Not Born in Singapore
Page 3
As a result, Goh produced Singapore’s first full-length modern dance, Nu Wa–Mender of the Heavens, complete with an orchestral and choral cast, in 1988. It was described as Singapore’s “most significant modern dance ever produced”. In 1995, Goh was awarded the Cultural Medallion. Kuo had been awarded the Cultural Medallion in 1989. In 1990, the couple set up The Substation, a centre for local artists. The Substation broke the mould by creating an autonomous intellectual meeting space for alternative voices. Critics complained that it was too edgy at times and too conventional at other times. But Kuo felt that it was important to try new things. He said, “In the arts, a worthy failure is more important than a mediocre success.”
Kuo died in 2002, two years after he established the Theatre Training and Research Programme (TTRP) with theatre educator T. Sasitharan. Well-known Singapore theatre directors like Ong Keng Sen and Ivan Heng have attended its directing workshops. The programme has now evolved into a stand-alone theatre school known as the Intercultural Theatre Institute. SPAS went through a series of revisions to its name and has been known as The Theatre Practice (TTP) since 2010. Goh believes that Singapore can develop a unique culture by nurturing the arts. “The material for our arts must come from our daily lives—what we see, think, feel and express—that inspire us in our creative work, especially in such a rich multicultural environment which Singapore is blessed with. Only our own creative work has the ability to make our people feel more familiar and closer to one another,” she said in a 2014 interview with The Straits Times. Goh continues to teach dance and is now the artistic adviser of The Theatre Practice. Her elder daughter, Kuo Jian Hong, is its artistic director and the younger, Jing Hong, is a dancer-choreographer who was trained in theatre.
References
Audrey Wong, “The History of The Substation,” The Substation, accessed May 2015,
http://www.substation.org/about-us/history/
Goh Lay Kuan 吴丽娟, interviewed by Tan Beng Luan, August 19, 2000, accession number 002410/03, transcript, Oral History Centre, National Archives of Singapore.
Goh Chin Lian, “The Ballerina who Overturned Tables,” The Straits Times, May 3, 2014,
http://www.c3a.org.sg/Learning_contect.do?id=2783
T. Sasitharan, “Theatre Doyen Sells Himself to Raise Funds,” The Straits Times, May 11, 1994.
Yu Yun, “The Soil of Life and the Tree of Art: A Study of Kuo Pao Kun’s Cultural Individuality Through His Playwriting,” in Images at the Margins: A Collection of Kuo Pao Kun’s Plays,
ed. Kuo Pao Kun. (Singapore: Times Books International, 2000).
Interview with Goh Lay Kuan in May 2015.
Kuo Pao Kun
China, 1939–2002
Goh Lay Kuan
Indonesia, b.1939
John Herbert
Soundmaster and Craftsman
John Herbert came to Singapore from Britain to run PolyGram’s Lion Studios, when it opened in 1981. Since then, he has produced numerous high-quality music recordings and groomed many talented music and audio professionals.
Singaporeans may know the tune to the national day song, “One People, One Nation, One Singapore” but few would know that it was mastered and recorded by John Herbert at Lion Studios.
Herbert grew up in the United Kingdom, and earned a living playing jazz guitar at bars. It was in Germany where he built a career as one of the leading sound engineers in Europe. At Union Studios, Herbert recorded and mixed top hits like “Rivers of Babylon” and “Mary’s Boy Child” by popular reggae and disco band, Boney M. Back then, there were no audio engineering schools so Herbert taught himself the tricks of the trade. In 1979, Herbert was scouted by PolyGram, a major music record label at that time, to start its outfit in Singapore.
PolyGram built two recording studios in Asia—one in Hong Kong, the other in Singapore, called Lion Studios, after the country’s nickname, Lion City. Of the two, the Singapore studio was more famous as it was designed by Jeff Cooper—an acoustic consultant and architect who had also designed studios for filmmakers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. At Lion Studios, Herbert requested for a console built to his specifications. It was a large 32-channel console that allowed more sounds to be mixed together. Lion Studios was a hit with regional bands as it had modern equipment, but more importantly it had Herbert—a sound engineer who could create high quality sounds. Artistes like Penang pop-rock band The Alleycats, veteran local band The Flybaits and one of Malaysia’s pioneer rock bands, Kembara, came to Lion Studios to work with Herbert.
