C Cambridge University Press 2011
Modern Asian Studies 46, 1 (2012) pp. 167–191. doi:10.1017/S0026749X11000618
‘The Modern Magic Carpet’: Wireless radio
in interwar colonial Singapore
CHUA AI LIN
Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
National University of Singapore, 11 Arts Link, Singapore 117570
Email: hiscal@nus.edu.sg
Abstract
Wireless radio broadcasting in colonial Singapore began with amateur
organizations in the early 1920s, followed by commercial ventures and, finally, the
establishment of a monopoly state broadcasting station. Listeners followed local
broadcasting as well as international short wave radio. Both participants in and
the content of radio reflected the multiracial, cosmopolitan make-up of a colonial
port city which functioned through the lingua franca of English. The manner
in which early broadcasting developed in Singapore sheds light on the creation
of different imagined communities and the development of civil society. There
was an increasing presence of non-Europeans, women, and youth, many of whom
were drawn by the mystique of this new technology. Wireless radio also brought
about a transformation in the public soundscape. These themes contribute to
our understanding of the global history of radio as well as the nature of colonial
societies within the British empire.
Introduction
Described as ‘the Clapham Junction of the Eastern Seas’,1 Singapore
in the 1920s and 1930s was a highly modern place, and self-consciously
so. New technologies such as motion pictures and gramophone records
arrived in Singapore not long after they became commonplace in the
West and were enthusiastically received by the population. Although
radio broadcasting only became widely popular in the 1950s in
Singapore, its early history is an important window on the social,
1
Frank Athelstane Swettenham, British Malaya: An Account of the Origin and Progress
of British Influence in Malaya, revised edition (London: Allen & Unwin, 1948; reprint,
1955), p. 342. Swettenham served as Governor of the Straits Settlements (Singapore,
Penang, and Malacca) from 1901 to 1904.
167
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
168
CHUA AI LIN
cultural, political, and economic processes taking place in a thriving,
cosmopolitan port city under the British empire. This is a story
that brings to the foreground individual, community, and commercial
forces which operated alongside or in place of official action and administration, giving a more rounded understanding of colonial society. In
contrast to the well-developed body of scholarly research on colonial
administrations and political structures, cultural history—including
the cultural and social history of everyday technologies—offers much
that remains to be studied. While making a contribution to our
understanding of how colonialism and empires functioned, the history
of new technologies like wireless radio illuminates the way in which
modernity and modern things precipitated changes at various levels.
The potential of historical cultural studies has been demonstrated by
the many works on the impact of the telephone, gramophone, radio,
and television on American society in particular, but these approaches
to modern technology and media have yet to be adopted for many
parts of the non-Western world, including Singapore.
A common approach to studying multiracial colonial societies is
to focus on either the European, colonial sphere, using primary
documents in the language of the colonizer, which are often of an
official nature, or to focus on specific local, ethnic communities, using
vernacular sources. However, a third angle is particularly useful for
interwar Singapore. As a highly multi-ethnic society, with a critical
mass of English-educated non-Europeans who came from a wide
variety of ethnic backgrounds, applying the linguistic category of
‘Anglophones’ opens a window onto a vibrant contact zone whose
lingua franca was English, where British, European, and American
technology, individuals, and ideas interacted with the Chinese, Indian,
Ceylonese, Eurasian, Malay, Japanese, and other diverse elements of
this port city.
Overall, the development of radio in interwar Singapore is a story of
the creation of new communities on an everyday level. These audience
communities operated at differing levels of geographical scope and
took on a civic dimension which widened to include new participants
among women and Asian listeners. While broadcast audiences formed
a very public grouping, it was the ability of radio to penetrate the
private realm of the home that enabled it to draw so many into these
new listening communities. At this early stage in its history it was the
novelty and mystique of this marvellous new technology that helped
the radio to win a hold over the imagination and attention of its
audiences.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
169
Broadcast media and the creation of imagined communities
The uneven and patchy development of wireless radio broadcasting
in Singapore illustrates very clearly the process by which the mass
media can create communities of listeners. Anderson focused on print
culture in the forging of an imagined community of the nation,2 and
broadcasting media functioned in a similar way but often in tension
with established political entities. In her study of how broadcasting
shaped the American imagination, Douglas points out that while
it is commonplace to apply Anderson’s conclusion and assert that
‘radio built national unity’, at the same time, radio also allowed a
multitude of regional and local identities to flourish, some in line with
national ideologies and others contesting them.3 This kind of diversity
was perhaps only to be expected in the United States, where the
airwaves were filled by numerous private and commercial stations. In
contrast, the British model of broadcasting instituted one governmentappointed monopoly broadcaster, which in the United Kingdom was
the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The intention was for
colonial policy to follow the British model, but in practice state
intervention was late in coming to British Malaya, of which Singapore
was the infrastructural, administrative, and commercial centre. The
relatively unregulated sphere of early broadcasting in Singapore thus
reveals a trajectory quite different from the image of territorial or
imperial unity implied by the policy of monopoly broadcasting. Looking
closely at the process by which imagined communities were created
and shaped, we might expect their creation to be a function of distance,
starting with the closest and gradually expanding to include people
and places increasingly far away. Even the newspapers discussed by
Anderson had to be physically transported to readers, and circulation
was a function of distance and time. However, the physical constraint
of distance did not exist with wireless radio broadcasting and instead
communities were dependent on radio technology and the emergence
of broadcasters at various levels.
Local broadcasting began in 1925, soon after the Amateur Wireless
Society of Malaya was formed by a group of enthusiasts in Singapore.
Among the various societies in Malaya formed to promote interest
2
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of
Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983).
3
Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American Imagination (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2004), pp. 23–24.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
170
CHUA AI LIN
in wireless radio, this society was the first to experiment with
transmitting programmes.4 It was founded by European expatriates,
most of whom worked in companies with an interest in wireless radio,
such as General Electric, Marconi, and Standard Telephone, and from
whom the society was able to receive support in terms of funding
and equipment.5 Its station, which was called ‘1SE’ (1 Singapore
Experimental) and transmitted on the medium wave band, was
granted a temporary transmitting licence by the Straits Settlements
government.6 However, by January 1928, facing declining financial
support and interest from its members as well as technical problems
with transmission and reception, the society ceased its transmissions.
