a brief introduction to SG lit + muzik

in the dark year of 2020, a dear friend's wife wanted to learn more about singapore. she asked me for a list of local books, and i shared with her, and another person, an overly comprehensive list of fiction (disclaimer: i worked on a few titles).

recently, i realised i haven't thought up the same for singapura muzik, so here's a preliminary list of my personal faves (limited to one album per artist), and the book list too, based on my faltering memory of some years of tuning in, on and off, to the sonic and textual waves emanating from this black isle. for anyone out there:

MUZIK

Anita Sarawak - Live at the Mandarin Singapore (1975)

ASPIDISTRAFLY - A Little Fable (2011)

Astreal - Ouijablush (1997)

Fauxe - Half of my Love (2016)

Force Vomit - Give It Up for the Trustfund Rockers (2002)

Gulayu Arkestra - Hippocampuskuda (2011)

humpback oak - Ghostfather (1997)

陳潔儀 Kit Chan - 心痛 (Heartache; 1994)

Leslie Low - Triangular (2014)

許美静 (Mavis Hee) - 遺憾 (Regret; 1995)

MEAN - In Flight (2013)

Muon - The Death of Cinema (2003)

sonicbrat - stranger to my room (2013)

The Observatory - Catacombs (2012)

X’ Ho (Chris Ho) + ARCNTEMPL - Lucifugous (2013)

Xhin (Official) - The Images Within (2022)

Zircon Lounge - Regal Vigor (1983)

LIT

Adrian Tan - The Teenage Textbook (1988)

Alfian Sa’at - A History of Amnesia (2001)

Alfian Sa’at - One Fierce Hour (1998)

Amanda Lee Koe - Delayed Rays of a Star (2019)

Andrew Koh - Glass Cathedral (1995)

Arthur Yap - The Collected Poems of Arthur Yap (2013)

Balli Kaur Jaswal - Inheritance (2013)

Boey Kim Cheng - After the Fire (2006)

Boey Kim Cheng - Between Stations (2009)

Boey Kim Cheng - Clear Brightness (2012)

Chong Tze Chien - Four Plays (2011)

Claire Tham - Fascist Rock: Stories of Rebellion (1990)

Cyril Wong - Tilting Our Plates to Catch the Light (2007)

Damien Sin - Classic Singapore Horror Stories series (1992—2003)

Dave Chua - Gone Case (2002)

Eleanor Wong - Invitation to Treat: The Eleanor Wong Trilogy (2005)

Faith Ng - Plays: Volume 1 (2016; ed. Lucas Ho)

Goh Poh Seng - If We Dream Too Long (1972)

Goh Poh Seng - The Immolation (1977)

Gopal Barantham - The City of Forgetting: The Collected Stories of Gopal Baratham (2001; ed. Ban Kah Choon)

Gregory Nalpon - The Wayang at Eight Milestone (2013)

Haresh Sharma - Off Centre (1993, 2006)

Haresh Sharma - Trilogy (2010)

Isa Kamari - Rawa (2013; trans. R. Krishnan)

Jean Tay - Boom (2008, 2009)

Jeremy Tiang - State of Emergency (2017)

Joel Tan - Plays: Volume 1 (2015)

Johann S. Lee - Peculiar Chris (1992)

Julian Davison - One for the Road: An English Boyhood in Singapore & Malaya (2007)

Kuo Pao Kun - Complete Works: Plays in English (2012; ed. C. J. Wan-Ling Wee)

Ming Cher - Spider Boys (1995, 2012)

Mohamed Latiff Mohamed - Confrontation (1997, 2013; trans. Shafiq Selamat)

Morgan Chua - Tiananmen (1989)

Philip Jeyaretnam - Abraham’s Promise (1995)

Pooja Nansi - Love is an Empty Barstool (2014)

Rex Shelley - The Shrimp People (1991)

Russell Lee - True Singapore Ghost Stories series (1989—ongoing)

Sonny Liew - The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye (2015)

Sonny Liew - Warm Nights, Deathless Days: The Life of Georgette Chen (2014)

Tan Hwee Hwee - Mammon Inc. (2001)

Tan Kok Seng - Son of Singapore (1972)

Tan Tarn How - Fear of Writing (2011, 2012)

Tania de Rozario - And the Walls Come Crumbling Down (2016)

Teng Qian Xi - They hear salt crystallising (2010)

Wong May - A Bad Girl’s Book of Animals (1969)

Xi Ni Er - The Earnest Mask (2004, 2012; trans. Howard Goldblatt & Sylvia Li-Chun Lin)

Yeng Pway Ngon - Art Studio (2011, 2014; trans. Goh Beng Choo & Loh Guan Liang)

“a fire of tenderness”

Gay Lib activist Marsha P. Johnson on the cover of ANOHNI’s new album 'My Back Was a Bridge For You to Cross'. FOTO: Alvin Baltrop 2022 Estate of Alvin Baltrop/ARS, NY

i've been house/catsitting for a dear friend, waking up early every day at his remote, nature-ensconced place that has little divide between outside and in. it's restorative, of course, and daily, before the backbreaking, depressing hustle of late capitalism begins, i take the time to listen to the noisy-AF birds and literally touch nature and sunshine. over coffee, i make it a point to confront the news (hate-read ST; deep-read the Guardian), and very soon, as i learn of new ways the climate is collapsing, the chirping begins to sound like screaming, the sun starts to feel too hot, the leaves strangely wilting.

