the audience together so well. Even the 7 years old girl took and microphone and sang 我问天!