From 1928 to 1933, the only local broadcasting that existed comprised
three amateur short wave stations run by individuals from the
Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya, including the president, F. B.
Sewell, and vice-president, R. E. Earle. Sewell’s station was rarely
active, while Earle was once reported to have forgotten to put on his
regular Wednesday evening transmission, indicating the infrequent
and unreliable nature of private stations run by individual amateurs.7
During this period radio listeners in Singapore were not limited to
these local stations. Listeners were more likely instead to tune into
literally an entire world of broadcasting via their short wave receivers.
The daily radio schedules published in the newspapers show that in
1931, the Singapore listener’s daily options included stations from
Saigon in French Vietnam, and Bandoeng, Tanjong Priok, Batavia,
Sourabaya, Medan, and Djokjakarta from the Dutch East Indies, as
well as stations further afield in Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Rome,
Eindhoven, Zessen, Nairobi, New York City, and Moscow.8 With poor
offerings in terms of local broadcasting, international short wave
transmissions formed the bulk of a Singapore resident’s listening.
4
‘Listening-in’, Straits Times, 7 May 1925, p. 9.
Fred Keller, ‘Work of the Pioneers in Malaya’, Omba Pende, September 1931, p. 2;
‘Programme of Singapore Amateurs’, Straits Times, 8 April 1925, p. 1.
6
‘Wireless in Malaya’, Straits Times, 28 December 1925, p. 11; ‘Bancam’, ‘Work
of the Pioneers in Malaya. I – History of the A.W.S.M.’, Omba Pende, August 1931,
pp. 16–17; Drew O. McDaniel, Broadcasting in the Malay World: Radio, Television, and Video
in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Publishing,
1994), p. 24.
7
‘What’s on the Ether?’, Omba Pende, July 1931, p. 16; ‘Singapore’s Experimental
Station’, Malayan Radio Review, 20 June 1932, pp. 3–4; ‘Z.H.I. Singapore Calling’,
Radio Magazine of Malaya, 1 February 1936, pp. 9–10.
8
‘What’s on the Ether?’, pp. 16–17. Reception reports were also published in the
Malaya Tribune’s daily column ‘To-day’s Radio’.
5
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
171
However, powerful short wave receiver sets were expensive and few
people could afford them. Foreign programming also did not fulfil the
need for local content, not only in terms of entertainment but also
for news and market reports, and in a language that listeners could
understand. In the opinion of the Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya,
‘broadcasting is not a luxury but a necessity to a civilised country’ and
official involvement in broadcasting was necessary—whether at the
level of a short wave empire-wide service, or at the local level—in
order to ensure a reliable service.9 In 1931, the society was re-formed
with the aim of petitioning the government on broadcasting matters.
At this time, the BBC was also making plans for its Empire Service,
which began operating on 19 December 1932. Correspondingly, a
reliable radio schedule of ‘Empire Radio To-Night’ was published in
the Singapore daily press, a vast improvement compared to pre-Empire
Service days when the Malaya Tribune relied on its readers to submit
reception reports and schedules of ‘likely transmissions’. The role of
wireless radio in shaping and bolstering an imperial identity had been
widely recognized from very early on. In early 1924, advertisements
by the newly incorporated Malaya Broadcasting Company read:
The printed word has had an effect, the potency of which does not need
emphasis today, but the appeal of the human voice, reaching hundreds
of thousands – nay, millions – of people, simultaneously, opens out vistas
that stagger the imagination. . . words fail to express the effect that will be
produced throughout Great Britain, when on the occasion of the opening of
ceremony of the British Empire Exhibition, on the 23rd inst., His Majesty
the King speaks to his subjects. . . It will be more difficult to imagine the
overwhelming effect that will be produced throughout the King’s Dominions,
when His Majesty the King-Emperor, for the first time, speaks to his subjects
overseas. . . and when the King speaks, will you in British Malaya want to
hear his voice? Are you ready to listen-in to His Majesty the King?10
Despite the formation of the Malaya Broadcasting Company in
Singapore as early as 1924, the failure of the Straits Settlements
government to live up to its promise to issue a transmitting licence
resulted in the company lying dormant.11 On another level, an
awareness of the empire impacted on everyday life through the
marking of dual time—the local time as well as Greenwich Mean
Time, sounded by the chimes of Big Ben on the Empire Service. A
9
‘Five dollars for nothing’, Omba Pende, July 1931, p. 3.
Quoted in a letter by Powell Robinson of the Malaya Broadcasting Company
Ltd., to Omba Pende, August 1931, p. 24.
11
‘Broadcasting’, Straits Times, 29 June 1931, p. 18.
10
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
172
CHUA AI LIN
Malaya Tribune editorial entitled ‘Big Ben links Empire’ emphasized
this, saying: ‘remember that to us out here, it is the day’s worst
disappointment when someone is allowed to talk through the time
for Big Ben to strike’.12 Over time, the regular chimes of Big Ben
would have taken on a warm familiarity for Malayans, associated with
a steady reliability and the pleasures of radio listening.
Not long after the introduction of the Empire Service in Singapore
in mid-1933, listeners were finally able to enjoy reliable, professional,
domestic broadcasting on a daily basis with the launch of Radio ZHI, a
commercial station owned by the Radio Service Company of Malaya.13
ZHI was broadcast on the 49 metre short wave band which, unlike
other short wave bands, could also be received by crystal receiver
sets. Simple and affordable, crystal receivers were often constructed
at home by amateurs during the early days of radio. The 13, 16 and 19
metre short wave bands used by the BBC required more sophisticated
and expensive valve receivers.14 The ZHI short wave signal was clearly
received by listeners not only in Singapore but across Malaya, who
appreciated the strong and reliable radio signals compared to those of
the more distant stations. The thrice-weekly ZHI programme line-up
featured mostly European gramophone music, talks in English, and
live music relayed from local dance halls, as well as occasional Chinese,
Malay, and Indian music. By February 1935 ZHI began making plans
to increase the amount of Asian content, and a year later even faced
the problem of which Chinese dialect to give prominence to in its
vernacular music programming.15 However, at the end of December
1936 ZHI was closed down, despite unhappiness from faithful listeners
across the peninsula. The reason was that the Straits Settlements
government had always intended to organize broadcasting along
British lines, with a transmission licence awarded to a single monopoly
broadcaster for the whole of British Malaya.
