Not Born in Singapore
Page 2
References
“A-List,” National Arts Council, http://a-list.sg/one-small-voice-santha -bhaskar/
“About Us,” Bhaskar’s Arts Academy, accessed March 2015, http://www.bhaskarsartsacademy.com/
Corrie Tan, “The Life! Straits Times Interview With Santha Bhaskar; Dance Of Love,”
The Straits Times, July 16, 2012.
Interview with Santha Bhaskar in March 2015.
K. P. Bhaskar
India, 1925–2013
Santha Bhaskar
India, b.1939
Della Butcher
A Home for Singapore Art
Englishwoman Della Butcher opened Singapore’s first art gallery to showcase local artists in 1970. By 1992, she had held more than 300 exhibitions of their work all over the world.
Since the 1950s, Singaporean “Nanyang style” artists like Liu Kang and Chen Wen Hsi had been known for integrating Western and Chinese painting traditions to depict Southeast Asian subject matters. But they had no chance to show their art to the world until Della Butcher opened the first gallery in Singapore for local artists in 1970.
After graduating in 1939 from the London College of Art, Butcher worked as a trainee designer at Worth, a fashion house in London. But she quit after her designs were passed off as the chief designer’s work. She recalled, “I didn’t like that and said so very loudly in front of everybody, and then I walked out!”
Butcher then worked at different jobs—as a telephone operator, air stewardess, art writer, representative at a wine company, restaurant owner and even race car driver.
In 1964, she jumped at an opportunity to travel to Kota Kinabalu in Sabah. That was when she first visited Singapore. The bustle of the port in Singapore and the exotic tropical jungles of Kota Kinabalu left an indelible impression. This was “Asia as its best,” she thought and vowed to return.
In Kota Kinabalu, Butcher fell in love with the tribal art of the Iban and Kenyah people but saw that they had no opportunity to exhibit their work. In Singapore, artists would display their art along Queen Elizabeth Walk (where the promenade at the Esplanade stands today) on Sundays. With Singapore’s unmistakable strategic location as an entrepot in Southeast Asia, she reasoned that it would be the best place to start a gallery. Two and a half years later, she returned to Singapore. She became friends with Constance Meyer, a collector of antiques and Balinese paintings, who shared Butcher’s interest in Southeast Asian art. In 1970, after 18 months of planning and with less than $1,000, they opened Meyer Gallery in a shophouse next to Robinson’s Department Store at Raffles Place. The Meyer Gallery was later renamed The Gallery of Fine Art.
Singapore artists could now concentrate on painting and leave the business of selling to the gallery. This art dealer-artist relationship was founded on trust, said Jimmy Quek, a Singaporean painter who held his first solo exhibition there. She treated everyone well and never thought poorly of anyone, said Quek. “The moment I met her, she felt like my mother. She’s warm and very kind,” he added.
Butcher continued to support Singaporean artists even after her business suffered several setbacks. A fire gutted the gallery in 1972. Salvaging what she could, Butcher moved the gallery to Orchard Towers. In the 1980s, art from China flooded the market and many gallery owners cashed in on the growing demand for such art. But Butcher stuck to her guns. To supplement her income, she furnished and leased flats on the side.
By 1992, Butcher had mounted more than 300 exhibitions in the US, UK, Bahrain, Hong Kong and Australia involving 100 artists from Singapore. She took an entrepreneurial approach to the exhibitions—mounting them in places that seemed unlikely but had a captive audience or consistent foot traffic. For instance, several exhibitions were held in makeshift stalls along sidewalks, in busy hotel lobbies or on the decks of luxury liners. Butcher was a social creature—not only interested in art, but also in people, said author Harold Stephens, who wrote a series of biographical sketches of expatriates in Asia. Butcher often held brunches at her home on Sundays, hosting people from all walks of life. Stephens, in a piece on Butcher, recalled that she had a “knack for collecting people that’s uncanny at times.”
Butcher died in 1993. Then, pioneer artist Ong Kim Seng recalled in an interview with The Straits Times an exhibition at Butcher’s where he did not sell any painting. The next day, he received a call from Butcher saying that he had indeed sold a painting—she was the buyer. It was classic Butcher. As she once said, “I can help make an artist, but I cannot help make his skill and talent. That’s a gift. What I can do is encourage him, work with him and give him moral support.”
References
Anne Millington, “Behind the Gallery of Fine Art: Woman with a Pledge Fulfilled,”
The Straits Times, January 24, 1982.
“Della Butcher,” Tribute.sg, accessed August 2015,
https://www.tribute.sg/artist-profile-della-butcher
Goh Beng Choo, “Butcher’s Bounty,” The Straits Times, May 30, 1991.
Harold Stephens, At home in Asia: Expatriates in Southeast Asia and Their Stories
(USA: Wolfden, 1995).
