Sadly, on 23 November, our dear President Yusof Ishak died of heart failure, leaving his wife Puan Noor Aishah a widow. He was only 60. He had been appointed as our first Yang Di Pertuan Negara (Head of State) in 1959, when PAP won its first election.
Ignorant critics had proclaimed in a disgruntled manner that he had just been a token President as he was a Malay. Contrary to the baseless rumour, he was not appointed because of his race but because he was an extremely intelligent man. He was the only Malay to be in the Queen’s Scholarship Class in Raffles Institution (RI) in 1924. Only 13 students had made it to this class. He was also a keen sportsman, and had represented his school in hockey, cricket, swimming, water polo, basketball, boxing and weightlifting. In 1932, he won the Aw Boon Par Cup for boxing and weightlifting, and in 1933, became the national lightweight champion, inspiring other athletes like Tan Howe Liang, who in 1960 became the first Singaporean to win an Olympic Games medal in Rome, with a silver in the weightlifting lightweight category. Ah Tetia had admired both of them and they had inspired him to take up weightlifting as a hobby. He had his weightlifting equipment laid out in the sandy yard behind our house, and two of our kampong lads, Rajah and Salleh, had joined him in the exercise.
Encik Yusof had also come from a respected and distinguished Perak family when Singapore was still part of British Malaya. He was titled Tun Haji Yusof bin Ishak and was an eminent journalist and politician. It was he who went the extra mile to help Malays and Chinese develop trust in each other during the horrific 1964 Malay-Chinese riots. This had not been an easy task. Our villagers knew the situation first-hand. Despite the bad feeling between the two races, our villagers had focussed on the fact that we had lived as one before, and struggled not to allow the race issue to poison our friendships and neighbourliness.
“Kita mesti pergi, hormati Encik Ishak. We must go and show our respects to Encik Ishak,” Karim said.
The state funeral was held on 26 November. As usual, Karim organised the lorry to take us to Orchard Road, outside the Istana. But unlike our trip to the Padang for our first National Day Parade, he had to engage three lorries instead of one this time. Fatima took the day off as well to come with us. She wore her sarong kebaya. The Malay sarong kebaya differed from the Peranakan one in that their kebaya and sarong were in matching batik. As a child, Fatima had usually worn the loose baju kurong on special occasions. At other times, she was dressed like other kampong kids. Now her outfit showed off her shapely feminine figure. And it occurred to me that we had both become young adults. We had both passed the age of 17, when in the old days, we had been fearful of being forced to marry. Now we were 19. Times had changed. We were no longer obliged to marry. If Parvathi had lived, she wouldn’t have had to kill herself.
“You look like Saloma,” I whispered because of the solemn occasion. Saloma was P. Ramlee’s beautiful wife, who was also a screen actress. “I bet all the boys will be after you soon.”
She smiled and blushed, pulling her selendang coyly across her face.
I knew then that she had met someone. When was she going to tell me?
It was the first time that we were attending a State Funeral. We did not expect the scale of it. We were astonished to see every street filled with people, three or four deep, ordinary folks turning up to pay their respects. There were thousands snaking down the pavements of the town, more even than the crowds that had attended our National Day parades. And surprisingly for me, not just Malays but Chinese, Indians, Eurasians and even Europeans. Men, women and children.
Luckily it did not rain.
In the beginning, there was a bit of chaos when people tried to surge towards the Istana gates to get a vantage point. The police had to step in to organise the crowd. We waited patiently until the gun carriage emerged from the Istana, the president’s official residence. President Ishak’s casket was draped with the national flag. People wept openly. In a TV newscast later, we saw that Puan Noor was in a black baju kurong and lacy black selendang. Unlike the usual Muslim practice of not permitting women to go to a burial, there were other Malay female relatives, friends and officials who were also present. Dignitaries also attended the burial ceremony at Kranji State Cemetery. For the final rites, men in Malay garb and songkoks took over from the military pall bearers. They lifted the president’s body, wrapped in its burial shroud, out of the casket for it to be interred in the tomb in keeping with Muslim tradition. The newsreel ended with the 21-gun salute in his honour.
Don’t Play That Song
(1971)
AT the end of the previous year, Singapore’s most successful band among local singers and musicians, The Quests, announced that they were disbanding. Since its formation, there had been a reshuffling and changing of members in the group, as some dropped out and others went overseas for study. Their songs had been playing in dance halls like Badminton Hall, nightclubs, and on TV and radio regularly. In 1964, their song, ‘Shanty’, was the first by a local band to rise to the top of the Singapore Hit Parade. It was a guitar instrumental in the style of the famous British group, The Shadows, with the distinct twang of the electric guitar. The tune was composed by one of the four band members, Henry Chua, who was their bass player. He modestly said that he had no professional musical training. We were astounded when it displaced the Beatles’ song ‘I Should Have Known Better’ from the top spot. Imagine that! How many musical groups could claim to have displaced the Beatles? Especially one which was a local band? ‘Shanty’ stayed on the charts for almost 12 weeks, a phenomenal achievement for a local group. It became as well known as ‘Apache’, the world-famous tune strummed by The Shadows.