The official policy was finally drawn up in 1934, and the licence
awarded in July 1935 to a new enterprise, the British Malaya
Broadcasting Corporation (BMBC). At the same time, Radio ZHI’s
12
‘Big Ben links Empire’, Malaya Tribune, 24 June 1933, p. 15.
Advertisement for the Radio Service Co. of Malaya, Omba Pende, August 1931,
p. 17; Singapore and Malayan Directory (Singapore: Singapor Printers Ltd., 1936), sub
voce ‘Radio Service Co. of Malaya’.
14
Details of broadcast frequencies were published regularly in the radio
programme listings in the daily newspapers.
15
‘First News of New Features for Malayan Broadcasting’, Straits Times, 6 February
1935, p. 5; ‘Chinese Music on the Air’, Straits Times, 9 June 1936, p. 12.
13
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
173
transmission licence terminated.16 The thinking of policy-makers was
that the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation was to be the
first local broadcaster to serve the masses across the entire Malayan
peninsula. Transmissions would be in the medium wave band, which
did not require expensive short wave sets, and powerful transmitters
would ensure that signals could be received across the country.
However, these grand plans were very far from the situation that
faced Malayan listeners in 1937. The first British Malaya Broadcasting
Corporation broadcasts, using the call-sign ZHL, were only accessible
to listeners in Singapore and Johore, the southernmost state on the
peninsular mainland. It was only in July 1938 that the British Malaya
Broadcasting Corporation finally started short wave transmissions
that could be received across the peninsula.17 In March 1940, with
the approach of war, the colonial government realized the potential
of broadcasting as a propaganda medium and decided to buy the
British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation, reorganizing the company
as the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation (MBC). The government
planned for the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation to be the most
impressive station outside of Europe, and the intended Far Eastern
Radio Service was to have broadcast regularly in 26 languages and
dialects. However, these grand plans were forestalled by the Japanese
invasion of Singapore in February 1942.18
This brief account of Singapore’s radio history reveals a complex
landscape of broadcasting at different levels—international and
local—which in turn was a function of the transmission distances
of different frequencies. The broadcasting mass medium initially
did little to create a local community of listeners. Instead, a diverse
range of international short wave stations grabbed the imagination
of audiences who were amazed at the ability to connect with distant
places, cultures, and languages. In the world of radio, the listeners’
abstract knowledge of world geography was put into practice and made
tangible, albeit transposed into the form of megahertz, international
time zones, incomprehensible tongues, and a smorgasbord of musical
styles. As one Philips advertisement emphasized, radio was ‘the key to
16
‘Radio Listener’s Disappointment’, Straits Times, 18 December 1936, p. 3;
‘Closure of ZHI: The Reason’, Straits Times, 19 December 1936, p. 12; ‘Listeners’
Protest at Closing of ZHI’, Straits Times, Radio supplement, 23 December 1935, p. 1.
17
‘All-Malaya to Hear ZHL’, Straits Times, 17 July 1938, p. 2.
18
McDaniel, Broadcasting, p.45.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
174
CHUA AI LIN
the world’.19 At the beginning of the 1930s, Singapore listeners had no
daily local broadcasts, and were unable to receive any British stations,
even though they could listen to the news in French, Dutch or Russian
and in English from America. The most obvious communities of
listeners with common interests and cultural references—Singapore
itself, the Malayan peninsula, and a British imperial network—were
glaringly absent.
As broadcasting developed, this open global outlook was overtaken
by more circumscribed identities along the lines of existing political
and geographical lines, which subsequent communities of listeners
mirrored. At the end of 1932 the first of these was a British imperial
identity, fulfilling the raison d’être of the Empire Service, followed
in 1933 by a Malaya-wide identity facilitated by the Singapore
station Radio ZHI. A Singapore-specific listening community came
about in 1937 with the first local medium wave broadcasts from
the newly set-up British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation. With a
clear intention to reach out to the vernacular masses through nonEnglish programming, Radio ZHL took on a more obvious local
character, and when the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation
took its programming onto the short wave band as well, the
listening community was once again extended to a Malaya-wide
one. Rather than a progressive development based on distance—
from local to regional to imperial to global—it was a haphazard
trajectory dependent on a combination of broadcasting technology,
commercial factors, and state regulation. In terms of using mass media
to create imagined communities of audiences, broadcast technology
reconfigured the process, making it much more diverse, unpredictable,
fluid, and ultimately contingent on both the available technology and
the provision of radio programmes.
Technological citizens and civil society
At the most active end of the spectrum of these radio communities
were those who organized, promoted, and participated in the work
of broadcasting itself. As with the history of motoring in Singapore,
in the field of wireless radio the very earliest interest came from
19
Malayan Radio Times, 24 May 1936, front cover.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
175
amateur enthusiasts.20 In fact, the first association in Singapore was
the Singapore Radio Society, established in October 1923, a year-anda-half before the Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya began.21 The
history of the Singapore Radio Society illustrates the close connection
between associational life, commercial interests, and the blurring of
dividing lines between the state and civil society during the mid1920s. The prime mover behind the Singapore Radio Society was
Powell Robinson, who later became the Managing Director of the
first local broadcasting company, the Malaya Broadcasting Company
Ltd., incorporated in April 1924. The society’s meetings were held at
the address of the company and prominent investors in the company
spoke at the society’s meetings.22 By the time the society held a
large public meeting in March 1925, it had won the support of the
Governor of the Straits Settlements, Sir Laurence Guillemard, who
agreed to be its patron. At this early stage, when broadcasting had
not yet become part of the state’s activities, there was no conflict
between the Governor’s support for the society and his official position.
