Getai Songs

[Music] Hi everyone and welcome to Opera Talk. I am Shreeta, one of the Opera People's co-founders and I am really excited to welcome you to the third season of this podcast. In 2019, we started the In Our Manor of Speaking series as a way of responding to socio-cultural issues through song. That year, in line with the 200th birthday of Clara Schumann, we presented the Clara Schumann project which explored women's voices in song through the 19th and 20th centuries. Since then, we have presented four more editions of the series, including the AIDS Quill Songbook, Re-Claim Lands, Sounds of View, and Altered States exploring migration, the idea of home, and climate change amongst others. Since 2020, we have also commissioned new work for the series and through this podcast, we will be documenting some of our more recent commissions through conversations with the composers, writers, as well as recordings of the works. [Music] Now, who are the Opera People? We are an Opera Company founded in 2018 by singers Jonathan Charles-Tay, David Charles-Tay and myself. Our works integrate technology, accessibility, and relevance to be at the forefront of contemporary opera production, and we aim to create an engaged community for musicians and audiences. [Music] In today's episode, Gatai Song's, we will be speaking with composer Tan Yuting on her arrangements of classic Gatai Song's for the 2022 edition of In Our Man of Speaking Sounds of View. [Music] Singaporean composer Tan Yuting explores the interaction of different sounds and the manipulation of rhythm, texture, and timber to create evocative soundscapes. Yuting received her PhD in music composition from the University of Chicago and is currently on the Faculty of the Youngstutor Conservatory of Music. Welcome to Opera Talk. Thank you. All right, so for the sake of our listeners who do not know what Gatai is, would you share a little bit about the genre and also how you first encountered this music? Right, so Gatai is Chinese. It literally translates to song stage in English. You have probably seen it around Singapore, even if you don't know what it is. These music performances, there's usually a live band and singers and dancers and it's usually conducted in dialects, usually hockeying when it's usually found in the Heartland areas during the Hungry Ghost Festival, which is the Eastman of the Lunar Calendar. And how did you first come to encounter these songs? So I grew up in Singapore. I lived in Singapore most of my life. And my parents, when I was younger, would always bring me to these grassroots events or Gatai events. And last time when I was younger, I remember finding them quite noisy and loud. As many young people may find that to be so. But then as I grew older, these memories sort of stuck with me. So when you approached me to do something with regards to something that's Singaporean or you were talking about Singaporean folk songs and I was thinking to myself, "What does that even mean?" Singaporean folk songs. And I started to think about what is truly Singaporean in terms of what I saw when I was growing up. What's interesting for me also is that like I always associate Gatai with so these very lavish sort of setups. These very elaborate costumes. It's actually quite campy in a lot of ways. - Very kitschy. - Yeah, very kitschy. Actually when we were having that discussion and again we talked about a few different possibilities. We talked about children's songs, folk songs. But then when we landed on Gatai, I was actually very excited by it because I feel like there's so much stigma around Gatai as being sort of very like cross or being very sort of loud and a bit obnoxious. And I think something that is so quintessentially sort of Singapore Malaysian. So I think I was very excited by the idea. Many of these songs are actually performed in dialect and not in Mandarin, in Hawkean. Majority in Hawkean but some in Cantonese as well. And I guess some in your true as well, right? - Yes, for me my mom's side of family is Cantonese and my dad's self-family is Hawkean. So there was naturally the two dialects that I gravitated to when I was selecting the songs. - And what excited you about the songs that you chose? Because they are, I would say songs that are quite popular and I would extend it like Gatai repertoire. - Yeah, I think back to the idea of Singaporean folk song when I was thinking about that, I was thinking, you know what is a folk song? It should be something that's off the people. And for me that meant choosing songs that were well known and popular in that sense. So yeah, these songs are very famous and a lot of people would have heard of them, especially my parents' generation. They know these songs very well and that's why I purposely chose them. Also there are songs that I particularly liked in terms of the melody for "Shanghoi Tan" and "Chia Dam". But for "Huanhi Dio Ho" that one was more, I really liked how upbeat it was and how Kijie and Kenphi in a certain way and very flamboyant. And I felt that I had to include one of these, you know, more flamboyant songs on this cycle. Yeah, yeah. It only felt right. (laughing) - Your settings of "Shanghoi Tan" and "Chia Dam" are quite a bit more sort of slower than what you would hear at like a traditional get-a-performance. - Yeah. - And it sort of have a very evocative, but it's like actually when you go back to like the text, yeah, they have, they evoke so many things and so many quite specific things like the waves and "Chia Huanhi Tan" and the train, the train leaving the station in "Chia Dam". And for a listeners, you'll hear it when you hear the songs, it's like having the train "Huan" sort of as this recurring motive in "Chia Dam" is really sort of just, it makes that feeling of it being a song about farewell, feels so much more poignant, you know? - Yeah, I think I was also thinking about how our ancestors sort of traveled down to Southeast Asia from China and how these dialects sort of traveled down to this region with them. So the idea of farewell and longing were very strong in the first two songs, "Chia Huanhi Tan" and "Chia Dam". Yes. (upbeat music) - So it brings me to actually how did you think about setting these pieces or arranging these pieces in a way? And I hate to sort of make a distinction between these two things, but sort of making a guttai song into sort of like a quote unquote art song. Again, a distinction that I feel is sort