last sunday i was up at 5am, but only because i am naturally nocturnal, nothing to do with the world cup (which i was not watching) — what i was doing was trying to answer an enormous backlog of emails, the kind from friends abroad you’re fond of but haven’t communicated with for ages, whose emails you put off answering immediately because they require thoughtful and extended answers, and in doing so demands a stocktaking of changes in your life and theirs, requires a recalibration of your mental image of them and them of yours, and which put on weight and become harder to answer the longer you leave them..while i was doing that i started listening to episodes of ‘commonwealth connections’ on bbc radio 3, in one of which singapore and nanyin or nanguan music is featured!
“Everyone here plays from memory, kept in tempo by the pulse beaten out on small wooden blocks. Apparently there used to be a teacher here who taught the tunes � the basic lines were learnt from a score, then embellished and pulled about as the musicians became familiar with them, similar to a jazz musician playing a standard. Except here there is a room full of players each negotiating their own way round the melody of �Little Peach Red�, a sound that needs to be heard to be fully appreciated.”
Best of the Transparent Hummingbird