However, nothing more was heard of the Singapore Radio Society
after March 1925. The motivation of its members was very likely to
have been closely tied to the progress of the Malaya Broadcasting
Company, and their energies refocused on establishing professional
broadcasting. A proposal was presented to the Straits Settlements
government for the introduction of receiver licence fees to fund radio
stations in Singapore, Penang, and Malacca, and this was followed
in 1926 by a government promise to give the Malaya Broadcasting
Company a broadcasting licence. However, this never materialized,
thus exposing deep divisions between the society and its official patron,
the Governor.23 The company eventually fell into abeyance, and in
terms of associational life, the Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya,
with its amateur broadcasting efforts, had taken over the lead from
the Singapore Radio Society.
The Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya encountered the same
issues regarding the relationship between the society, commercial
interests, and the state. It changed in character from being a small
20
Automobile Association of Singapore, Motoring Beyond 100: Celebrating 100 Years of
the Automobile Association of Singapore (Singapore: Automobile Association of Singapore,
2007).
21
‘Singapore Radio Society’, Straits Times, 3 October 1923, p. 10.
22
‘Malaya Broadcasting Company’, Straits Times, 5 April 1924, p. 8.
23
‘Mr P. Robinson “Broadcasts”’, Straits Times, 25 November 1931, p. 2.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
176
CHUA AI LIN
group of enthusiastic amateurs dabbling in a common pastime in
1925 to a larger society which, by the time of its revival in 1931,
saw lobbying the government as one of its primary functions. Unlike
the Singapore Radio Society, which was intimately connected to the
Malaya Broadcasting Company, the re-formed Amateur Wireless
Society of Malaya initially attempted to keep commercial vested
interests out of the society’s affairs by disallowing members of the
wireless trade from joining the society’s committee; only when this
was found to be impractical did the society alter its constitution.24
During initial discussions in 1930 on the matter of reviving a wireless
society, it was decided that the Governor, Sir Cecil Clementi, and
the Chairman of the Singapore Harbour Board, G. W. A. Trimmer,
would be invited to be the society’s patron and president respectively.25
However, these officials never did take up a position in the society, and
it would not be surprising if this was a result of the realization that it
would be best to avoid a repeat of the problems caused by the Singapore
Radio Society having the Governor as its patron yet finding itself at
odds with the state.
The potential for conflict between state and public opinion was
far greater for the new Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya in
1931. Changing conditions signalled that the time was ripe for the
association to become active once again. The society’s newsletter
Omba Pende reported an increase in the purchase of radio equipment,
greater press coverage of radio matters, and an intensification of
public demands for the broadcasting of British programmes, both
locally and from the metropole.26 Lobbying the state for reliable
broadcasting of programmes tailored to the Malayan listeners was
one of the key functions of the society. Significantly, participants
in the revived Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya were a far more
diverse group than the original set of European technical professionals
who had formed the society’s committee in the 1920s. Nearly 100
people submitted their names to join the society prior to the inaugural
meeting and ‘most of them are Europeans, Eurasians or Chinese, but
others are represented—Indians, Ceylonese, Malays and Japanese’.27
The first committee comprised European names familiar in local radio:
R. E. Earle, F. E. A. B. Sewell, C. H. Stanley Jones, and D. W. Mortlock,
24
‘Wireless in Malaya’, Straits Times, 19 February 1932, p. 16.
‘Radio Society’, Straits Times, 10 November 1930, p. 12.
26
‘Five Dollars for Nothing’, Omba Pende, July 1931, p. 1.
27
‘First meeting of Society’, Malaya Tribune, 31 October 1930, p. 10.
25
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
177
but it also included an equal number of non-Europeans: Eurasians,
O. E. Hogan and C. P. M. Martinus; an Indian, I. M. Nagalingam;
and a Chinese, Kwah Siew Tee.28 Even the venue of the society’s
meetings, the café at G. H. Sweet Shop in Battery Road, was courtesy
of the hospitality of the owner, J. Sarkies, an Armenian member of
the society.29
Even prior to this, non-Europeans demonstrated a significant
interest in radio. When the Singapore Radio Society organized the
first large-scale public meeting on the subject of wireless in 1925,
it was standing room only at the Singapore’s premier venue, the
Victoria Theatre. ‘The audience consisted of all nationalities, Chinese
ladies occupied the boxes and some of the circle seats, whilst Arabs,
Indian, Malays, Chinese, Eurasians and Europeans were there in
goodly number,’ reported the Malayan Saturday Post.30 At the same
meeting it was announced that several prominent Chinese had pledged
their support to the Malaya Broadcasting Company: Tan Kah Kee,
Song Ong Siang, Lim Nee Soon, See Tiong Wah, and Li Sing Yu,
who represented both the English-educated and Chinese-educated
sectors of the community. Tan Kah Kee, who had founded the Nanyang
) Chinese-language newspaper two years earlier,
Siang Pau (
also requested the paper’s management to help actively promote
radio in Malaya.31 These individuals represented community leaders
and entrepreneurs whose influence and financing would promote the
wireless radio in the mid-1920s. Soon after, non-Europeans began
making their mark as enthusiasts with an interest in technical
practicalities of radio in their membership of the Amateur Wireless
Society of Malaya.
The Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya also understood the
importance of increasing the size of the listening public. A critical
mass of listeners was needed to strengthen the society’s appeal to
the authorities responsible for the official provision of broadcasting
services. The Asian presence among empire radio listeners was
conveyed to the BBC and Colonial Office by the society, which asserted
that ‘we Britishers and English-speaking Asiatic races in this part of
the world feel keenly the absence of regular British programmes and
28
‘Radio Society Revived’, Malaya Tribune, 10 November 1930, p. 9.
‘First Meeting of Society’; advertisement for G.H. Sweet Shop, Omba Pende, July
1931, p. 4.