All the boys in our village made Karim, our resident musician, laugh when they picked up make-believe guitars and pretended to twang them with gusto. The vibrant local pop scene had inspired and nurtured homegrown singers and musicians. But the disbanding of The Quests told us that this magical era was ending.
Tiong Bahru neighbours Chong Chow Pin (better known as Jap), Raymond Leong, Henry Chua and Lim Wee Guan had formed The Quests in 1961. They were all teenage schoolboys then. Chong and Leong were from Queenstown Technical Secondary School, and they picked their group’s name from the school magazine. My elder brothers were great fans because the group’s first paid performance was at St Andrew’s School, where they had played on borrowed instruments. They were paid a princely sum of $20! St Andrew’s School was on Meyappa Chettiar Road, just next to Kampong Potong Pasir, where my brothers were schooling, and it was where Eldest Brother eventually became a teacher. Though we were Catholics, my brothers went to that school because of the generous bursaries for kampong kids.
“Wah! That Leong played the lead guitar like Hank Marvin,” Second Elder Brother enthused, citing the famed guitarist of The Shadows, who eventually backed Cliff Richard.
The Quests also backed local singers like Sakura Teng and Rita Chao, and also a young man called Wilson David, the Elvis Presley of Singapore, a dark handsome young man whose hair was styled like Elvis and with a voice just as velvety, making girls swoon. It was Wilson David who introduced The Quests to EMI Records, and thus helped them on the road to fame.
British-Jamaican Keith Locke joined the band as lead vocalist in 1965, but returned to England in 1967. Though his stint with The Quests was brief, with his soulful singing, The Quests produced 10 songs; their cover versions of 2 songs became instant hits. The first was ‘Be My Girl’ and the second, ‘Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)’, made the group a household name. Keith’s presence on stage and the way he moved earned him the moniker, Mr Dynamite. ‘Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)’ was written by a Turkish-American businessman, songwriter and philanthropist Ahmet Ertegün and Betty Nelson, wife of soul singer, Ben E. King, who first recorded it in 1962 in the US. Later, the song was performed by other artistes, like Aretha Franklin. But Keith Locke gave the song a distinctive Jamaican beat and lilt, which transformed it entirely. His rendition was deliciously melodious and it captured the hearts of many
. Everywhere in Singapore, at tea dances and nightclubs, and on every radio programme, you could hear the song being sung.
Karim, who was himself a professional guitarist, admired The Quests, and he loved playing the song. These days, when he went out, Karim had to tie his hair back in a pony-tail that curled back so he could pin it short, making it appear as if he had short hair. Otherwise, he would be served last at all government offices, and also would not be allowed to perform at the nightclub. The campaign against men with long hair was still prevalent.
“Ah Phine,” Karim said. “You know the song? Want to help me teach the kids?”
I was so honoured he asked. My mother used to sing for him when he played dondang sayang type of songs. But Mak did not sing any English songs as she did not speak English, though she liked listening to Jim Reeves, Pat Boone, Cliff Richard and Andy Williams, who, she said, sang word-by-word, by which she meant their enunciation was clear, as opposed to screechy songs with indistinct words. I loved to sing; in the beginning, it was whenever I was terrified of the dark, when walking in the dark, or going to the outhouse at night. Then later, it was because I loved the rhythm of words, relishing the way the words rolled off my tongue, the sound vibrating in my throat. I accompanied Karim by singing the lyrics.
Mak would strap Robert to a rattan chair, together with a pillow, so that he wouldn’t fall off when we had our singing sessions outdoors and he could listen. Even though Robert was nearly 13, he still looked like a little child and could not manage to sit without support. Sadly, our family never did have the resources to seek medical help for him. Mak had taken him to Badminton Hall once when there had been a spiritual healing session. But despite all the frenzied waving of the pastor’s hands and calling upon the Holy Spirit, Robert remained unable to sit, walk, talk or fend for himself. Yet, he loved music. He would thump his fists and feet in absolute delight and gurgle merrily at the repetitive refrain in the song, which went, “Whoa, baby you lied, you lied, you lied, lied, lied… yeah, yeah, yeah”.
The kampong kids also adored the song, and they attempted to sing along. But as their English enunciation had not been perfected, they ended up singing:
“Whoa, baby you lite, you lite, you lite, lite, lite… yeah, yeah, yeah.”
They were not the only ones. Most local folks sang it like them: “You lite, you lite, you lite, lite, lite…” Somehow our people found the “d” consonant at the end of a word difficult to pronounce, so bad sounds like bat, Dad sounds like dat, bed sounds like bet, mud sounds like mut and food sounds like foot!
Chinese New Year of the Metal Pig was ushered in on 27 January in subdued tones. The firecracker ban was lifted temporarily, but firing crackers was allowed only in designated areas. The majority of the Chinese felt the difference between previous celebrations and this year’s. The firing of the firecrackers was now at a distance, not at our doorsteps. We were saddened. I did not realise how the sound of my imagined horses’ hooves thumping the ground had been such a significant part of my Chinese New Year celebrations. Without that sound, it didn’t feel like Chinese New Year. Though we still had the tong tong chir, their prancing without the blast of the firecrackers felt wrong.
