When I first started writing music in Mandarin and Hokkien, I didn’t think that I was one day going to write about ‘tonal meltings’ or the affect of listening to music similar to mine — indie-folk tunes and ballads supported by the mantra-like repetition of acoustic guitar motifs, with tenderness and plainness in the lyricism. Growing up in Singapore, Mandarin was taught to Chinese students like myself in school as our mother-tongue. We studied Mandarin and were introduced to various aspects of Chinese culture, including calligraphy, classical poetry and Xinyao, Singaporean Chinese music, which I quickly developed an interest in. This led to my participation in my high school’s ‘mother tongue songwriting competition’ in 2018, which kickstarted my songwriting journey.
It was not until several years later that I learnt of the impact and scale of Singapore’s ‘Speak Mandarin Campaign’, launched in 1979. Through attempting to write my first Hokkien song while struggling to find references for music in that dialect in Singapore and engaging with peers who were active in dialect revitalisation efforts, I realized that what I had always thought was my ‘mother tongue’ was just a second language. I also started coming to terms with the state of censorship in relation to dialect content in Singapore. This became especially clear to me when I was invited onto a Chinese radio station in Singapore in 2023 to share my music. Only my Mandarin songs could be aired on broadcast radio while Hokkien pieces were shared by the station on Facebook Live.
While this continues to be how my interviews on Singaporean Chinese radio stations have taken place, my Hokkien music has been aired on FBi Radio in Sydney without pushback. However, through performing consistently to a supportive non-Chinese speaking audience, it has raised alternative complex questions about how my music lands.
I think about one of my more meditative pieces 歌[1]I wonder if non-Chinese speaking listeners get lost in it in the way I do. I wonder if they allow the circling melodies to embrace and envelop them. The piece beams at me, an infinite pool of liquid gold, the meaning of the words transcending themselves as I repeat them, ‘歌， 歌，歌...’. A coil of incense burnt and reformed in reverse, significance returns and fades. Flour sifted through a layer of chiffon and then more as intensity builds, every movement in my vocalisation becomes clear to me. I allow my voice to rise into fog and ice. I allow stillness to echo and fold into itself.
Then I approach ShyHey’s ‘厝’[2] Cautiously, I explore how the use of homophones across Mandarin and Hokkien give rise to a light that has the potential to overcome the aforementioned bans. As if a strand of my blood and a strand of water are being wound together, my Mandarin-speaking self and Hokkien-speaking self are drawn out, laid down and are made to face each other, they become singing mirrors sounding into each other as resonance builds and layers. Like sheets of tracing paper with colour on them, a picture all the more vibrant forms when they are layered atop one another. They speak through each other while existing across one another. They are placed in conversation, made to sing together, experience meaning together, listen to one another and do not escape the other, creating a strategy that could be used to mask oneself; I hear Hokkien 火車 telling Mandarin 回家, I am here and I have always been. Existing within you, you cannot remove me. Sing 回家，回家，when you want to refer to me. I am there though I cannot be seen. Invisible yet sounding. Through you I can exist. Only this way, I can exist.
[1]Wen Pei Low, ‘刘雯佩《歌(2) 》(Song 2)’, 2023,
https://streetvoice.com/l45r4m43/songs/741920/.
[2]ShyHey,‘你太白了，去曬黑 《厝》’, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9_VbHNuu80