General Lee and I return to perform our works again, this time as part of the Singapore Writers Festival.
Our performance – titled Call It Singaporeana – is a music and spoken-word collaboration focused on telling Singapore stories.
Each piece integrates an original song by General Lee with a poem or literary text written by me, in response to their music, where we bring together music, theatre and literary arts to imagine (or reimagine) Singaporeana – Singapore stories of our country’s history, myths and legends, and to tell (or retell) them through word and song.
General Lee will also be arranging their music in collaboration with The Good Company to incorporate acoustic instruments integral to American folk music such as the fiddle, the banjo and the mandolin.
The Good Company – comprising Kailin Yong, Kelly Olafson and Mark James Garratt – is a collective of musicians well-versed in the acoustic instruments that define the sound of Americana, or American folk music. This includes country, bluegrass and old-time music of the Appalachian Mountains.
A little teaser about what’s new and different from the previous show:
- We’ll be debuting two new works: Murder in Toa Payoh x Confidence Man and No Place for the Blues x The Yellowgreenhouse.
- While General Lee’s songs from their eponymous debut album released in 2016 form the bulk of the collaboration, “Murder in Toa Payoh” is one of their newer songs that hasn’t been released on an album yet.
- “The Yellowgreenhouse” is a monologue written in response to “No Place for the Blues”. It’s a bit of a departure from poetry as I wanted to try something a bit different and I felt the form was better suited to the theme and subject matter of my response to their song.
- Playwright and director Lucas Ho provides dramaturgy for this performance.
- We’ll also have drummer Sami Kizilbash sitting in for the show.
It takes place this Sun, 13 Nov 2022 at the Festival Village (roughly between Victoria Theatre and Anderson Bridge).
There’ll be two sets – one from 5pm to 5.45pm and the other from 8pm to 8.45pm – so come for one or both, depending on your schedule (note: both sets have different works).
See you then!