But the die had been cast. We would never return to the old ways anymore.
Some people felt that we were being straightjacketed.
“Don’t play with firecrackers. Don’t have more than two children. Don’t eat rice, eat wheat…” Ah Gu grumbled. “So many don’t, don’t, don’t!”
“You forgot. Don’t wear your hair long…” Karim said dismally. “Oh, and don’t play yellow culture music…”
Karim was referring to the banning of the song ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ in 1963. Sung by the folk group—Peter, Paul and Mary—the lyrics were based on a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton, a 19-year-old Cornell University student. I remember the song well. I was in primary six then and couldn’t understand how a children’s song could be banned. My imagination ran riot. I imagined the authorities sending out their officials with sniffer-dogs to sniff out the vinyl records in the way that pigs were sent out to sniff out truffles. Would they gather all the vinyls in one room, where the officials would then smash them to smithereens? What would happen if they caught any child singing the song? After all, we absolutely loved the song. Each stanza of the song was set in a quatrain with an aabb rhyme scheme, followed by a repetitive chorus that made it easy to sing. In school, we sang it, waving our arms, before assembly, or whilst walking along corridors and at recess. The beat was jolly and the tune was lively. Its story was about a dragon who was befriended by a little boy, though it had a slightly sad ending when the boy grew up and left Puff behind.
Robert displayed how much he liked the song when I sang it to him, by thumping his fist and leg rhythmically on the bed. The first verse and chorus went like this:
“Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee,
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff,
And brought him strings and sealing wax and other fancy stuff oh
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee,
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.”
But some overzealous citizen in New York said the words of the song described a drug trip. People can always put meanings to things that may not have been there or intended. Peter, Paul and Mary denied the allusion. Our authorities were swift to react. Anything that smacked of drug-taking, flower power or hippies was forbidden.
“Don’t play that song!” they commanded.
Suddenly, the song was taken off the air and no one was allowed to sing it. We were upset. We loved the tune. Robert loved the tune. And not once did we see any link or reference to marijuana.
“Don’t this, don’t that,” Abu, Fatima’s elder brother, said, disgruntled. “I’m so fed up with so many rules here. Our family is planning to go to Malaysia to live.”
“I could write a song to that beat, Don’t, don’t, don’t,” Karim said.
I was devastated. Fatima was still my best friend. Was I going to lose her too?
“Ah Phine,” Fatima said, “I meant to tell you…”
“Ya, ya, ya,” I said in a begrudging tone. “About your boyfriend, you mean? I was wondering when you were going to share that with me…”
“Don’t be like that lah, Ah Phine,” Fatima said, pulling me aside so we could speak privately. “I’ve been on the graveyard shift, remember, so I haven’t had the chance. By the time I got home from work, you had gone to the hospital. By the time you got home, I left for work…”
“So who is he? Where did you meet?” I asked.
“Sulaiman is Abu’s friend from KL,” she said, and from the blush on her cheeks, I could see she was in love. “He is helping us to relocate to KL.”
“You are all moving?”
“That’s what I was going to tell you,” Fatima said. “My father feels that since we are Malays, we would be happier in Malaysia, where there are more of us…”
“But the government here is doing so much to help the Malays,” I said, “I read in the paper recently that the Action Group of the Malay Cultural Organisation (MCO) is setting up a small employment bureau specifically for Malays, to help you all get jobs. You are getting a waiver of school fees and other financial assistance…”
“But did you hear that when we move from the kampong, we Malays are not going to be able to all live together as we are living now?” Abu interrupted us.
“What do you mean?” I asked, somewhat perplexed.
“It’s already happening, Ah Phine,” Abu said. “When the villagers at Kallang were moved to HDB flats, they couldn’t choose to live in the same block. Neighbours wanted to live with neighbours. But now the government is fixing a percentage quota…”
“I don’t understand,” I s
aid.
“Each block of flats can only have the percentage of each race according to its national percentage. This is the brainchild of LKY,” Abu said. “If there are 75 percent Chinese in the whole population and only 15 percent Malays, then each block can only have 15 percent Malays lah! We will be overwhelmed by the Chinese…”
“Mr Lee’s idea is to prevent racial ghettoes…” Uncle Krishna, forever the government’s champion, explained. “It’s important to get the different races to live with each other in harmony in the community, so that we don’t develop a them-and-us attitude. Then we won’t get the 1964 situation again that had caused the racial riots…”
“Yes, sounds good, but we are used to living as we are living now, amongst our own people what…” Abu said.
“I didn’t know we won’t all be moving together when we have to go into HDBs,” I said stupidly, a bit shocked. “I thought our whole kampong will move into the same estate together so we will have the same neighbours…”
“Aiyyah, Ah Phine, you tidor or what? Are you asleep or what?” Abu said.
Indeed, I was a frog under a coconut shell. Sheltered. Unused to the great big world. Probably not the brightest spark either. When I told my mother afterwards about what Abu said, she was crestfallen.
Goodbye My Kampong Page 11