Cinema

A Feeling Of Music Playing

Film-maker Ong Kah Jing – better known as OKJ – has produced a fascinating independent documentary centred on a jamming session involving four players of Asian instruments: Govin Tan (tabla), Mohamed Faizal (guzheng), Gildon Choo (pipa) and Tong Wei Jie (dizi). Tan is Chinese but plays the Indian tabla because his father converted to Hinduism in the 1980s and passed on his love of Indian music; Faizal is Malay but plays the guzheng because he’s loved the sound of the instrument since he was 14. It’s a multiracial, cross-cultural Asian fantasy that can exist only in Singapore – except that it’s real.