30
‘The Singapore Radio Society’, Malayan Saturday Post, 14 March 1925, p. 9.
31
Ibid.
29
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
178
CHUA AI LIN
would greatly appreciate efforts to speed up the process of bringing
the life and music of Britain to our imaginary firesides’.32 In 1933, the
society discussed lowering its annual fee from $12 to $2, and noted
that ‘should the proposition go through the Society looks for a big
increase in membership, especially amongst the Asiatic members of
the community’.33 In the society’s official organ, the Malayan Radio
Review and Gramophone Gazette (the successor to Omba Pende), the
inaugural editorial of June 1933 opined,
At the moment the bulk of radio enthusiasts come from the European
community and most of these people hold executive positions. Tact and
enterprise should enable each one of us to introduce the subject of radio to the
senior members of our non-European staff. It will be found that their interest
in radio matters is soon roused and needs but little guidance to develop a
healthy movement which will benefit us all. As long as radio enjoyment is
confined to Europeans and a few members of other communities, Malaya will
not occupy the position in radio to which it is entitled.34
What is clear is that Singapore residents were participating in a
movement concerning an area of technology in which the state had
little interest at this stage, and that non-Europeans too were being
drawn into a wider civil society.
The role of the press was a key factor in the growing interest of
Asians in wireless radio. As mentioned earlier, the Singapore Radio
Society had sought the support of a major Chinese newspaper, the
). Among English-language dailies, the
Nanyang Siang Pau (
Malaya Tribune was the prime mover behind the revival of the Amateur
Wireless Society of Malaya in 1930. The Tribune was known as the
‘krani’s paper’ (the clerk’s paper), with a wide readership in the Asian
community and a history of lobbying the government on various issues,
from municipal matters to political rights for Asians. Starting out with
sporadic articles in the late 1920s, the Tribune moved on to running a
weekly Friday column on wireless radio. The writer of the radio articles
and column was ‘Radiofan’, whose true identity was almost certainly C.
H. Stanley Jones, the assistant editor of the Malaya Tribune. He became
a committee member of the revived Amateur Wireless Society of
Malaya and was the editor of Omba Pende which began publishing in July
32
‘Five Dollars for Nothing’, p. 4.
Malayan Radio Review and Gramophone Gazette, July 1933, p. 33.
34
‘The Dawn’, Malayan Radio Review and Gramophone Gazette, June 1933, p. 1.
33
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
179
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
1931. Omba Pende was even printed at the Malaya Tribune press.35 Soon,
the other English-language newspapers in Singapore—the Singapore
Free Press and the Straits Times—also began giving more coverage to
wireless radio news and became firm supporters of radio.
The character of associational life changed as new technologies
became part of everyday life for a significant proportion of the
population. They were no longer clubs where gadget-obsessed
eccentrics found companionship with like-minded souls, but platforms
for citizens in the wider community to make their voices heard
by the colonial administration. Associations became instruments of
democracy for civic interests, and were a particularly important
avenue of expression under conditions that gave little room to
imperial subjects to participate in politics per se. In terms of political
development, the Straits Settlements ranked very low compared to
other Crown colonies. Until the formation of the Straits Settlements
Legislative Service in 1932, there was a ‘colour bar’ which prevented
non-Europeans from being appointed to higher civil service posts.
Despite reforms in the Legislative Council and Executive Council,
in 1924 and 1932 respectively, to include more Asian and nongovernmental representation, the resulting changes were extremely
limited: in the Legislative Council of 26 seats, there were only six
non-Europeans.36 Along with Hong Kong, the Straits Settlements
were the only two Crown colonies that did not have an unofficial
majority in the Legislative Council. New mass technologies created
spheres of activity where ordinary citizens found they could engage the
state to convey their needs and opinions, and this acted as a training
ground for democracy well before mass politics in the post-war era of
decolonization.
Widening participation: Asians, women, and youth
As a sphere for civic activism wireless radio broadcasting was made
even more significant by the way in which it was able to draw new
publics into its fold, beyond the European men who dominated the
Singapore scene. As we have seen, Asians were active promoters of
35
Malaya Tribune, 19 December 1930, p. 12; Omba Pende, July 1931, p. 1, back cover;
and November 1931, p. 1.
36
C. M. Turnbull, A History of Singapore, 1819–1975 (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford
University Press, 1977), pp. 157–58.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
180
CHUA AI LIN
radio from the earliest days and participants in public engagement
with the state. They also played a part in the radio industry as technical
staff and broadcasting talent. The consumer aspect of radio, which
gave it a presence in homes, schools, associational clubhouses, in shops
and amusement parks, brought more Asians, women, and youths into
the sphere of those with an interest in wireless radio broadcasting.
By dint of race, gender or age, these groups were much less visible
in public life, but their role as part of radio’s listening communities
gained them recognition as sections of society that had to be directly
catered for.
Asians were present behind the scenes from the very beginning
of wireless radio in Singapore, providing technical services as well
as programming content. When the Amateur Wireless Society of
Malaya started experimental broadcasting in 1924, the ‘Society’s
Chinese staff, Ah Swee and “Batchi”’ were acknowledged for helping
to solve the technical difficulties encountered.37 Radio magazines
carried advertisements for radio engineering services from Chinese
shops such as Soo Ban Soon, Chung Wah Radio Service, and
Kee Huat Radio Company, as well as the Indian radio engineer
behind S. P. Shotam and Co.38 or the Japanese Mitsuboshi Electric
Company which boasted of providing ‘repairs under the personal
supervision of a diplomaed [sic] engineer of the Nagoya Wireless
School’.39 Commercial directories reveal that a fair proportion of
radio and gramophone shops in Singapore during the 1930s were
owned or run by non-Europeans. The performing arts also gave
opportunities for non-Europeans to be heard on the airwaves. Unlike
the cinema, which was entirely dependent on foreign content, the
simpler demands of radio programme production allowed people in
Singapore to become active producers, and not simply consumers,
in this new sound technology. The earliest transmissions by the
Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya included performances by a
Eurasian, Mr Eber, as well as an Indian, Roy Minjoot, and his
band.40 In the 1930s, the amateur orchestra of the European-run
Singapore Musical Society included a fair number of Asians and
37
‘Bancam’, ‘Work of the pioneers in Malaya. I – History of the A.W.S.M.’,
pp. 16–17.
