To mark our nation’s 52nd birthday this year, The Weekly tagged along with Dick Lee, Irene Ang and Belinda Lee as they took us to their favourite
Think of singapore’s entertainment scene, and one enduring name synonymous with our local media landscape comes to mind: Dick Lee. a true singaporean, the self-styled Mad Chinaman uses singapore as inspiration for his unique brand of musicality and lets it seep into every nook and cranny of his work throughout a 40-year career span. Dick’s singaporean connection is evident in his hit national song Home, as well as his latest film Wonder Boy.
“I think the reason behind my longevity in the industry has everything to do with my singaporean-ness,” he explains. “My best successes have been when I tried to be singaporean, and made it a point to be singaporean. that originality made me stand out, and was my greatest asset.”
For anybody with eclectic musical tastes, original is a word hard to come by in the music industry. that’s why Dick, in making singapore his muse, was seen as avant-garde for his time.
“In the ’80s and ’90s, singapore was still a young country,” says Dick. “We didn’t have any folk songs of our own. What we did have was simply borrowed from other ethnicities.”
This story is from the August 2017 edition of The Singapore Women's Weekly.
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This story is from the August 2017 edition of The Singapore Women's Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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