Tag - poetry

In an extension of our previous collaboration, I will be performing together with my good friends General Lee in General Lee/Speaking: Singaporeana on Thu, 24 March 2022 from 7pm to 8.30pm at the Esplanade’s Concourse.

This is a music and spoken word performance focused on telling Singapore stories and will feature General Lee’s original songs from their their eponymous debut album released in 2016, as well as poems written by me in response to their music.

This interdisciplinary collaboration brings together music 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 rearranging their music in collaboration with The Good Company to incorporate acoustic instruments integral to American folk music such as fiddle, banjo, mandolin and dobro, in what is likely to be the first performance of its kind in Singapore.

The Good Company – comprising Kailin Yong, Greg Tucker-Kellogg, 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.

More information can be found on the Esplanade’s website here.

See you then!

I’m proud to announce my collaboration together with my good friends from General Lee titled “Revisiting the Ballad of Bukit Brown”.

This is an interdisciplinary piece combining literary arts and music, in which I wrote “Revisiting”, a twin-cinema poem, in response to “The Ballad of Bukit Brown” by General Lee, from their eponymous debut album released in 2016.

We’ve also recorded a music video, which you can stream on Facebook and YouTube (videos embedded below for easy streaming).

From the blurb:

In this cross-disciplinary collaboration, both band and poet tell their stories in a new way and for a new age, brought about by the societal shifts and cultural changes of 2020.

Exploring the tension between conservation and progress in Singapore through the lens of the defunct Bukit Brown cemetery, the video contains images and footage of old and contemporary Singapore, sourced from both private collections as well as Creative Commons.

This includes scenes of Bukit Brown, pictures of historical figures, as well as modern-day Singapore.

This visual juxtaposition illustrates the various facets of the conversation on conservation and progress, and mirror the duality of the twin-cinema format used in the poem.