Bohemia

(As an aside, I wish girls had deeper voices. Somehow high-pitched voices don't strike a serious chord in me...whenever some girls talk I find it hard to take them seriously =P But seriously now, I wonder why some of their voices lend themselves so well to allusions to pretenses and superficiality, at least in my mind. Perhaps it's the unjustified stereotype of the TV bimbo at work.)

"To what extent has the state of its popular culture proved a successful indicator for the health of a society?"

That's the Hist S question I'll be trying to hammer away at through this week. It's all in the definitions, this one, because depending on how you define what a "healthy" society is, and what you include in "popular culture", and how you decide to measure its "state", this question can go off on all different sorts of angles. The obvious starting point, I guess, is the issue that decadence in popular culture has lead to the degrading health of society in terms of morality and virtues and other miscellaneous highminded stuff. But there's the issue of causality (to what extent can it be shown that moral degradation is caused by pop culture, or even that moral degradation is not in fact a sort of progressive moral change?) and periodisation (criteria used to judge the health of today's society may not be applicable to past societies, who may not have thought of the criteria at all.

What I'm thinking of doing is approaching the "state of popular culture" in terms of who produces it, and the "health of society" as how willing and capable it is to take care of its weakest members, how capable it is of non-violent social reform, or how resilient it is in the face of crises. The general argument would be that the more desirable "state of popular culture" is when pop culture is controlled and produced by the people, as opposed to the state or government, and that this state of pop culture is most conducive to defending the minorities, promoting progressive gradual non-violent reform and building a strong cohesive society.

Now what I need is examples.

And that's where the biggest problem comes in. I have to read three books by Thursday in order to be able to write the essay that night and pass it up the next day. And after one day of nonstop reading in every scrap of spare time, my brain is really numb. The fact that the question is really interesting helps a lot, and sociological explanations are quite fascinating...kind of like a version of economics that I can appreciate. But there are just so many words to read!

Anyway, shall move on to more joyful things =) Had a positively Bohemian afternoon and evening yesterday. Spent 1.5h in the library ferreting out all the books I could find on sociology, mass media, pop culture and stuff like that. There is a certain serenity that can only come from being surrounded by shelves upon shelves of books, all with words that I haven't read yet, all waiting to be openend, and among this overwhelming store of knowledge waiting to be tapped, I know where to find the scrap that I'm most likely to want at that time. Then ran off to join Soph, Eugene Oh and Ian for dinner before the band concert, but on the way I walked past Chorale rehearsing for a choir performance that evening, and decided to sidetrack there instead.

Apparently Chorale was taking part in a choir exchange programme organised by their conductor. Basically you have five choirs (SA, Dunman Sec, RI and RJC, plus an Australian choir called the Iona Voices) in LT2, all taking turns to sing. Because the thing only started at like 6.15, I only managed to watch the first three choirs, which were not the Raffles choirs. The Singapore choirs were not bad. DSS's rendition of Drunken Sailor was quite hilarious, really =) And anyway, choirs have a certain attraction for me, because they can do so many things with the human voice that I can't. I'm sure there's a scientific reason for why they sound so good...resonance, pitch, tone, whatever...but from all I can tell they just sound really nice.

The Iona Voices were amazing, though. They started with this piece which contained nothing but humming, and the humming fluctuated and intersected on different pitches, and they produced what Chern calls an "overtone" which, as far as I can tell, is a sound you hear but is not directly emitted from the choir's voices. So they produced this digeridoo-like wheezing buzzing hum by overlapping differently-pitched hums, and by modifying their pitch they could change the sound. Bah...I'm not equipped with the right terminology. But it's the first time I understood what they meant by "soundscape", because listening to them, you interpret the sounds in terms of topography. Heh, and they had a really soulful rendition of "Danny Boy", and to my surprise, they sang "Bohemian Rhapsody", which was a great touch. It sounded so familiar, but I only placed it when they were singing like the third verse. Originally thought they were singing some Queen song =P

Hmm...I realise that by some strange coincidence I know quite a few Chorale people. Chern, the two Graces, Kath, Shenting. RJGE notwithstanding, Chorale is probably the CCA in which I know the most people. Odd, how things like these work out. Was chatting with Chern and Grace before the thing started, and they smuggled me into their ranks by appointing me an honorary bass =P

Anyhoos, after Iona Voices (I didn't get to hear Chorale, which was a pity), it was a sprint down to Esplanade to watch the band concert. It was the first time that I managed to get a seat in the circle, because this concert probably offers the cheapest circle seats ever. Unfortunately, I think it'll be the last...the circle isn't so cool when you're sitting in the third row and facing a full military band. The acoustics are fantastic, the upholstery first-rate and the general architecture of the auditorium is superb and sumptuous, but the sheer volume of the band is enough to give you a headache! Never again in the first ten rows of a concert of this scale. Luckily, though, they didn't manage to sell out, so we managed to change to a seat further away, where we could actually see more of the band than the first row and the conductor's posterior.

(I'd forgotten that YY is in band. Was a nice surprise to see him onstage with his good old instrument.)

Another surprise was that Jenn and Yangwei were emceeing. It was stunning to see the two of them together onstage, Jenn in this long maroon (I don't know the exact shade of red) dress with an interesting cutting, and Yangwei in this svave suit and maroon shirt. Really stylish. And I think that was about the limits to their contribution to the concert experience. Enough said, I must think of my audience when writing this...who knows who will read this entry =S

The band, though, was great. The first song opened the night spectacularly, and the jazzy second piece is my favourite I think. They rendered the soundtrack from "Pirates of the Caribbean" and oldies from the 70s. I realised that when I was in the third row, it was really easy to envision a music video to go along with the musical score...like the jazzy piece invoking visions of castles with ivory towers and princesses waiting to be rescued...and this song inspired by a Spanish hymn generated thoughts of a small old church long abandoned to the mountainside, with only a child dressed in mauve playing among the leaves under the crucifix. It's something I could never quantify or explain, how music can invoke the imagination as well as the written word. I guess we all want to imagine, fundamentally.

When we moved backwards after the intermission, though, I was too busy looking at the drummers and percussionists in the last row. There was this one drummer who had four of those large bowl-shaped drums under her charge, and she was practically whacking away at them in one of the songs, bouncing up and down with all that energy. I imagine it must be therapeutic to play an instrument with such...vigour =) And when they were doing the 70s songs, the last row apparated sequinned pink scarves and A-Go-Go wigs. Most hilarious =) In the end they got the required encore call...in fact they got three, but they only had two songs, and the crowd refused to leave for a few tense moments, and the ushers were pissed and the band couldn't exit the stage =P Ah well, such is the average Singaporean JC concert. It is crass, I have to admit, and not at all refined, but I don't think I can bring myself to be like Purvis and wish it were any other way.

All in all quite an artistic night. The library visit and the choir performances came right out of the blue. In the end I kind of dumped the others in pursuit of my own artistic enjoyment...I wonder what they did before the band concert. Ah well, it's jsut as well I guess. So much music can only be good for me in my current state. All I can say is that I want to do it all again! =)

pondered by phoenican @ 12.4.05