We basked in the fame and glory of the regional musical
achievements that Stephanie Sun and JJ Lin have brought to our little red dot, unaware
of the success that was achieved at the expense of the anguish and despair of a
generation of Chinese-educated.
Xinyao’s roots was
unravelled by Eva Tang’s documentary “The Songs We Sang” and admittedly, I will
never look at xinyao--a term used to
define songs produced by Singapore youths, the same way ever again.
Paradoxically, xinyao
was founded upon the closure of Nantah--the first and last Chinese university in
Singapore that was initiated, established and funded entirely by our local
Chinese community. People from all walks of lives from the Chinese community contributed
to cause of Nantah.
The closure of Nantah symbolized an extermination of the Chinese
medium education and the beginning of the inevitable decline of the Chinese
language, the Chinese culture and its identity. Yet, it was precisely the shrinking
of space for the Chinese-ed that created an unforeseeable growth of Mandarin singing
groups that would later grow to make a name for our little red dot in the
regional music business.
Led by Nantah graduates, the frustration and anguish of being
discriminated and the erosion of cultural identity in your own country were
channelled into poetry singing and subsequently into a more colloquial form of campus
singing groups among the Chinese-ed junior college students. It was the same
collective and spontaneous effort from the ground to build Nantah that ignited
the xinyao movement among the
Chinese-ed community.
Campus xinyao
flourished and grew out of campus when the first record company was set up, breathing
new life into xinyao, bringing it to
another level and setting the stage to take flight offshore with our
locally-nurtured talents. The perseverance, the passion and the patriotism of the
xinyao members and predecessors were rewarded
with the inroads that our home-grown singers made in the music biz in the Greater
Chinese community.
Amateurish but xinyao’s
passion and sincerity touched those who heard them. A whole generation of
Chinese-ed that was written off by history, scarred by the brutal language
policy and yet transformed the negative events in their lives into positive
notes and voices through the medium of xinyao.
And those who heard them came forward with their helping hands. People from the
media industry, government officials and audience out of their own accord played
a part in their own capacity to promote xinyao
along the way. Xinyao would never
have made it without the support of the community.
Singapore’s official history has been well-documented from a
top-down perspective. But xinyao
refracted a part of our history of that generation, both the xinyao members and its supporters
through grounds-up effort created the existence of xinyao. Xinyao came from
the people and came from the hearts. It is the voices, the spirit of that
generation that I believe are what Eva Tang is trying to capture in this
documentary.
Paradoxically again, the generation of Chinese-ed deemed inferior
to their English-educated compatriots, were also the ones who gained
recognition overseas and became “talents” beyond our shores. The Chinese
language which was denounced by the then government was the medium which our newer
generation of English-ed xinyao singers
such as Kit
Chan, Stephanie Sun and Tanya Chua have to borrow to break into
the regional music scene. Liang Wern Fook’s “Sparrow with a twig” was banned from
broadcasting for 23 years because of the dialects present in the song and yet, songs
with other foreign languages are allowed to be aired freely. Such belittling of
our own culture and people is indeed a paradox itself and uniquely Singapore.
After spending stacks of cash, F1 may have put our little
red dot on the world map and we have added another Olympic medal in table
tennis into our collection of vanity. But nothing beats a group of civilians
who are entirely self-driven by pride, genuineness to have successfully placed our
little red dot on the regional map. Because this is genuinely and uniquely Made
In Singapore. It has to come from the heart.
And neither do I need to wait till National Day for the designated
official patriotic song to flaunt my patriotism. I have already heard it in xinyao. From our own people, from our
own voices and from our own hearts. And it is this that moves me. Even without
the overseas recognition of xinyao, this
is where our pride should be.
I was in time for the last screening of the documentary. And
fortunately, I was in time for xinyao
too.
