Review: The Songs We Sang2 min read
Reading Time: 2 minutesWatching The Songs We Sang (2015) would not have held that much importance for me had it not been a special screening organised by both Hwa Chong Junior College and CHIJ St. Nicholas’ Girls alumni associations. Surrounded by both fans, participants and their children, it was amazing to feel the audience hold their breath and exhale as one at various points of the film.
I am not very familiar with the genre in this film but I noted that director Eva Tang was audacious enough to not just cover the Xinyao movement from the music industry’s point of view but also from its very humble beginnings in the Chinese medium schools.
The latter is what makes the film stand out, otherwise it would have been just another documentary, albeit still a good one, on a music movement. Eva Tang is of course, well-known for her work with Royston Tan and Victric Thng in Old Romances (2010) and Old Places (2012) which are social-historical documentaries on Singapore. It is such experience that we see Tang bring to the fore in her debut feature.
The closure of Singapore’s vernacular schools as it made to switch to all English-medium schools was a necessary, yet bitter move in the 1970s as Singapore sought to prepare itself for survival in the world economy. However, “Nantah” University had been built only two decades before as a pinnacle to Chinese education in Singapore. Thus it is usually such regret that comes to be associated with the switch.
However, Tang shows us a completely different reaction in “Nantah” Chinese poetry club’s last days. Within this club, we see poetry and music flourishing dramatically as the university faced its imminent closure; The students creating poetry to express their emotions on the state of affairs and then taking cues from Taiwan’s folksong movement to set their poems to music which became wildly popular. Such creative outpouring of the students, a lesson in how to respond nobly to a traumatic event.
via: Sindie
Image Credit: Jenson Chen/ Sindie
