By Zai Tang This piece was composed for Drive; an exhibition on wheels that brought the audience on a journey through Singapore's arts & heritage district. 9 Artists were involved in the show, each creating a piece for different parts of the route through bustling city scape. My composition took its inspiration from a particular street in China Town where Chinese Opera in Singapore originated from... Wayang, a form of Chinese musical theatre, was brought to Singapore by Chinese immigrants arriving in the late 1800's. With it's growth in popularity during this period many theatres were built centred around Chinatown. One such theatre was Lai Chun Yuen which existed from 1887 - 1927, at 36 Smith Street, also known as Theatre Street to the older generation. The composition you hear sources material from an old Chinese opera record I discovered at Thieves' Market (Sungei Road), combined with various personal recordings of Singapore's soundscape from more recent times. To me the piece functions as a wormhole into the past; transporting the listener through the ambient remnants of a Wayang performance captured on vinyl, to a fleeting scene from the aural memory of Smith Street, re-imagined through sound.
