CHILDHOOD MELODIES OF YESTERYEARS / Ding Yi Music Company / Review

 

CHILDHOOD MELODIES 

OF YESTERYEARS 

Ding Yi Music Company 

Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre 

Saturday (1 June 2024)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 June 2024 with the title "Seriously playful concert of children's songs by Ding Yi".

One of the most important musical projects of Ding Yi Music Company is its Disappearing... Series, which documents Singaporean cultural heritage at risk of becoming extinct. Previous concerts have celebrated dragon kilns, giant joss sticks and Teochew embroidery. Its latest offering, conducted by Quek Ling Kiong, was a salute to Asian children’s songs over the ages. 

Its scenario was a 1970s Chinese school classroom, with members of Ding Yi dressed up like primary school students being lectured by their “form teacher” Quek. On the subject of old traditional songs, past ethno-musical research carried out by “headmistress” Tan Beng Luan had unearthed over 300 such examples. Not limited to the Chinese language, these also included Malay and Indian Tamil songs, a selection of which was performed in this 85-minute-long concert. 

Simple archival recordings were aired, but contemporary arrangements and new settings by composers Zechariah Goh Toh Chai and Liong Kit Yeng lent these ditties a relevence for younger people in the audience. Some of them may have forgotten or neglected their family’s spoken dialects and other traditions. 

The Hokkien song Ban Chun Hong (Wang Chun Feng or Pining for the Spring Breeze) was heard in an elegant transcription by Goh. A variation of its melody by Quek called Longing For Home played by Ng Hsien Han (dizi) and Yvonne Tay (guzheng) also evoked the same nostalgia. These tunes were based on an actual composition by Taiwanese composer Teng Yu-hsien. 

Most of the songs, however, were passed on by oral tradition. Mothers singing their children to sleep are the stuff of fondest memories. Hush-O-Hush (sung in Teochew), Sleep Well (Cantonese) and Pat-The-Bottom (Hokkien), sung by Chan Cheow Wee, Pang Hyin June and Isabel Kang respectively, had lovely arrangements by Liong. 

One was hard-pressed to suppress the mirth upon hearing that last song, also called Pai Pi Gu. In Hokkien, the words “pak-kah-chng”, if taken in the wrong context, could sound terribly vulgar, equivalent to “slap that arse”! As this was a family-oriented concert, it sounded endearing and charming instead. 

A nod to South Asian tradition came in three Tamil songs, Nila Nila Odiva (O Round Moon, Come To Me), Thosai Amma Thosai (Mother’s Thosai) and Vattamana Thattu (Round, Round, Plate), which saw Raghavendran Rajasekaran perform the bansuri (Indian flute), vocals and lead the audience in a spot of konnakol (rhythmic vocal percussion). 

The delightful pairing of Siti Shahira binti Abdul Halim and Nurul Amirah binti Amiruddin, singing in Malay, also lit up the stage in Bintang Kechil Di Langit Yang Biru (Little Star in the Blue Sky) and the playful Air Pasang Pagi (The Tide Rose In The Morning). 

As a final apotheosis, a kind of rap combining Chinese dialects, Malay, Tamil and English words, was memorised by the audience and sung with the help of Chordinate Singers (Acid Pang, chorusmaster) and orchestral ensemble at full tilt. The exhortation of this programme was to learn these “lost” songs, and then pass it on. Was it a guilty pleasure for one to have enjoyed a serious concert so much?