Paper short abstract:

Nanyin music that is usually committed to Fujian, China is already played over 70 years in Singapore. The purposes of this paper are clarifying the formation of the music societies in Singapore, concerned people and oversea network for musical activities in there.

Paper long abstract:

Nanyin music is an intangible heritage committed to Fujian, China. In Singapore, people who immigrated from there brought it and continued playing over 70 years among Hokkien speaking communities.

Its popularity, however, declined gradually in a few decades. The reasons are the problems of dialects, disappearance of the chance to play such as in temples, communities, and musical societies. Behind the disappearance, there were some problems on language policy, education, religious activities, and cultural activities, etc.

Singapore government made effort to make their people as 'Singaporean' from 1980s and didn't pay attention so much on each dialects related cultures. And in late 1990s, after the change of the concepts and policy on culture, many changes happened and dialects related cultures began to decline.

Nanyin also have such experience. In recently, however, some of the old Nanyin music societies make effort to transmit their music to youth and began to make something new with new creation of theatre pieces and new songs. Moreover, as for the education, not only for the youth but for adults, a new Nanyin institution was established in a Taoism temple in 2011.

For this paper, I will clarify the formation of Singaporean Nanyin as heritage. How is the way the music came to there, and how to transmit it? How the people consider its history? How is the way to reconstruct the music as heritage? How about the effects of oversea network between the music societies in Singapore, Fujian, Taiwan, Philippines and Malaysia, etc.?