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Culture Culture and religion remain entwined in Singapore, far more than in the West. Throughout the year, a constant stream of festivals and celebrations in the streets and temples reflect the diverse beliefs and backgrounds of this multicultural society, comprising of Buddhists, Taoists, Muslims, Hindus, Christians and Sikhs. Many of the major Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu festivals are marked by public holidays and Christmas is just one more holiday – for which shops stay open. The Chinese calendar dominates and the Chinese New Year is the biggest festival of all, where everything shuts for several days. The city’s art scene, while mainly conventional, reflects the flavours of the region; Malay, Chinese and Indian performances, art and music are on offer. Mainstream performing arts are also well represented, culminating in the Singapore Arts Festival, held every year in June, which attracts dance, theatre and music groups from all over the world. Andrew Lloyd Webber productions are a favourite. Year-round performances from overseas tend to be heavily oversubscribed and tickets should be booked well in advance. Domestic performers are of a high standard and easier to experience. Free musical and theatrical performances are held regularly in local parks, for example, the Singapore’s Dance Theatre performs Ballet Under the Stars twice a year at Fort Canning Park. Singapore is a good place to view and purchase art from all over Asia, as well as works by local artists. The cultural diversity means that works by local artists cover a broad palette of themes and styles. Notable galleries include the Singapore Art Museum, Bras Basah Road (tel: 6332 3222); Artfolio, Raffles Hotel (tel: 6334 4677); Art2 at The Substation, Armenian Street (tel: 6338 8713); Cicada Gallery of Fine Arts, Ann Siang Road (tel: 6225 6787), and the ground floor of the Ministry of Information, Communication and the Arts, MITA Building, 140 Hill Street (tel: 6270 7988; fax: 6837 9480; e-mail: mita_pa@mita.gov.sg; website: www.mita.gov.sg). For arts and antiques, there is a hub of shopping outlets at the Tanglin Shopping Centre, 19 Tanglin Road. Local newspapers (the biggest English-language paper is the Straits Times) carry lists of events happening each day, as does the online National Arts and Entertainment Calendar (website: www.happening.com.sg). Two free publications to look out for are I-S Magazine and BC. Both have good listings and reviews for exhibitions, dance, art and music. Additional information can be obtained from the National Arts Council (tel: 6746 4622; website: www.nac.gov.sg) or through the Singapore Tourism Board. Tickets can be booked through Sistic (tel: 6348 5555; website: www.sistic.com.sg) or Ticketcharge (tel: 6296 2929; website: www.ticketcharge.com.sg). Music: The Singapore Symphony Orchestra (tel: 6338 4401; website: www.sso.org.sg) gives performances every Friday and Saturday at the Victoria Concert Hall, Empress Place (tel: 6338 6125), as well as open-air concerts. The SSO was founded in 1979 and walks a skilful tightrope between Asian and Western music and has a growing, if still fragile, reputation. There is also the NUS Symphony Orchestra (tel: 6874 2493), which can be found at the NUS Forum and Theatrette. The Singapore Lyric Opera, Waterloo Street (tel: 6336 1929; website: www.singaporeopera.com.sg), usually performs Western classical pieces, occasionally fusion. The Chinese Classical Music play at various different venues and are worth catching, by checking local press for details. Theatre: Local groups are extremely energetic in producing contemporary theatre with an Asian flavour. The usually hidden deep ethnic tensions in Singapore commonly underlie much of the drama and the struggle for freedom of expression is often very palpable. The newest and largest venue for performing arts, The Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, 1 Esplanade Drive (tel: 6828 8222; fax: 6337 3633; e-mail: corporate@esplanade.com; website: www.esplanade.com.sg), is due to open its doors in October 2002 and promises to be one of the best and largest performing arts centres in Asia. Some of the more prolific theatre companies include: Singapore Repertory Theatre, Cecil Street (tel: 6221 5585; website: www.singrep.com), who showcase at the DBS Arts Centre, 6 Shenton Way; and TheatreWorks (tel: 6338 4077; website: www.theatreworks.org.sg), based at the Black Box in Fort Canning Centre, Cox Terrace Fort, Canning Park. Other theatres include Kallang Theatre, Stadium Walk (tel: 6345 8488; fax: 6344 2340; website: www.sistic.com.sg), and The Substation, 45 Armenian Street, (tel: 6337 7535 or 7800; fax: 6337 2729; website: www.substation.org), which shows modern, experimental drama. Dance: Ecnad Project Ltd (tel: 6226 6772; website: www.ecnad.org), one of the youngest professional performing arts groups, has built a reputation for also being one of the most dynamic and daring. The company is based around the Telok Ayer Performing Arts Centre in Cecil Street. The Singapore Dance Theatre (tel: 6338 0611; fax: 6338 9748; website: www.singaporedancetheatre.com) performs classical dance and ballet and is based at the Fort Canning Centre, Cox Terrace Fort, Canning Park. One of the city’s most popular events is their Ballet Under the Stars, held twice a year at Fort Canning Hill. Film: Cinemas cater purely to popular taste. Mainstream films are highly popular and often sold out, although there is a backlash from those who deplore the censorship allowed through the Film Act of 1981, which bans obscene and pornographic films with a much tighter definition of these than in the West. NETPAC (Network for the Promotion of Asian Cinema) was set up in 1994 as an attempt to involve film-makers, critics, festival organisers and the like in a drive for greater artistic freedom in Singapore’s film industry. There is also an annual Singapore International Film Festival in April, which features documentaries and films from