"Why Do We Have Such Bad Taste?"
"Why do we have such bad taste? Why do we listen to such music?" Jen asked me, half in mock despair, half in a very real self-conscious embarrassment.
This was after we had spent a long time poring over stacks of CDs of Chinese cabaret hits and torch-songs older than our parents right slap in the middle of a crowded and noisy pasar malam.
Because, as it turned out, we discovered we both had been searching for (to borrow Jen's description) "those 1920s, 1940s Shanghainese cabaret songs". Her father had promised to help her look for them, but was unsuccessful; my parents had no idea where on earth I would be able to find such songs.
So it was really fortunate for us I persuaded her to take a walk with me around the pasar malam under the pretext of aiding the digestion of our dinner. If there were just one thing of Singapore I would miss, it'd have to be a sensory-overload walk through the heartlands. Forget Orchard Road and similar shit - the heartlands are where the life and breath are at; besides, pasar malams are the closest things to fairs we have here, and I lurve fairs!
As I dug around for CDs with recognizably retro cover-slip designs or cover-slips featuring old fashion portraits of songstresses, Jen was responsible for reading the track-lists and determining whether they were the CDs we'd been searching for. We ended up buying five CDs between the two of us, giggling self-consciously all the while; but we were really excited at our purchases.
"We don't have bad taste in music!" I shot back at Jen. "We've got good taste! This is good music!"
And, you too would know, if you'd only listen to these old Chinese songs, that I wasn't exaggerating or being defensive.
I wasn't wrong either: this music is some pretty fucking awesome shit.
This was after we had spent a long time poring over stacks of CDs of Chinese cabaret hits and torch-songs older than our parents right slap in the middle of a crowded and noisy pasar malam.
Because, as it turned out, we discovered we both had been searching for (to borrow Jen's description) "those 1920s, 1940s Shanghainese cabaret songs". Her father had promised to help her look for them, but was unsuccessful; my parents had no idea where on earth I would be able to find such songs.
So it was really fortunate for us I persuaded her to take a walk with me around the pasar malam under the pretext of aiding the digestion of our dinner. If there were just one thing of Singapore I would miss, it'd have to be a sensory-overload walk through the heartlands. Forget Orchard Road and similar shit - the heartlands are where the life and breath are at; besides, pasar malams are the closest things to fairs we have here, and I lurve fairs!
As I dug around for CDs with recognizably retro cover-slip designs or cover-slips featuring old fashion portraits of songstresses, Jen was responsible for reading the track-lists and determining whether they were the CDs we'd been searching for. We ended up buying five CDs between the two of us, giggling self-consciously all the while; but we were really excited at our purchases.
"We don't have bad taste in music!" I shot back at Jen. "We've got good taste! This is good music!"
And, you too would know, if you'd only listen to these old Chinese songs, that I wasn't exaggerating or being defensive.
I wasn't wrong either: this music is some pretty fucking awesome shit.
posted by s at 04:22
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