Song-Ming Ang (b.1980) makes art revolving around the social aspects of music and sound, exploring what can be produced through temporary communities, amateur efforts, and interactions with systems. These works are usually executions of an idea or investigations of a premise, often yielding indeterminable outcomes and adopting various formats. Ang is also a musician and writes on music/aural culture.


Q+A

Hi Valentine,

I find your questions thought-provoking, but at the same time, I find them tricky for various reasons. As an artist whose practice considers how music reflects the workings of society, I would like to instead adopt an oblique strategy of answering, and make two musical recommendations for visitors to this exhibition.

Leslie Low and Liang Wenfu (梁文褔) are both Singaporean songwriters whose lyrics deal explicitly with the notion of Singapore dreaming/living. Ostensibly they couldn’t be more different. Low sings in English and is seen as an indie music stalwart, first as front-man of folk-rock outfit Humpback Oak in the 90s, and now for the experimental rock group The Observatory. On the other hand, Liang charted a commercial path – first gaining local recognition by writing Mandarin television theme songs for the Singapore Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), before being sought after as a songwriter for Hong Kong Cantopop superstars like Jacky Cheung, Leon Lai, and Andy Lau.

I identify with their music because there is a staunch honesty to it; a palpable attempt to enunciate what Singapore is; a nationalistic sense of mission like what James Joyce did for Ireland in his writing. In the process of doing that, Low and Liang have created a form of music that I consider to be Uniquely Singapore. In addition to being superb tunesmiths, their lyrics are as poetic as possible in the context of pop music. Like Bob Dylan, whose influence one can easily hear in their songs, their lyrical tones oscillate between sincerity and irony. And yet, regardless of where they are on the scale of irony, their lyrics manage to point out the idiosyncrasies of living in Singapore.

They both have box sets out, by the way. Humpback Oak just released a 4-CD box set this year, while there is a Liang Wenfu 6-CD box set still available (from 2008 I believe). Both box sets are available for around S$60 if I recall correctly. Given the chock-full of gems within, they are absolute bargains. (And don’t we Singaporeans love a good bargain?)