around the globe. Singapore’s main cinema complexes include Cathay – Orchard, 8 Grange Road (tel: 6235 8386); Lido 8 Cineplex, 350 Orchard Road (tel: 6732 4124); United Artists Singapore at Bugis Junction (tel: 6337 9522) and Beach Road (tel: 6391 2550), Suntec City Mall (tel: 6836 9074), and Shaw Towers (tel: 6391 2550). While there are no art cinemas, the Alliance Française, Sarkies Road (tel: 6833 9303), screens mainstream and alternative French films every Tuesday. Cultural events: Singapore’s calendar of annual events is a real mix of ancient and modern, with old, revered ritual pitted against the new and experimental. In January, Hindus celebrate Thaipusam, a time of devotion, penance and thanksgiving; but the sheer volume of dominant Chinese outshines them with their New Year celebrations. The Lunar New Year is the highlight of the Chinese calendar and the streets of Chinatown are lit up in January/February with traditional decorations and fairy lights. After dark, Chinatown becomes a heaving spectacle of the Orient, with hawkers and fortune tellers lining the alleyways as vibrantly coloured dragon and lion dancers parade among the crowds and Chinese opera takes to the streets. The public holiday for Vesak Day, in May, honours the birth, enlightenment and death of Sakyamuni Buddha. Hundreds of caged birds are set free to symbolise the release of captive souls. The annual Singapore Dragon Boat Festival in June sends fishermen in search of the Chinese poet and patriot, Qu Yuan. In celebration of the anniversary of Singaporean Independence, a new anthem is composed every year and played incessantly in the month running up to the National Day Celebration on 9 August. A National Day Parade is held before thousands of spectators. The month-long Festival of the Hungry Ghosts (August-September) is one of the biggest Chinese festivals. According to Taoist belief, the gates of hell are thrown open throughout the seventh month of the lunar year when spirits are allowed to wander the earth. To appease these homeless spirits, sumptuous banquets and ‘wayangs’ (Chinese street operas) are held, candles and joss-sticks are lit in a row in front of Chinese homes and hell currency notes are burnt as offerings. During the Lantern Festival in September, the Chinese Garden becomes a fiesta of light and colour as children and adults pour into the park with their paper lanterns. Also known as the Festival of Lights, Deepavali is a Hindu celebration held in October/November to mark the victory of light over darkness and of good over evil. Little India, especially the Hindu temples of Sri Veerama Kaliamman, Sri Vadapathira Kaliamman and Sri Srinivasa Perumal, is decorated with fairy lights, garlands and colourful arches. Muslims gather for festive shopping for Hari Raya Puasa, to mark the end of Ramadan (the month of fasting), usually in November. However, the society’s younger generation are engaged in an array of performance and theatre arts that continually push the boundaries of this tightly governed island. Take Art, from March to April, is a selection of local and international events with theatre, comedy, art auctions and film. For Art’s Sake!, from September to mid-November, comprises many performing and creative arts festivals. This includes WOMAD, which takes over Fort Canning Park for three days in August; ARTSingapore, which showcases contemporary art from South East Asia, and the Singapore Music Festival. The Singapore Film Festival, usually in April, continues to try and make cultural headway in a heavily censored society, which would rather give its attention to the Great Singapore Sale, the annual shopping bonanza, in July. Literary Notes ‘When in Singapore, feed at Raffles.’ It was a good piece of marketing for the hotel by Rudyard Kipling, who came to Singapore after leaving India in 1889. In fact, Kipling spoke of ‘a place called Raffles Hotel, where the food is as excellent as the rooms are bad’. Raffles has, for more than one hundred years, been fertile writing ground for a number of authors, including Hermann Hesse, Joseph Conrad, Noel Coward, Somerset Maugham and James Michener – and it is in their honour that the Writer’s Bar was named. More than any other writer, Somerset Maugham sought inspiration on several visits to the island beginning in 1921. His short stories of Singaporean colonial life include ‘The Outstation’, ‘Yellow Streak’ and ‘The Casuarina Tree’ (1926). Society was outraged by his portrayal, in The Letter (1927), of the real-life murder of her lover by a rubber planter’s wife. More recently, the success story that is Singapore could be said to be the vision of one man, the island state’s Senior Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, the grandson of a Hakka coolie from China. His memoirs, The Singapore Story (1998), recount the events leading up to Singapore’s Independence, from British colonial rule through Japanese occupation, Communist insurrection, riots, independence and the struggles that followed. Prominent contemporary Singaporean novelists include Hwee Hwee Tan, whose Foreign Bodies: A Novel (1999) tells the story of an authoritarian state in which three rootless friends become implicated in the shady dealings of an international soccer gambling syndicate. A very different Singapore is portrayed in Catherine Lim’s The Bondmaid (1997), set in the 1950s. The novel paints a picture of a Singapore far removed from the developed, modern, cosmopolitan society of today and far more entwined with its Chinese roots, traditions and beliefs. Two popular new books are Got Singapore (2002), a collection of articles and stories by journalist Richard Lim. He depicts his own perception of the changes that accompanied Singapore’s Independence and gives a personal and humorous testimony about life from the 1960s to the 1980s. Neil Humphreys gives a slightly different angle in Notes from an Even Smaller Island (2002), dissecting the culture and lifestyle of Singapore from an ex-pat’s viewpoint. |
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