One thing beautiful about choral music
is the element of language as expression.
The power of errant syllables, merging to form
more than the sum of its parts.
And no, before you ask, we are not polyglots.
Far from it, in fact.
We simply follow instructions meticulously,
maneuvering lips, tongues, and soft palates
in a deliberate system of trial and error,
reaching blindly for the sound that
best resembles the lilting character of
mandarin. A challenge, indeed, for a choir
schooled primarily in Western music.
It makes me wonder about us, a group of
majority ethnic Chinese living in a multiracial country
yet unable to speak our mother tongue.
To have to curl our tongues around
voweled diphthongs haltingly,
to handle consonants with care,
and still fall short of authenticity.
As spoken by maestro,
“You sound like a real Chinese choir.”
Honest praise that carries with it the regret of a people
who failed to master the language of their ancestors.
Goh Yong Ming Calvin is a literature educator from Singapore who enjoys exploring what different literary genres have to offer. A strong believer of ‘writing what you know’, he is enchanted by the beauty of the quotidian and how it is perceived through different lenses. He is also fascinated by the power of language to convey complex thoughts and evoke emotional resonances, and he hopes to share with others the little moments and observations in life that may otherwise go ignored and unrecorded.