The Performance of Enchantment & the Enchantment of Performance in Malay Singapore

What is it about?

This article concerns wedding silat, a martial art danced at Malay weddings in Singapore. Details are provided of the Orang Siglap, a Malay people indigenous to Singapore whose beautiful, breezy wooden kampung houses no longer exist. Nonetheless, the kampung spirit remains strong in Singapore due to rites of passage that continue Malay traditions, culture and community into the present.

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Why is it important?

The ‘traditional' villages (kampung) of wooden houses in Singapore have long since disappeared to be replaced by social Housing Development Board flats where “85%" of Singaporeans now reside in a cage of concrete and steel. This does not mean, however, that the kampung is merely a figment of misplaced “nostalgia." Instead, the kampung springs to life each time there is a Malay wedding in Singapore: it has a ‘virtual' existence safeguarded in the resilient culture of the Malay people.