of unfair to both parties, but also thinking about sort of making it moving it from sort of like the guttai stage to the conscious stage. - Yeah, I think part of me was very excited about, you know, hearing these songs in a totally different context with a different kind of singer, you know, like trained in Western classical music. That in itself already puts a very, there's a really very strong difference between this song as an art song versus as a guttai song as how a guttai performer would perform it. So that's why I didn't make too many changes to the melody, but instead what I did was to bring out the inflections. So there are a lot of inflections when these guttais singers perform slides upwards towards the note away from a note. And I sort of drew on that and really emphasized on those slides and glides in all the songs actually, but more so in the first and the second one, the Shunhoitan and Teh Tam, which you were saying that I slowed it down a lot because I really wanted these inflections to come through. And these sort of slides and inflections also to me represented that feeling of longing and sying and farewell, you may hear. I know that when we were performing the pieces at the premiere, the singer at that time, Kira, she did not really speak Hokkei and Akatsumi. So I assume a lot of all the other singers were correcting, like came into correct case. Oh, you have to see it this way, or like in a guttai performance, they would accent like this word and things like that. So it actually felt like there was a whole kind of community that built around, so I'm getting these songs to be performed in a way that felt like, or people would like, even people who don't come to a song's recital would like understand the inflections and why we were doing them. Yeah, I think definitely listening to the original performances of these original performances by the original singers and also by various guttai performers, which I sort of found through YouTube, because there's a guttai challenge show that wasn't shown on Channel 8, which I used to watch with my family. And then when I went to the States, I didn't have access to that. But then luckily all those videos, were on YouTube so I was able to look up those performances and also I joined a Facebook group My dad actually recommended me the Facebook group because he was in the Facebook group because he enjoys watching these performances I guess and they would have live streams of good high shows almost every weekend actually yeah so it's actually very common and there's something going on almost every weekend in Singapore so I was actually working on these songs when I was still in Chicago so through Facebook I was able to sort of get in touch with what is happening in Singapore Yeah I guess the magic of technology is you can just do it once you're online right even if you're on like 10,000 miles away and yeah and I think I think the online live streaming thing probably started during COVID because that was when you know they couldn't gather and have that sense of community I think a lot of it also is that sense of community that you get so I have some friends or performers who actually do perform good high and they were actually telling me that because of COVID actually a lot of the live good high performances have actually stopped happening because you know people couldn't come out especially the elderly who were actually who frequent these performances quite often like they when they found that you could just stay home and watch it actually not them won't make the effort to like go to the communities and to watch good high okay so you said that actually that perhaps in the generation actually a lot of the those performances that we watched when we were kids and then we saw sort of in the community where the kids would probably probably die out because a lot of younger singers also are not really sort of taking it up as something that they perform they you know prefer to go down the more kind of singers so I'm right they're kind of kind of route so that so in a way good high is a slowly sort of dang-unformed yeah it's in a place as well yeah yeah I'm very glad we got to do this too and for me it's also well I feel a little bit selfish for saying this but it's also quite personal and for me it's like documenting my memories of watching good high with my family growing up and also a way of connecting with my parents and my grandparents through dialect because I think a lot of times when I'm working with English texts there's a or even in the in the genre of music that I'm working in I feel like sometimes it's not so accessible and it's fine you know I I think there's value in doing that but I think for this project I really appreciate that the opportunity that it gave me to sort of connect with my family through this as well yeah we will now hear good high songs arranged by Tan Yuting performed by soprano Felicia Tio Kai Sin and pianist Jonathan Shin the songs you will hear in order are Chong Hoi Tang Jia Zham and Wahi Tio Ho [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] Connesio, simlaisioza. Docelle, la pasion, si la pasion. Quota emenieta, si la simlaisioza. Quota emenieta, si la pasion. Si la tanglai, si la. Tioquitaia, Iua, ba, Iua, ia, ia, ia, ia, ia, ak and in beta лю m m van smoothly beat to the off new ice all up nothing you away again Lent embark on I riskste I dis Šime Gave Jianzuини Link Para Limpsena My Amr ouủu lessa خía re ап questa Pieque hao huia cuiga m'jaboo cao pa, yo'nzuo cao toa, yo'nzaizuoo oo hoja, yo'nbos you'n po'i qua, s'aidoo cao cao langta, toa tu'o pai bi'a sou, cao sio ho, cao sio go, sio mo' te lums ii. Pinsimte to'o tinsimte to'o sio hollo o si kinko mo'o da to'o pai lau sio fa to'o ki si bo pietoo, a heduoo, hao, hao. Pinsimte ho'o hoi, a linsimte to'o. R punch A Kill Troll returns fullisha 2013. Conven feelings by Jonathan Chin. по Piano con Uniting females la dolte di misio la taatnena di misio bat n reason. Faig di misio di misio di misio di misio di misio Haltzi, s'agrezaa di papi. Nguyen Ling, l'inferno de l'Opropipo. Opertok is written and created by The Opropipo and is produced by Mayavok's life with a support of audio technica and city music. Hosted by Shridhamanyi with guests Tanyu Ting and recordings of Gataisongs performed by Soprano, Felicia Teokai Sin and Pianis Jonathan Shin. Direction and Sound Design by Raven Lim and Production Assistance by Loh Yen Ling. [Music]