The development of urban entertainment parks in Singapore by the Straits Chinese entrepreneurs had been instrumental in leveraging bangsawan to a wider public and making it a popular culture in the early twentieth century.[1] These entertainment parks had provided bangsawan troupes with regular performance grounds that were free of charge and also, steady streams of audience every night. Thus, the Worlds could be seen as the venues that transformed bangsawan from an urban entertainment form into a true popular culture of Singapore. The Worlds also became advocators of bangsawan as a social pastime for the common people. Moreover, the vast array of activities within the entertainment parks became a source of creative inspiration for the bangsawan dance choreographers who had to adapt to keep up with the fierce competition for audience from the Western cabarets and revues.[2] Hence, the urban entertainment parks became an establishment for the promotion of new dance styles and musical repertoires for bangsawan, which led to a revolutionary change to propagation of the Malay cultural traditions of folk dance and spiritual practice.
The entertainment parks, which were seen as a common space for all classes and ethnicities, had created a truly multi-ethnic audience that prompted bangsawan to become versatile and innovative to cater to the broader cultural makeup of the audience. Furthermore, the mingling of audience of bangsawan in the common space of the park enabled people to socialize with one another as well as with the performers in an active participation of the occasion. It was observed inside the Worlds that men would sit together while women and children would sit upstairs in the second level of the complexes to maintain the social decorum. This observation had revealed the prevailing conservative nature of the Asian society at that time.
[1] Wong Y.C., Tan K.L., “Emergence of a Cosmopolitan Space for Culture and Consumption: The New World Amusement Park-Singapore (1923-70) in the Inter-war Years”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5,2 (2004), p. 279-301.
[2] Mohd., Zapin, p. 44.
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