Sonic City: Making Rock Music and Urban Life in Singapore by Steve Ferzacca (review)

From Rock n' Roll in the 1950s to Black Metal in the 2010s, modern pop music has sat uncomfortably as dissonance and noise to the postcolonial governments in Southeast Asia. Youthful, Western, discordant, irreverent, and at times in radically direct opposition as alternative and protest music to the traditionalizing political cultures of national governments, these musical expressions often represent the sonic articulations of every new generation. However, these expressions have often been met with episodic clampdowns, from banning gigs and record albums to harassing and even killing performers and musicians (in Pol Pot's Cambodia). Such episodes often fall into the notion of histoire événementielle ('short term historical events or episodes') that characterises the narratives of contemporary popular music histories. The narrative and the related actors often fade into oblivion when the limelight shifts to new trends subsequently.

Reflected by its name that was considered comparatively rude in the 1960s, the rock band Straydog's (1966–78) Psychedelic Blues style was radical for its time in Singapore, during a postcolonial transition against the background of the Vietnam War. Termed the 'Golden Age' of Singapore's popular music, the trend fizzled out with the end of the lucrative 'rest and recreation' (R&R) economy that fuelled the demand for touring bands. Restrictions to the scene during this period also came with official disdain by the interventionist People's Action Party (PAP) government against 'decadent Western' influences, culminating in the forced closure of the popular Golden Venus venue that had served as home base for these bands. Other than occasional 'anniversary' performances for an ageing nostalgic audience, these groups had faded largely by the 1980s with rise of discotheques and the nationalized pop music of 'National Day Songs'.

The founding members of the Straydogs, Dennis Lim (known commonly as 'Lim Kiang' in this volume), his brother Lawrence Lim, James Tan, Jeffrey Low and Ronnie Kriekenbeek are now in their late sixties. The band's newest member—also the youngest, having joined in his early sixties—anthropologist Steve Ferzacca, enters the picture four decades later. Performing in gigs around the band's 50th Anniversary 'reunions' in 2016, Ferzacca's participation in Straydogs (and its offshoot band Blues 77) comes long after the group had retreated from the currents of popular music in the republic. Cultivated by decades of observing 'deep sounds' musicking in his fieldwork in Indonesian kampongs, as part of appreciating manifestations of social relations, Ferzacca's sonic ethnographic approaches led him effortlessly towards the writing of Sonic City.

Being a hobbyist bass guitarist of the same generation as members of Straydogs, Ferzacca was able to participate more intimately in their activities, and gained access to their life stories, as part of his acoustemological approach, one that involves a way of knowing the world through sound. From a participant observation perspective in jam session rehearsals, performances in Singapore and Vietnam, as well as casual drinking sessions and 'hanging out' at Lim Kiang's Guitar 77 shop in the basement of the ageing Excelsior Shopping Centre, Ferzacca mapped out an emotionally charged vibrant, cosmopolitan acoustemological undercurrent circuits of the Straydogs in Sonic City.

The otherwise 'late entry' of the author into Singapore's Rock n' Roll scene allowed him to identify longue durée continuities in an ageing band that has weathered half a century of global and local developments. In this respect, the study of Straydogs became both a historical and contemporary spatial-temporal undertaking. Describing vividly the exchanges on their social media WhatsApp platforms amidst their travels and performances in Singapore and in the neighbouring countries, Ferzacca pulls readers through meticulous ethnographic accounts of a 'typical day' for the band. He is also quick to connect the present with the past as he traces their socio-historical backgrounds in the colourful Peranakan-populated Katong estate where band members grew up and links the vicissitudes of their personal lives with Singapore's...