38
Denyse Tessensohn, Elvis Still Lives in Katong (Singapore: Dagmar Books, 2003),
p. 166.
39
Advertisement for Mitsuboshi Electric Company, Omba Pende, July 1931, p. 21.
40
‘Bancam’, ‘Work of the pioneers in Malaya. I – History of the A.W.S.M.’,
pp. 16–17.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
181
performed regularly on Radio ZHI.41 One notable performing group,
‘believed to be the only all-Chinese choir singing in English in Asia
today’, attracted many admirers among ZHI listeners across Malaya.42
Regular broadcasts from Singapore dance halls, especially those at
the Worlds entertainment parks, featured professional dance bands
most of which boasted Goanese or Filipino talents, such as the ‘Victor
Celeste Trio’ who performed on Radio ZHL in 1938.43
During the mid-1930s the number of radio listeners suddenly
increased, reflecting changes in receiver technology and creating a
greater diversity of listeners. In 1934, 931 licences were issued, more
than double the 353 licences issued in 1933.44 Improvements in
receiver technology resulted in off-the-shelf units that could receive
a clear signal without requiring much technical skill or knowledge to
operate and so encouraged the average person to become a regular
listener. A sign of the changing manner of radio listening was the
disappearance of technical articles from radio magazines of the mid1930s, which were replaced by reports on programming content. Two
fortnightly periodicals in Singapore also pointed to important shifts.
While earlier radio magazines functioned as the official organ of the
Amateur Wireless Society of Malaya, the Malayan Radio Times (1935)
and the Radio Magazine of Malaya (1936) were commercial publications
aimed at a mass readership. The latter was produced by the Radio
Service Company of Malaya, the owners of Radio ZHI. With its radio
supplies retail shops in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Penang, Seremban,
Malacca, and Ipoh, the Radio ZHI station in Singapore, and now the
Radio Magazine of Malaya, the company had a comprehensive marketing
strategy, and its high profile also helped to boost public awareness of
radio in Malaya.45
Broadcasting content had to take into account the diverse
backgrounds and specific interests of the expanded range of radio
listeners. From 1935, Radio ZHI included regular Chinese, Indian,
and Malay music in its broadcasts,46 and from the inception of Radio
ZHL by the British Malaya Broadcasting Corporation in 1937, it had
41
Paul Abisheganaden, Notes Across the Years: Anecdotes from a Musical Life (Singapore:
Unipress, 2005), pp. 56–58.
42
‘Unique Chinese Choir’, Straits Times, 19 November 1933, p. 10.
43
Abisheganaden, Notes Across the Years, pp. 8–9, 74; Malayan Radio Times, 11
September 1938, p. 32.
44
McDaniel, Broadcasting, p. 42.
45
Radio Magazine of Malaya, 1 February 1936, p. 2.
46
McDaniel, Broadcasting, p. 37; Malayan Radio Times, 16 February 1936, pp. 30–40.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
182
CHUA AI LIN
about two hours’ worth of non-English programming each day, mostly
in the form of Malay and Chinese music gramophone recordings
and children’s shows in Cantonese and Mandarin. In order to put
on these programmes, non-European staff must have been employed
by Radio ZHI and ZHL as early as 1935. At the very end of the
interwar period, the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation introduced a
major change in Singapore broadcasting in the scale of its vernacular
content, and trained Asians in a full-range of broadcasting-related
jobs.47 According to Malayan Broadcasting Corporation producer,
Giles Playfair, who was brought in from London, during the short
time that the corporation was operational, it ‘recruited and trained
locally a staff of 290 individuals, mostly Asiatics’.48 These included lowend support staff such as drivers and messengers, control engineers
who managed operations in all the studios, as well as announcers and
producers for the vernacular-language services. There were numerous
female employees working in supporting positions as secretaries and
‘switchboard telephonists’—mostly Eurasians and some Chinese, as
well as high-profile announcers, such as Zamroude Za’ba and Barbara
Lee.49 The fact that many of the local staff returned to work in Radio
Malaya after the Japanese Occupation, indicates the fundamental
role of the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation in creating a localized
broadcasting industry staffed by non-Europeans.
As broadcasting in Singapore became more sophisticated,
programmes were offered that specifically catered to women and
children, following the pattern in Britain where the BBC had separate
advisory committees for women’s and children’s programmes. In
June 1932 the Malayan Radio Review commented that ‘most radio
enthusiasts get a pretty tough time from their wives, wireless widows
they call themselves’, and yet one year later, when the magazine was
relaunched as the Malayan Radio Review and Gramophone Gazette—with
twice as many pages, more advertising, and at half the price—signs of
the female reader-listener were clearly evident. A ‘Women’s Page’ was
introduced and there were advertisements targeted at women, such
as one for Elizabeth Arden beauty treatments. Radio ZHL appealed
to the female listener with its weekly 15-minute ‘Talks for Women’
47
For a detailed personal account of work of the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation
from December 1941 to February 1942, see Giles Playfair, Singapore Goes Off the Air
(London: Jarrolds Publishers, 1944).
48
Ibid, p. 143.