T. Sasitharan, “Mother of Singapore artists,” The Straits Times, January 13, 1993.
“Two wives make a dream come true and set up art gallery for local artists,” The Straits Times, March 19, 1970.
Interview with Jimmy Quek in January 2015
Della Butcher
United Kingdom, 1922–1993
Choo Hoey
“Maestro Among the Cognoscenti”
In 1978, Indonesia-born musician Choo Hoey returned to Singapore from a sparkling performing career abroad to form the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO). By the time he stepped down in 1996, the SSO had performed over 730 different compositions, a feat even established orchestras find hard to accomplish.
Growing up in Palembang on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Choo Hoey listened to his father’s classical music records and was drawn to the violin. His father noticed this and started teaching him to play the violin through an instruction book. In 1947, he came to Singapore, as his parents were worried for his safety. There were clashes between Indonesians and Dutch forces as part of Indonesia’s fight for independence. Here, Choo studied at The Chinese High School and took his first violin lessons from Goh Soon Tioe, whom Choo described as “the only and best Singaporean teacher” then. After only two years of study, he passed his Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music examinations with distinction. He would go on to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Royal Conservatory of Brussels in Belgium.
Choo was sure of his calling in music after watching his first symphonic orchestra concert at the Royal Albert Hall. “I thought it was amazing how one man was able to wield so many different elements into one entity,” he said of the conductor, in a 1993 interview.
At his debut with the Belgian National Orchestra in 1958, Choo’s performance of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale impressed the Belgian State Radio so much it invited him to conduct Stravinsky’s Agon. Over the next decade, Choo guest-conducted throughout Europe before settling down as the principal conductor for the Greek National Opera for eleven years.
In 1978, Choo was invited by Singapore to set up a national orchestra. The lack of one had been described as “something of a minor scandal” by Deputy Prime Minister Dr Goh Keng Swee. Choo took up the challenge, saying “to go from nothing to something, this is a creative process.”
He called his contacts, advertised positions in the press, travelled to recruit musicians and visited music schools. After a year, the SSO had 41 members, enough for a start. But it was a rocky start. On the first day, the cellists, bassoonists, and horn players walked into the rehearsal hall only to realise they had one-arm chairs instead of armless ones. At other times, the hall was in darkness but the chief technician was nowhere to be found.
For its inaugural concert, the SSO played a joyous piece, Rossinni’s Barber of Seville. Choo also picked Charles I
ves’ The Unanswered Question. Giving his comments on his choice of pieces, Choo said to The Straits Times, “Because I really had a lot of unanswered questions…Really a very suggestive programme because I was also very unsure.”
Financial woes plagued the fledgling orchestra in its early days. Choo had to ask favours from his friends to bring in guest conductors and soloists to spice up the programme. They included Yo-Yo Ma and Lang Lang, relative unknowns then. Despite these and other complaints over pay and schedules, the orchestra eventually found its place when Singaporeans started sending in their compliments.
Dayong Sampan by Cultural Medallion winner Leong Yoon Pin was the first local work performed by the SSO in 1980 and sparked a debate on whether it ought to play more local instead of Chinese compositions. A reader of The Straits Times wrote in to say, “We are not merely a conglomeration of various races living on the same island; we are Singaporeans, and the Chinese cultural bias exhibited by the SSO seems sorely out of place.”
Twelve years later, the orchestra had performed seven symphonic works by Singaporeans, including an innovative collaboration between music and poetry. The orchestra performed Tsao Chieh’s Amidst the South of Winds while poet Edwin Thumboo read two of his poems. The avant-garde piece was typical of Choo, who was not afraid of experimenting with works that many orchestras avoided. Under his baton, the SSO performed over 730 different compositions—a feat that the more established orchestras can envy, said an article in The Straits Times in 1996.
The SSO could stake its claim as one of world’s top new orchestras because of Choo. In 1994, the SSO gave a “magnifique” debut in Paris. Claude Samuel, director general of Radio France, told The Straits Times, “I am very, very surprised because it’s such a young orchestra and yet it is such a brilliant one.”
When Choo stepped down as music director in 1996, the SSO had 100 musicians. In 2014, it was invited to play at the BBC Proms, one of the world’s largest classical music festivals. Choo’s efforts have been indisputable in laying the foundation of the SSO. Using Edwin Thumboo’s apposite moniker for him, Choo is a “maestro among the cognoscenti.”
Thanks to Choo, the sound of the SSO today is “warm, beautiful—something you can’t see in the invisible region between blue and purple,” said the conductor’s successor, Lan Shui.
Choo received the Cultural Medallion in 1980 and was awarded the Public Service Star in 1982. He is married to a Greek archaeologist and resides in Athens and London, where his two sons live.
References
B. Sunuja, “Father Knew Best,” The Straits Times, March 21, 1993.
“Choo Hoey, ‘Maestro Among the Cognoscenti’,” The Straits Times, August 30, 1989.