In the early 1990s, Herbert bought the studio for about $250,000 when PolyGram wanted to pull out of Asia. It was around this time that he applied for Singapore citizenship. However, he told his friends that he found the administrative process vexing, and eventually gave up. He remained a British citizen. Business for recording started declining in the 1990s but several homegrown bands continued to support Lion Studios, such as Plainsunset, The Lilac Saints and Humpback Oak. In the late 1990s, Herbert started an internship programme during which students would be asked to go through drudgeries like coiling the cables of music equipment. “Herbert would trust us to handle the console only after we had the patience to do simple things well,” explained Rufus Varghese, a graduate from a media and arts school, the SAE Institute.
“Herbert was a true craftsman,” said guitarist David Tan who in 2011, along with jazz keyboardist Jeremy Monteiro invested $150,000 in Lion Studios to keep it going. The studio faced challenges from a rapidly changing music industry. Whereas sound engineering used to require finesse, it could now be done by anyone who possessed recording programmes at home—which was not difficult as these programmes had become affordable. Herbert’s protégé, Varghese, recalled Herbert saying that the advent of MTV in 1981 had caused the worst damage to the music scene. Herbert thought that music videos promoted singers who could not sing but got famous merely by looking pretty.
While Lion Studios continued to be known for specialising in warm analogue sound quality, the studio received fewer recording projects, except for regular ones from Singapore-based jazz group Tropic Green and Jeremy Monteiro, who still trusted Herbert to do a good job.
As Herbert’s once-glowing career began to fade, so did his attitude to life. He asked his apprentices to discard old photos and letters that reminded him of his former glory. However, his students stored them in a wooden box at a corner of the studio. Herbert no longer owned a house and had begun bunking in with his friends until he was admitted to hospital for pancreatic cancer in early 2015. When Herbert’s health began deteriorating, Tan persuaded him to return to the UK instead of living here alone without any family but the tonmeister refused. “He did not want to leave the studio,” Tan said.
Dawn Ho, a local jazz vocalist, started a campaign to raise money for Herbert’s medical fees in his last days. “It seemed such a shame for such a monumental figure to die alone without any care or aid,” she said. Many musicians whom he worked with contributed to the fundraising. Herbert died on July 12, 2015 at the age of 76. “He gave the best of himself,” said Ho. Herbert left Lion Studios in Tan’s hands.
References
“PolyGram Invests in Studio Here,” The Business Times, July 16, 1981.
“Warm Studio Sound Still a big Draw,” AsiaOne, April, 2013.
Interviews with David Tan and Rufus Varghese in June 2015, and Dawn Ho
via email in August 2015.
John Herbert
United Kingdom, 1939–2015
J. M. Sali
A Man of Letters
Chennai-born writer J.M. Sali’s literary output is nothing short of prodigious—400 short stories, 80 plays, 30 novels, 200 articles and counting. In a career spanning over 60 years, he has become one of the most prolific authors in Tamil literature.
Seventy-six year old J.M. Sali is celebrating the 60th anniversary of his writing career. Just this year, he has already translated three of his works into English—a collection of Singapore short stories Tha
t Day, children's novel Two Eyes and love story The Sound of Waves. He wrote his first short story for Kannan, a children’s magazine in India, when he was 15 and a high-school student. He was paid five rupees. He realised then that he could earn money by writing and was inspired to continue. The magazine editor saw his potential and decided to mentor him. Thus, a friendship was born between the editor, an upper-caste Hindu, and Sali, a Muslim. Though the two never met, they bonded through mail.
Their friendship inspired Sali to write his first children’s novel, Iru Kankal (Two Eyes), about the friendship between a Muslim, a Hindu and a Christian. In 1961, the magazine Kannan awarded it the Best Children’s Book Prize in Tamil Nadu. After graduating from Chennai State College with a Master of Arts, Sali worked in the Accountant-General’s Office but kept an eye on openings in publishing. In 1964, when he was offered the assistant editor’s post in Singapore’s Tamil Murasu newspaper, he grabbed it and moved to Singapore.