though no one seems to want to really address it, the recent turn in contemporary art towards the ecological also includes a lot of greenwashing (not naming names, but i'm sure you know who all these people are lah), in the same way the most polluting oil & gas conglomerates financially support a lot of the arts. it seems to me like many artists feel the pressure to become environmental, in most cases all of a sudden, in order to be relevant, woke, or continue to receive funding, even if it's all just lip service and they're destroying the planet making their wasteful art.

which is why it was so refreshing to immerse myself in ANOHNI's new album, My Back Was a Bridge for You to Cross. she's been engaging with the political-as-personal, anti-patriarchal, the transversal and existential from the start (Blacklips Performance Cult, 1992), which are what the environmental crisis is really revealing itself to be. plenty has been written about her and her instantly seminal album, so i'll keep my sharing and admiration brief and hopefully fresh:

Anohni as Fiona Blue during her Blacklips Performance Cult days. FOTO: Megan Green

- as others have pointed out, this is her first guitar-based album, after her new-operatic, piano-focused works of the past. i think, like her tribute to her mentor Lou Reed, "Sliver of Ice", that this has allowed her to embrace an even more punk rock yet mellow aesthetic that doesn't sacrifice on the live, organic soul—it's an album modelled after Marvin Gaye's What's Going On (1971) after all.

- i also admire how, after her last full-length, the electronic, in-your-face HOPELESSNESS (2016), My Back... adopts a less confrontational, more graceful approach. it seduces instead of strikes. i don't think there's any one, even the conspiracy theorists amongst us, who doesn't truly know the undeniable facts of climate collapse—does provoking them into action really help? can empathy, kindness, and humanistic personalisation—“a fire of tenderness”—be the more radical solution?

- Laura Kim Sommer and Christian A Klöckner's recent study of COP21’s eco-art festival "discovered only three of 37 artworks made a positive behavioural impact...All three, they found, belong to the 'awesome solutions' subset; they were sublimely beautiful, were exhibited outside, clearly showed the effects of human behaviour, and were regarded as something new." of course, art has never meant to have such a direct, scientific relationship with human behaviour and societal change. yet, in these very soon-to-be end days, do we honestly and practically have the time, resources, and capacity for art's so-mythologised long-term and mysterious impacts?

- while "sublimely beautiful" in its own and even classical ways, My Back... to me is essential because it recasts climate collapse in personal, romantic, haptic, and truly biophilic ways. way, way beyond virtue signalling, trends, and metaphors, she shows, and allows us to feel, that if we committedly open ourselves up, that our dying planet, and our culpability and potential, is also an abusive relationship falling apart; a loss of our only home, the love of our lives; “rotten teeth”; a cause of our oppressed sexualities and histories; our very sustenance and mother, who is leaving us quickly because we insist on killing it, and ourselves.

- i'm not sure if this will eventually have a behavioural or philosophical impact, but wow, do i stand in awe of ANOHNI's useful gorgeousness. she deserves all the flowers in the world (but don't pluck them, please). it's rare moments like this that i can still believe in the revolutionary potentials of art. it's not about commissions, awards, ego; it's about our atmosphere, our ecosystem, our very existence.

- rebecca solnit, another leading light, writes in support of why "we can't afford to be climate doomers": "people assume you can’t be hopeful and heartbroken at the same time, and of course you can... Hope is not happiness or confidence or inner peace; it’s a commitment to search for possibilities."

𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑡ℎ 𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑙𝑜𝑣𝑒

𝑊𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑜𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ 𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑛𝑖𝑡𝑦

𝑊𝑒'𝑟𝑒 𝑛𝑜𝑡 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑑

𝑁𝑜 𝑜𝑛𝑒'𝑠 𝑔𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑜𝑓 ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑑

𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑢𝑟 𝑤𝑜𝑟𝑙𝑑

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑑

𝑇ℎ𝑎𝑡'𝑠 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑖𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑑

𝐼𝑡'𝑠 𝑠𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑑

𝑆𝑜 𝑠𝑎𝑑

𝑊𝑒'𝑟𝑒 𝑗𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝑔𝑜𝑛𝑛𝑎 𝑏𝑒 𝑎𝑙𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑎 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑐𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑢𝑠

— ANOHNI, "It Must Change", 2023

mandinka

oh, to be outspoken about injustice, loud in one's beliefs; to be soft and vulnerable outwardly, too; to always be questing, searching for all spiritualities; to keep growing artistically, that blast of a voice (even louder as a whisper, in silence), pen, and guitar is always there.

i love so much of sinéad o'connor's discography, and activism, but just to highlight her most famous: the genius of her cover of prince/the family's "Nothing Compares 2 U" is that she directed this song towards her physically, mentally and emotionally abusive mother, and always thought of her when she performed it ("all the flowers that you planted, mama").

i aspire towards this grace under pressure, this forgiveness, generosity in the wake of hapless abuse. how to understand our parents? how to treat them, and ourselves, with kindness and faith? that wail of pure emotion, sinéad.

nothing, no one compares 2 u, sinéad/magda/shuhada, thank u xx

FOTO: Anton Corbijn

𝐼 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑛𝑜 𝑠ℎ𝑎𝑚𝑒, 𝐼 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙 𝑛𝑜 𝑝𝑎𝑖𝑛

…𝑆𝑜𝑜𝑛 𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛 𝑔𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑚𝑦 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡

— Sinéad O'Connor, "Mandinka", 1987