Phan Ming Yen, “Choo Hoey can Leave With Head Held High,” The Straits Times,
February 8, 1996.
S.Tsering Bhalla, “Manifique! Manifique! The SSO Bowls Over Paris,”
The Straits Times, March 7, 1994.
Terence Dawson, “Choo Hoey – Did he Jump – or was he Pushed?
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the dark,” The Straits Times, July 26, 1996.
“Why not give local works a chance in SSO performances?” The Straits Times, March 20, 1981.
Choo Hoey
Indonesia, b.1934
Kua Pao Kun and Goh Lay Kuan
Titans of Theatre
Kuo Pao Kun and Goh Lay Kuan, originally from China and Indonesia respectively, met and married in Singapore. They are acknowledged as the founders of modern Singapore theatre and an inspiration to a generation of practitioners.
Kuo Pao Kun is Singapore’s most significant dramatist. Many of his 24 plays have been translated into numerous
languages and staged here and abroad. He wrote and directed his first full-length Chinese play, Hey, Wake Up!, in 1968. Thereafter, he wrote numerous multi-lingual plays that were characterised by their insightful commentary on social conditions. Kuo came to Singapore from China in 1949 at the age of 10. Almost a decade later, he left for Australia to work and study there and his fiancée Goh Lay Kuan, whom he had met at Rediffusion Radio, Singapore’s first cable-transmitted, commercial radio station, followed a year later. Goh's family came to Singapore when she was barely five weeks old but fled to Malacca when Japanese troops invaded the country. After losing her father when she was six, Goh left Malacca, returning to Singapore.
Since young, Goh has been an ardent dancer and even went against her mother’s wishes to learn ballet while preparing for her ‘O’ Levels. Later, she left for Australia to study at the Victorian Ballet Guild in Melbourne. Her overseas experience created an identity crisis and she has since been questing after a Singapore culture. Goh recalled in an oral history interview, “At an international gathering, they asked us Malayan students what we wanted to perform. What should we sing? Geylang Sipaku Geylang? Malay songs? The Indonesians were singing [them] too…We did not even have a simple song we could call our own. We were strongly affected by this. We felt we didn’t have our own identity and culture. We felt we should to do something.”
They established the Singapore Performing Arts School (SPAS) on returning to Singapore from Australia in 1965. The couple had difficulties obtaining performance permits and Goh had to strong-arm her way through. She recalled how the government did not reveal why permits were denied and felt that such a move was unjustified. “I overturned tables and slammed the door very loudly.” Goh was the only one who could obtain the permit for the school from the early days to the 1980s, she said.
Despite these problems, the school was popular. Students and blue-collar workers arrived from even Malaysia to watch its plays. Kuo and Goh’s performances touched on everyday problems like poverty and inequality, which these people could relate to, and were at times a means of social criticism. Goh said, “When I see some wrongdoing, I will talk about it. This is my right. This is why I became an artiste.” Goh’s sense of social responsibility, as with Kuo’s, was influenced by the political upheavals of the 1950s. Kuo’s earlier plays in the Chinese language medium depicted the exploitation of the working class (The Struggle, 1969) and tensions with capitalism (The Spark of Youth, 1971).
Goh said in a 2014 interview, “Theatre is about life. It’s about people, about how we see, how we think, how we feel. It is so simple, yet so powerful.” Thus, the couple and their group members started a “Going into Life” campaign to live alongside farmers, fishermen and construction workers, through which they gained a thorough understanding of their lives, and gleaned their hopes and aspirations. This experience furnished their performances with a more realistic and nuanced portrayal of the poor.
Goh and Kuo were detained under the Internal Security Act in 1976 for alleged communist activities. Goh was released four months later after a television confession but Kuo was detained for four and a half years.
After his release, Kuo’s criticism of the government was less strident. His first English play, The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole, was an allegory on the absurdities of Singapore’s bureaucracy. The play was written in Chinese and English, a hallmark of Kuo’s later style. The Chinese-educated felt marginalised when English was introduced as the lingua franca. Kuo used both languages to bridge English- and Chinese-educated Singaporeans. Though his plays may not have closed the gulf entirely, they became a common reference point for both groups.
Kuo also believed firmly in multiculturalism—that the various languages used here are fundamental to the fabric of society and speaking in different languages would not cause a rift. In Mama Looking for Her Cat, Kuo created history by crafting dialogue in all the functional languages of Singapore: Mandarin, English, Malay, Tamil, Hokkien and Cantonese. In one poignant scene, a Hokkien-speaking old lady and a Tamil-speaking old man converse and reach out to each other, transcending their race and language differences. “This was a really good play, and late President Ong Teng Cheong came to watch,” said Goh.
In 1983, Goh, driven by curiosity and the desire to pick up a new art form, went t
o New York to learn contemporary dance under the legendary Martha Graham. That experience transformed her style. It became more philosophical. Being away from home also made Goh more aware of her Chinese heritage.