Introduction

Bangsawan had been a popular culture in the Malay Peninsula from colonial times till post-war period. Through the formative years of Singapore, bangsawan too, underwent drastic transformation from a ritualistic village culture to a pure urban commercial enterprise. Global and regional trends experienced in Singapore had become factors of change for bangsawan. Hence, from the study of bangsawan through these years, one could identify the values and culture of the masses and the impact of bangsawan in people’s lives in those days.

Looking at the appeal of bangsawan which had a strong hold on the audiences in the early days, the conflict between tradition and modernity against the backdrop of an industrializing Singapore was examined. Furthermore, the micro-history of Singapore could be constructed using the unconventional study of bangsawan as a historical text in order to establish the ideologies, politics and the society at large. In the following posts, more of Singapore society would be revealed in relations to bangsawan from its peak popularity in the early 1900s up to its demise in the 1980s.