sarma

In today’s fashion-speak, Zai Kuning is a ‘new economy’ artist.

Short of being a DJ, a show-host or a face in commercial gigs, he has worn more hats than most independent artists around town.

Within a decade, this chameleon has crossed from visual art to performance art and theatre.

In his latest work, he moves from dance choreography into music-making and video art.

His works may not be populist. But his intense charisma in performance, at first impression, rivets the ordinary man.

Anticipated by keen observers as a return to his solo creative status, String In the Ocean stirred minor pre-show waves.

As it turned out, the triple bill evening became a twin-offering. His debut puppet performance was cancelled due to funding deficit.

Still, his main concert of ‘vocal and music improvisations on Torajan funeral songs, Buddhist chants and Quran recitations’ was a thrilling evening of sonic melange.

He shone with consummate musical talent and ready spirituality that belie his worn face and strikingly gaunt body which one remembers from his past butoh performances.

This time, fully-clothed, he sat steadfast on a matted podium littered with Korean drums, guitars, Chinese bleat-pipe and cymbals.

He unleashed a gibberish litany that vibrated with clear emotional registers.

It is a voice of innate musicality stung with longing, lamentation and erratic playfulness. He growled, slurred and trilled the night into poetic cadence.

In the intimate Guinness Theatre, he charmed while he chatted in disarming ease with his audience.

He revealed candidly his negligence of live music in his creations thus far – that his ‘dance has been mute’. Then he launched his rhythmic hands and belted into song.

He may not boast the vocal gymnastics of Meredith Monk or Diamanda Galas. But he is truly unique in welding personal technique, cultural make-up and individual experience.

Born in Singapore to a Malay-Muslim father and Chinese mother, married with a Japanese wife and child, he draws from a cultural web of identities, heritage and art practices.

His trauma over the recent death of a close collaborator-friend inspired his foray into film-making as his untried mode of communicating with the netherworld.

Screened during mid-performance, the film-elegy gave glimpses into Zai Kuning’s daily life as son, husband, father, traveller and friend.

Words of ironic and tender reflections to the deceased Leonard Lee were often personal yet epic notes on human presence and absence, life and death, loss and tragedy.

His musical abilities may well cast him as an exotic player in world ethnic music festivals. But his next development points to greater exercises in melding his artistic talents.

String In the Ocean has placed its own creator at the heart of art-making. He sails a self-journey in transforming debris of joy, pain and experience into something rich, strange and meaningful.

But a helpless flotsam, he also awaits the next wave – and more funds.