49
Ibid, pp. 55, 69, 98, 123; Barbara Lee, oral history interview, Oral History
Centre, National Archives of Singapore, reel 1.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
183
at 7.30 pm on Thursdays; and wartime propaganda from the Malayan
Broadcasting Corporation in 1940 included a play about Florence
Nightingale ‘designed to rouse the courage of the women of Malaya’.50
According to an editorial in the Malayan Radio Review and Gramophone
Gazette’s ‘Women’s Page’, women listeners were a more serious radio
audience than men:
A woman’s interest in wireless is pre-eminently that of a listener. She wants a
good programme which will interest and amuse her and she is more exacting
and discriminating in her demands than the average man. His interest, if he is
an enthusiast, is more mechanical; he likes tuning in and getting obscure and
varied stations and seems more concerned with the quality of reproduction,
volume of tone and clarity than with the subject of the broadcast. . . But the
man who is not an enthusiast takes less interest in wireless than the average
woman.51
This analysis implied that women’s cultural interests led to a deeper
engagement with the transformative potential of modern mass media
than did men’s fascination with the mechanics of technology. The
different approaches of men and women to radio were echoed in other
forms of new mass media. The cinema was widely seen as attracting
a large female audience, who in turn were more obviously influenced
by what they saw on screen than were men. In comparison with the
cinema, radio had the potential to have an even greater impact on
women than men because it could be enjoyed within the confines of
the home, thus reaching out to many housewives. As the ‘Women’s
Page’ put it, ‘she has more time to listen in than her menfolk, for
where her work lies in the home, she can listen while she is doing her
daily jobs’.52
With the increasing technical simplicity and general popularity of
radio, listening to the wireless became one of the hobbies encouraged
in young people. In 1934, The Monitor, a ‘weekly newspaper for
young people of Malaya’, began a radio section focusing primarily on
addressing technical problems. By 1936, Radio ZHL was broadcasting
a short ‘Children’s Programme’ on four days of the week in English,
Cantonese, and Mandarin. Learning to build rudimentary crystal
receiver sets was also a good science lesson for students, and, with
the introduction of medium wave broadcasts in Singapore in 1937,
there were even programmes on frequencies that crystal sets were
51
Playfair, Singapore, p. 58.
‘Women’s Page’, Malayan Radio Review and Gramophone Gazette, June 1933, p. 25.
52
Ibid.
51
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
184
CHUA AI LIN
capable of receiving. The educational potential of radio was most
evident in the learning of the English language, which was one of
the aims of the BBC. In 1926, the Advisory Committee on Spoken
English was formed to decide on the usage and pronunciation of
both English and foreign words. Even in Britain itself concerted
effort was required in the endeavour to standardize spoken English;
radio and recorded speech became particularly important tools in
the pursuit of the same goals in the colonies where English was
learned as a foreign language.53 Many Anglophone Asians who read the
English daily newspapers or did clerical work in European merchant
houses or government offices did not come from English-speaking
homes themselves. Their fluency was acquired through a primary and
secondary education in English-medium schools. English textbooks
could be supplemented by recorded sound to improve spoken English,
in programmes such as the Radio ZHL ‘Children’s Programme’, as well
as those in ‘Received Pronunciation’ broadcast on the Empire Service.
The latter also functioned as a counter to the spread of American slang
and pronunciation through Hollywood movies, which was critically
noted by several contemporary observers.
The urban soundscape
Radio also made its presence felt in the daily life of Singapore’s
streets and contributed to the identity of Singapore as a modern
city. The growing presence of radio was important in expanding the
listening communities that this paper has focused on. During the early
years of the twentieth century there was a general ‘aural awakening’
because of the existence of more sound, as well as a greater variety
of sound, as the media studies scholar, Biocca, has noted.54 Beside
the explosion of music in society, with the advent of electrically
amplified sounds from radios and gramophones, the increased aural
stimulation of the modern city arose from the sounds of urban
congestion, mechanization, and machines.55 Observers’ descriptions
of Singapore in the interwar period also began to pay attention to
53
Robert McCrum, Robert MacNeil and William Cran, The Story of English, 3rd
edition (London: Faber & Faber and BBC Books, 2002), pp. 16–19.
54
Frank Biocca, ‘Media and Perceptual Shifts: Early Radio and the Clash of Musical
Cultures’, Journal of Popular Culture, 24 (2), 1990, pp. 1–15.
55
See the discussion of noise in Emily Thompson, The Soundscape of Modernity:
Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933 (Cambridge,
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
185
these distinctly modern soundscapes of the city. The rapidly growing
motor vehicle population on the island resulted not only in traffic
congestion, but also in ‘brakes grinding harshly and horns making
incessant pandemonium’.56
Recorded music and radio broadcasts became common sounds on
Singapore’s streets during the 1930s. In public spaces they could be
enjoyed for free as they filled shops in the city centre and spilled
out onto the adjacent streets. Stores selling radio and gramophone
equipment, records, sheet music, and merchandise related to popular
music had a direct commercial interest in playing gramophone music
or turning on the radio to attract potential customers. Advertisements
for the Radio Service Company read: ‘Open every evening up to
10 o’clock/Come in and hear what’s on the air’.57 Even shops and
businesses unconnected to the radio trade installed wireless sets to
attract customers. Prior to the Second World War, there were about
30 barber shops in the South Bridge Road area, with eight of them on
Smith Street alone. Two or three of the Smith Street barbers aimed to
outdo their competitors by placing radio-sets at their front entrances.58
A similar strategy was used at the Worlds entertainment parks, where,
for example, in January 1931, The New World News advertised a new
amusement feature: wireless radio broadcasts nightly from 7 pm to
10 pm with ‘Music! Songs! Speeches!’ from ‘Saigon, Bandoeng, Manila,
Soerabaya and Singapore’s Amateur Station, California (if on) on
an All British built Set’.59 Another way of enjoying what was on the
airwaves would have been to pay a visit to a neighbour’s home to listen
to their set. Particularly in rural areas, kampong-dwellers would have
crowded round the sole radio in the village, and radio listening took
the form of a communal activity.
Organized sound pervaded not just the spaces of the city, but also
its horological cycles. Broadcasts could be tuned into at all hours of
the night from the other side of the globe, and those who owned a
radio or gramophone were no longer tied to the opening hours of
public venues to enjoy music or catch up on international news. This
Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002), Chapter 4 ‘Noise and Modern Culture, 1900–
1933’.
56
‘Spark-Plug’, ‘Motoring in Malaya: The Craze for Power and Speed’, The Christmas
Herald of Malaya, 1929, p. 32.