The chief editor, Thamizhavel G. Sarangapani, trained Sali in all aspects of the newspaper. For eight years, Sali worked alongside Sarangapani before returning to India. There, he worked at a magazine, Ananda Vikatan, and met celebrities like Muhammad Ali whom he later wrote about. He came back to Singapore in early 1983 to resume the post of assistant editor at Tamil Murasu, and later that year became a senior broadcast journalist at the then-Singapore Broadcasting Corporation for 17 years. There, he wrote news bulletins and plays for television and radio. In a 2012 The Straits Times interview, Sali said, “As a news editor, we had more information in those days. Now, of course, you can get the information for free off the Internet. But back then, it was different. These books were very popular and the sales were very helpful to me.” So popular were his books that they have been translated into English, Hindi, Urdu and Sinhalese.
Sali’s works have also been prescribed as textbooks in India and Singapore. One of his novels, Alaikal Pesukinrana (The Sound of Waves), which is a story about a man from India who fell in love with a woman in Singapore, is a literature text for students at UniSIM, Singapore. Through Sali’s stories, which were published in 1977, the woman managed to draw public support for her divorce. Sali’s extensive contribution to Tamil literature earned him the Thamizhavel Literary Award from the Association of Singapore Tamil Writers in 2001—one of many literary awards he has received from India and Singapore. Asked which form—novels, short stories and essays—he enjoyed writing most, Sali said he has no preference, as it depends on who the audience is. In 2012, Sali was awarded the Cultural Medallion. Typically a man of few words, Sali heaped gratitude on his mentor,
T. G. Sarangapani, during his speech and added that it was in Singapore where he had received opportunities to hone his craft and publish books. At the award ceremony, Sali said that his mastery of the Tamil language was due to him having learnt his mother tongue well and he encouraged young Singaporeans to follow suit. Sali, who became a Singapore citizen in 1990, retired from journalism in 2000 to focus on his writing and has been helping various agencies like the Civil Service College, Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau, National Heritage Board and National Archives with Tamil-language translations. Religion has always been important to Sali—he has woven his ideas about Islam into his stories. Wanting to fulfil what he said was the “fifth duty of Muslims”, Sali spent 28 days in 1994 on the Hajj to Mecca. Between religious and ethnic identity, Sali identifies himself primarily as a Tamil. “People refer to us in our village in Tamil Nadu as ‘the ones who came to Islam’. But for me, I only know the past three generations who came before me. And based on that I strongly feel I am a Tamil first. Other things come later,” Sali told the English-language Indian newspaper
The Hindu.
References
“A success story,” The Hindu, May 10, 2013.
J.M. Sali, “Words of Appreciation,” Cultural Medallion 2012, NAC,
https://www.nac.gov.sg/docs/cmyaa/jm-sali.pdf
Adeline Chia, “Winners’ Circle,” The Straits Times, October 18, 2012.
Stella Danker, “Telling the Singapore story,” Singapore International Foundation,
http://singaporemagazine.sif.org.sg/telling-the-singapore-story
Interview with J.M. Sali in March 2015.
J. M. Sali
India, b.1939
Tan Swie Hian
Portrait of an Artist and a Writer
Indonesia-born Tan Swie Hian’s paintings have sold at auctions for millions of dollars. He broke into the Chinese art market when few foreigners did. His literary output—40 volumes of verse, criticism, prose and translations—is equally impressive.
When the hammer came down during the Beijing Poly International Auction in November 2014, Portrait of Bada Shanren by Tan Swie Hian drew a figure of $4.4 million. This auction house is said to be the world’s third largest by sales after Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Tan’s success was viewed as a major achievement for Singaporean artists, as the booming Chinese art market has been dominated by big-name Chinese artists and a continued demand for Western art.
Art has been part of Tan’s life since young. Growing up in Indonesia, he often drew pictures of the God of Earth and folk heroes for his neighbours. When he was 12, his parents sent him to Singapore, where he attended a primary school in Jurong and later, The Chinese High School.
