A Wild Man’s Dreams (1990)
Wong Hong Mok
With his raw husky pipes, Wong Hong Mok stood out immediately. The singer-songwriter, better known as Huang Hongmo, sounded distinctly different from most of the clear and genteel voices on the xinyao Singapore folk scene in the 1980s and early 1990s.
And the self-penned title track of his debut album, A Wild Man’s Dreams, proved to be the perfect song for him.
Although he sings it with xinyao group Tiao Dong Lv Xiao Zu, it was his unvarnished, low-pitched vocals which immediately evoked the image of the titular wild man.
The song opens with a dramatic howl and then throbs with a sense of yearning: “I once had this dream/I was lying quietly among flowers and grass/Through the wild glade and over the hill/I ran freely through the wide grass plain.”
His lush images were startling, given Singapore’s highly urbanised environment. The picture he painted of this idyll was irresistible. It seemed to tap into a yearning that city folk did not even know they had, for the freedom of vast, open spaces.
The album sold more than 69,000 copies in Singapore and Malaysia.
Wong, 53, was ahead of the curve in going green before being environmentally conscious was hip.
The titles alone – Lakeview At Sunset, Flower Date – contain several references to nature. And his subsequent album, Confessions Of A Stupid Bird (1991), contained tracks such as Mountain Passion and A Tree’s Conviction.
The lyrics for Zui Hou De Dian Ji (The Last Thing I Think About), for example, are also filled with nature imagery. The ballad opens with: “Walked through the melancholia of fallen leaves/Passed by the beauty of red flowers/Who was my earliest spring/And will also be my final season.”
While he has embraced nature all along, he had little desire to embrace the limelight, especially when he first started writing songs. In the mid-1980s, songs written by him under a pen-name were played on the radio and performed by others at the annual Xinyao Festival held in Singapore.
It was not until the 1989 Xinyao Festival that he performed live for the first time and using his own name, Huang Hongmo.
The performance caught the attention of an executive at music label BMG and eventually led to the release of A Wild Man’s Dreams.
Reflecting both the collaborative spirit of xinyao and perhaps his own reticence, Wong sang only four of his 11 compositions on the album.
Apart from the title track and Zui Hou De Dian Ji, he also lent his vocals to nostalgia-laden Wan Zhong Feng Qing (Ten Thousand Sensations) and Na Ban Qing Huai (That Kind Of Feeling).
He had said then: “I knew I had to record at least a few tracks. But I would be happier if I didn’t have to sing at all.”
Happily for us, he did.
(ST)