In 1964, Filipino musician and songwriter Vic O. Cristobal (葛士培) and (I’m assuming Hong Kong) lyricist Ye Lü (葉綠) wrote a song called “Enjoy Yourself Tonight” (歡樂今宵) that was recorded by Billie Tam (蓓蕾).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4PA1OpshAo
Two years later, in 1966, the song was featured in the Shaw Brothers film, The Joy of Spring (歡樂青春).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEsAkVS0WCY
A year later, in 1967, the song was recorded by Teresa Teng (鄧麗君) in Taiwan.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbryuYITYpY
And it was also recorded in 1967 by Yvonne (梅子) and the Sparklers in Singapore.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEo9WDUbQfQ
This was just the beginning of this song’s “journey,” as it was recorded many more times. What I find interesting, however, is how quickly it spread across what I call the “Free Chinese World.”
The center of the Free Chinese World was Hong Kong and Taiwan, and to a lesser but still significant extent, Singapore. However, it also extended to places like Saigon, Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Ipoh, Kuching and other places where there were large populations of Chinese (outside of Communist China).
The culture of the Free Chinese World spread first among Chinese, but other than Hong Kong and Taiwan, all of these other areas of the Free Chinese World were either multi-ethnic, or the Chinese were a minority in the place where they lived.
Given that culture can never be contained, my sense is that the culture of the Free Chinese World must have had a strong influence on music, film, architecture, fashion – the list goes on and on – of other peoples in this region.
Think about it, all it took was for someone like Yvonne and the Sparklers to perform “Let’s Go Gay” (as the song was translated on their album) at a place like the New World Amusement Park in Singapore, and it was easy for people of other ethnicities and nationalities to hear the music, see the dancing, observe the clothes and. . . get inspired.
As far as I know, this type of “inter-Asian cross-fertilization” is something that people have not studied all that much. Much attention has been focused on the cultural exchange between “the West” and “Asia,” but less has been devoted to looking at how cultural ideas spread through spaces like the Free Chinese World, and beyond.
Try listening to the song. Your body will immediately start to move. A song like this couldn’t have remained contained among Chinese. Other people in Southeast Asia in the 1960s must have decided to “go gay” too.
Here are the lyrics:
喂喂 你說甚麼我不知道
Wei wei, what you’re saying – I don’t get it
嗨嗨 不要提起明朝
Hei hei, don’t mention tomorrow morning
你給甚麼 喂喂 你給甚麼我都不要
What you’re giving – wei wei – what you’re giving, I don’t want it
嗨嗨 只要歡樂今宵
Hei Hei, just enjoy yourself tonight
我們要忘卻煩惱
We want to thoroughly forget our troubles
我們要盡情歡笑
We want to completely laugh with joy
來來來你我在一起快樂消遙
Come on, come on, come relax and have fun with me
你不要嚕囌又嘮叨
Don’t jabber on and on
你不要哭哭又笑笑
Don’t keep changing your mood
有甚麼話留著到明朝
If you have something to say, leave it until tomorrow morning
喂喂 你說甚麼我不知道
Wei wei, what you’re saying – I don’t get it
嗨嗨 不要提起明朝
Hei hei, don’t mention tomorrow morning
只要歡樂今宵
Just enjoy yourself tonight
Thanks for your post. Yesterday I listened to a talk of Tuan Mami (a Vietnamese performance artist). He presented an outline of contemporary art in South East Asia and mentioned to a Singapore artist called Josef Ng and his protest performance to the anti-gay operation of the government.(http://sgwiki.com/wiki/The_Josef_Ng_affair) Do you think 1960s Singapore was looser to gays than 1990s Singapore?
oh, I’m sorry, I misunderstanded “gay” meaning. But that’s still a question I want to ask, I think it concerns to freedom in general.
Yea “gay” was used pretty commonly until about the 1960s to mean “happy and excited” or “cheerful and lively.” I used it here to try to provoke and confuse people because I think that there is a similarity between the topics of homosexuality in Southeast Asia and the influence of the Chinese in Southeast Asia – many people don’t want to acknowledge either.
Which gets us to Singapore. Thank you VERY much for pointing that out to me. I didn’t know anything about that. It’s really interesting, and I’m not surprised at all that anti-gay measures by the government were connected to the (invented and politically motivated) idea of “Asian values.” That totally makes sense though.
This “LGBT history in Singapore” Wikipedia entry is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_history_in_Singapore
Was Singapore looser to gays in the 1960s? I don’t know enough to answer that. In the above Wikipedia entry, it mentions that when compulsory military service was established in the 1960s, you were supposed to declare whether or not you were gay, and if you said you were, then you were assigned to “non-combat, non-sensitive” “light clerical work.” Is that a sign of looseness/openness??? You could acknowledge that you were gay, but then if you did, you were discriminated against.
I would like to know what things were like for homosexuals in every day society. The existence of transgendered prostitutes on Bugis Street in the 1960s is something many people know about, and associate it with a time when Singapore was less restrictive than it is now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bugis_Street_%28film%29
But that’s a kind of extreme example. What was life like for homosexuals in the 1960s who lived and worked in “mainstream” Singaporean society? Could they come out? Did they come out? I have no idea. But that’s what we would need to know in order to tell how “loose” or “unloose” Singapore was at the time.
Thanks for your answer and your links. I’ll read more about this topic:)
The interesting little cultural detail that catches my eyes is the appellation “agogo” (阿哥哥) on the bottom video. I’m guessing that “free” Chinese (non-Maoist) popular songs were rooted to ascribed dance rhythms and had some connection to ballroom dancing like in Vietnam.
The music doesn’t sound very different than the nhạc kích động of Vietnam that was prevalent from around 1963 to 1971. This music got going with the twist which was being danced in Saigon from the 1950s (much to Madame Nhu’s chagrin). One of my favorite pop song artifacts is the “Saigon Twist” – at the bottom of this entry:
http://taybui.blogspot.com/2009/02/twit-twit-me-ly.html
That’s also about as racy as Vietnamese lyrics get – “cùng nhịp đàn ngất ngây đào tiên” – “to the beat, I thrill with an angel.” “Don’t mention tomorrow morning” has a provocative undertone – a lot could happen between now and tomorrow morning, especially in the setting of the second video – see how the chandelier shakes!
I can’t really tell when the word agogo originates. It appears to a French adaptation of English – à go go – and to have come into parlance in the early 60s. An n-gram of the word shows a jump in use of the word around 1962 and a peak in 1967.
http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=agogo&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=19&smoothing=3&share=
It would be interested to see the original 1964 sheet music of that song – it was probably written as a twist?
The term / dance agogo never seems to have been as big in America as it was in Europe – though of course there was the Smokey Robinson and the Miracles song “Going to a go go” in 1965. I would expect Vietnam (through France) and free China (through Britain) to have had equal access to it. Nevertheless the songs in agogo rhythm I find in Vietnam are from circa 1969-1971. One of the great mysteries of pre-1975 Saigon popular culture is the influence of Chinese merchants. They would often be the best able to provide the “goods” of international popular culture – instruments, records, sheet music, books, magazines. A few people have mentioned this to me, but it’s a difficult subject to track down.
Anh Tay Bui, check this version out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV5sjawyTPk