So we have much to be proud of in our local musicians and music industry... - Mr Lawrence Wong

Lawrence Wong :

At the “Music Matters” conference yesterday, and was delighted to see great enthusiasm for local music.

The Singapore music scene is still relatively young. But it has come a long way. Over the years, we have built a strong base of established songwriters, lyricists, music arrangers, concert directors and producers, like Dick Lee, Liang Wern Fook, Jeremy Monteiro, Iskandar Ismail and Goh Kheng Long, just to name a few.

In Chinese music, we had the home-grown “xinyao” movement in the 1980s. This paved the way for the emergence of several successful Singapore artistes, such as Kit Chan, Tanya Chua, Stephanie Sun and JJ Lin.

In other regional and international markets, Singaporean musicians have also won acclaim. Singapore Idols Taufik Batisah and Hady Mirza are making their mark in the region. Shabir Tabare Alam, our first Vasantham Star winner, has established himself as an actor, music producer and recording artiste. And of course we are proud this year to have the first Singaporean, Arun Shenoy, to receive a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Instrumental Album.

Singaporeans also perform many other important but sometimes not-so-visible roles in the music industry. For example, music veteran Mohamed Raffee has written many scores for theatre productions and movies. Likewise for composer Ricky Ho, who won the Best Original Film Score at the Golden Horse Awards in 2011. Many have heard of Taiwanese pop star A-Mei, but not many know that her crew is made up mostly of Singaporeans – from supporting singers, to band members and dancers!

Recently, the Singapore Music Society (SgMuso) brought Steve Lillywhite, a five-time Grammy Award winning record producer, to Singapore. At first, Steve was not sure whether he would find music talent here. But he met some of our young local bands like Sam Willows and later said that he was highly impressed by their music and creative talent. This is high praise indeed, coming from someone who has been credited on over 500 records, and worked with top bands like U2, The Killers, and The Rolling Stones.

So we have much to be proud of in our local musicians and music industry. Let us continue to support our musicians, so that they can play more Singapore-made music, and take our music industry to even greater heights!

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