John Larkin

The wedding musicians in the car park as seen from our kitchen window

I have been trawling through old photographs and video clips and I chanced upon these photographs and video clips taken in Singapore back in October, 2000. My wife Shao Ping and I were living in a flat in Pasir Ris and one morning the sounds of this exotic and hypnotic music came in trough our 9th storey window.

I grabbed my camera, a Sony DSC70 Cybershot and managed to take a few photographs and four MPEG video clips that were 15 seconds in length. That was all the camera could deal with at that time. I edited the four video clips into a single video file using iMovie and uploaded the finished product to Vimeo.

Malay Wedding ~ Singapore from John Larkin on Vimeo.

Every time I play these clips the music simply entrances me. The repetitive percussion and the rise and fall of the rhythm and the crescendos that writhe around you are just mesmerising. The wedding was colourful as are all Malay weddings.

The wedding musicians perform in the void deck

The wedding musicians perform in the void deck

The wedding musicians begin their walk up the stair from the void deck

We lived in a Housing Development Board flat, Block 423 Pasir Ris Drive 6 and the wedding was held in the void deck of the adjacent housing block.

We lived here in Block 423 Pasir Ris Drive 6 Singapore