Virtual tours of the 6 ASEAN Sculpture Gardens - Fyerool Darma (Singapore)

Sitti Wang Kembong and Bukit Larangan Ancestral and Ambience Ensemble
Sunrise is a sound recording of the site’s ambience interwoven with melodies hummed in tandem with 808 drum samples. These melodies are echoes of the site’s history-melodious syair, or poetry, were performed in the courts, amidst the landscape of Bukit Larangan, presently known as Fort Canning Hill. These have lingered as fragments of sonic history found in the spoken vernacular of communities in Singapore. In this sonic response, a short melodic hum is repeated throughout, informed by three variants of gurindam, a type of irregular verse form found in traditional Malay poetry, in a syair oration. The 808 drum sample here stands in for the gong as an instrument, embodying the constant wave of new vibrations that the site hosts. Descriptive readings of the sculptures by a “Speech Reader” will be saturated and used as samples interspersed throughout the composition.
The work employs Jose Maceda’s A Concept of Time in a Music of Southeast Asia as an entry point. Maceda proposed the use of drone or ostinato and melody as a way to understand the concept of time and a linkage between the modern and the present, within the context of Southeast Asia.
$unri$e is a part of Fyerool Darma’s ongoing body of work Poiesis of Pantun/Pantoum (2019-ongoing) where melodies of syair are re-sung and reimagined. The response involves the decomposition of varied forms of information, ranging from history to reinvented literature and hearsay, woven together to generate a modular wave of rhythmic flows. Like the histories and happenings of the site, the sonic response gradually builds in density, creating a saturated soundscape.