posted by Savanah on Mar 7
For the last ten years, jazz musicians from all parts of the world have come together in Singapore for the Mosaic Festival. This ten day festival occurs every March at the Theaters on the Bay at the Esplanade in downtown Singapore. The complex was built in hopes of bringing a wide range of live music to Singapore, and is set close to other attractions such as the many 5 star Singapore hotels. With so many options it is quite easy to find a place to stay during the run of the festival. Famous jazz masters play along side those just breaking into the musical tradition, it’s a meeting of the most creative of minds. When the Esplanade Center for the Arts opened it was the goal and dream to bring such incredible talent and beauty and freedom to an island so much controlled by its government. In a world where a ticket is issued for chewing gum or a student is caned and tortured for speaking there mind and capital punishment is dished out like parking tickets in Los Angeles, music is what heals and makes life worth living. The people involved just wish for an audience to witness and experience and to feel what is good, and not for monetary gain, but spiritual and artistic health.
Singaporeans sat up and took notice to the international music during the invasions of the Fab Five in the sixties. The British Invasion was not missed on this tiny island. Since that time, music from the punk rock and R and B genre have gained popularity. And just as it always does, exposure inspires creation. Punk and rock and even the American brand of country music, is starting show itself in the influence on the local bands. And given the government they have to work with it is an amazing achievement, a window into what it is to be really free in the mind and soul, while perhaps not being so free in the physical and governed sense. To be able to fine expression in the midst of oppression, to have the opportunity to make others sing and dance and play along…to quote an Amnesty International film, Shadowland, “you can take my body but you can’t take my mind” is what the music and the arts offer to people, the artists and to the audience. From philharmonic symphony to heavy metal, and from opera to alternative, the Esplanade in Singapore is helping the people take there lives and put them in a safe place and a place where it is safe and encouraged to express one’s self in a dynamic way.
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