During his adolescence, Tan said he played truant, got into fights and was almost expelled. His father wanted him to run the family business back home, but he turned down the opportunity. He repeated another year of school, during which he participated in art competitions and bagged many awards.
Eventually, Tan made it to Nanyang University. There, he studied Modern Languages and Literature, and immersed himself in the works of John Keats, T.S. Eliot and other writers. Tan’s affinity for both Eastern and Western artistic traditions is reflected in his creative works.
Tan published a volume of modern Chinese poetry, The Giant, in 1968, the year he graduated from university. It was the first anthology of Chinese modernist poetry in the literary history of Malaysia and Singapore. After his graduation, Tan worked as the press attaché at the French embassy in Singapore, while pursuing painting as a passion. He launched his first solo exhibition in 1973. At the same time, he continued publishing literary works, including translations of writers like Samuel Beckett, Henri Michaux and Jacques Prévert from French into Chinese. It was only 19 years after his first exhibition, when he had amassed enough savings, that Tan quit his job to focus on art.
Tan began to win fame in China when he published a five-volume collection of his writings there in 1993. Since then, his artworks have been on permanent display in various museums throughout the country. The works on display include an essay and calligraphy to celebrate the birthday of Huangdi, or Yellow Emperor, at his tomb. In 2004, Tan was the only Southeast Asian artist out of 20 renowned artists who were invited to collaborate with South African anti-apartheid revolutionary Nelson Mandela for a charity exhibition. Tan juxtaposed the image of Mandela’s shackled hands with a Buddhist “No-Fear” hand sign, which depicts the Buddha holding up his open hand.
To Tan, art and religion are inseparable. He said in an interview with The Peak magazine, “My art is just a drop in the ocean of wisdom expounded by Prince Siddhartha (The Buddha).” Religion, he said in an interview for the book, has freed him from dogmas and superstitions, and “with an unfettered mind, everything is possible”. He published a book titled Fables in 1996, in which the stories illustrate Buddhist philosophies about man’s transient nature in the Universe. The book, first written in Chinese, has been translated into five languages. While writing the book, he meditated and spoke to “the flowers, the birds, the plants and the trees.” He said in a 1996 interview that “my understanding of life affects the way I write the fables.” Indeed, Portrait of Bada Shanren came about when Tan was meditating in his friend’s apartment in Beijing. He had an “epiphany”, he said, adding, “One night, a genius of Chinese art who is regarded as one of the
most influential personalities and ink painters of his time just came to me.” And in 60 seconds, he drew Bada Shanren—a Ming dynasty prince who became a Buddhist monk in order to survive the Manchu invasion of China in 1618—and the Chinese calligraphy inscription surrounding it. Bada Shanren means “Mountain Man of the Eight Greats” and the prince was known for his black-and-white ink paintings, which were outlets for and manifestations of his grief.
Portrait of Bada Shanren fetched a higher price than Tan’s first painting auctioned in China—an acrylic and oil painting titled The Moon is Orbed (2012), which was sold for $3.7million at the Beijing Poly International Auction. No artist in Southeast Asia today has been able to sell his art at such a high price in China. Tan Chai Puan, a Malaysian poet, said in the The New York Times, “For a tiny country to have produced an artist of his calibre, recognised internationally, he’s put Singapore firmly on the international cultural map.” TIME magazine called Tan the “Singapore Renaissance man” and the The New York Times noted that Tan is “a multifaceted Singaporean Painter”.
Despite being a millionaire, Tan’s studio at Telok Kurau Studios, an art community, is barren, with only a large wooden desk, a worn sofa and a bookshelf brimming with books ranging from Vladmir Nabokov’s Lolita to Osho’s New Dawn: Here and Now, and a collection of quotes from the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar. When a fire broke out in the studio in 2013, the first thing he did was to save a stray cat instead of his artworks. He told The New Paper that it was because “between art and life, I chose life.” Many of the diaries where he jotted down his inspirations were also destroyed, but he has slowly penned down his recollections and aims to reproduce them in a monograph.