57
Omba Pende, August 1931, p. 17.
58
Tang She Choon, oral history interview, Oral History Centre, National Archives
of Singapore, reel 7.
59
The New World News, 31 January 1931, p. 14.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
186
CHUA AI LIN
provoked a public debate on the ‘noise’ in urban centres like Penang
and Singapore: ‘In our Singapore suburbs, with their open houses
and different nationalities, the gramophone, especially the electrical
type, can be a very real nuisance.’ This was particularly said to be
the case for Muslims whose prayer times were thereby disrupted.60
Eventually, the problem had to be dealt with by law, and in 1934 the
Minor Offences Ordinance, in relation to ‘post-midnight noises in the
Colony’, was amended to prohibit the playing of gramophone and radio
music after midnight except with the written permission of the police,
in addition to the original categories of ‘any drum or tom-tom, or blows
[of] any horn or trumpet, or beats or sounds [of] any brass or other
metal instrument or utensil’.61 This new legislation was part of a long
history of attempts by colonial authorities to maintain order in the
urban environment. For example, large Chinese religious festivals,
such as the Chingay procession, were restricted by the 1867 Peace
Preservation Act, an ordinance primarily concerned with controlling
rioting, but which also effectively contained loud and colourful social
events.62
The mystique of wireless radio
Juxtaposed with the development of radio as an increasingly
commonplace and quotidian phenomenon was the impression of
wireless broadcasting as something intangible and mysterious. But,
instead of being at odds with its increasingly everyday existence, the
novelty of wireless radio transmissions was an important factor in
capturing the attention and imagination of the masses. Of all the
new communications technologies of this period, radio was perhaps
the most conceptually astounding for the average person. Radio
transmissions crossed immense distances without any lag in time
and with no visible means of transmission. For many people, it
seemed almost mystical. ‘Through the medium of the ether the radio
enthusiast ranges far over continents and oceans, and is in touch
60
Bumiputera, 14 July 1934, quoted in Tan Sooi Beng, ‘The 78 rpm Record Industry
in Malaya Prior to World War II’, Asian Music, 28 (1), 1996–97, p. 14.
61
Ibid, pp. 14–15.
62
Song Ong Siang, One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore (1923;
reprinted Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 146–47; Victor Purcell, The
Chinese in Malaya (1948; reprinted Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1975),
p. 125; Edwin Lee, The British as Rulers: Governing Multiracial Singapore, 1867–1914
(Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1991), pp. 57–60.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
187
with one of the greatest and most mysterious phenomena revealed by
science,’ wrote A. W. Jansen in the school magazine of St. Joseph’s
Institution.63 Jansen continued,
Many a time could I be seen sitting in front of my receiver with headphones
firmly clapped on to my ears, my inscrutable eyes resting impassively on the
tuning dial like those of an ancient Egyptian priest meditating before the
shrine of Osiris.64
Radio and psychic powers were forms of communication where the
means and method of contact was intangible and inexplicable to
most. Both provided privileged access to certain kinds of information
and required the intermediary of a wireless set—or medium. An
advertisement for RCA Victor radio receivers expressed this technosupernatural relationship by describing the radio as a ‘Magic Brain’
with ‘Magic Eye’, words which invoked mystical powers.65
There seems to have been a general attraction to the fantastical
during this era, whether in the form of modern science or the
supernatural. Recent historical studies have begun to emphasize the
‘enchantment’ of modernity, in contrast to the long-standing view that
the science, secularism, bureaucracy, and rationalism of the modern
age stamped out spirituality and a belief in ‘wonders and marvels’.
Modern enchantments appeared in Europe and America in the form
of fin-de-siècle German occultism, the freak shows of P. T. Barnum, and
the illusionist performances of magician, Jean-Robert Houdin, among
others. Each of these examples also established a close link between
modern marvels, popular culture, mass media, and consumerism.66
The same phenomenon has been observed in the Dutch East Indies
by Rudolf Mrázek, who sees parallels between the practice of the
occult and that of radio. The Indisch Spiritisch Tijdschrift (Indies Spiritist
Journal) was as popular as the Orgaan van de Ned. Ind. Radio Amateurs
63
A. W. Jansen, ‘Radio as a Hobby’, St. Joseph’s Magazine, 1931–32, p. 40. Jansen
was probably an old boy of the school, as the magazine included writings from students
and teachers as well as the school’s alumni.
64
Ibid.
65
Malayan Radio Times, 7 June 1936, inside front cover.
66
Michael Saler, ‘Modernity and Enchantment: A Historiographic Review’, American Historical Review, 111 (3), 2006, <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/
ahr/111.3/saler.html>, [accessed 8 October 2011]. Among the works discussed by
Saler are Corinna Treitel, A Science for the Soul: Occultism and the Genesis of the German
Modern (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); James W. Cook, The Arts of
Deception: Playing with Fraud in the Age of Barnum (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard
University Press, 2001); Simon During, Modern Enchantments: The Cultural Power of
Secular Magic (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002).
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
188
CHUA AI LIN
Vereeniging (Journal of the Association of Netherlands Indies Radio Amateurs),
which sold at least 5,000 copies monthly.67 In Singapore, Sripaty’s
Magazine, ‘A Monthly Devoted to Astral Mental and Occult Sciences’,
first published in 1908, was revived in 1925 and was still going strong
in the early 1930s. Another Indian-run periodical from Singapore,
The Orient Gong, contained a substantial number of advertisements
and articles on spiritualism, such as ‘Occult Ethnology’ and ‘What
is Radiant Energy?’.68 For the urban public in Singapore it seemed
that an eclectic combination of esoteric spiritualism from around the
world came together in their city, easily incorporating a vocabulary of
scientific rationalism and academic qualifications. Within the city,
the mystical also sat comfortably in the heart of the fashionable
downtown, in Capitol Building itself, which was the home of the
premier luxury cinema. As advertised in the Singapore-based Hollywood
News Magazine, here was to be found ‘Guru Max’, representative of the
‘The Ancient and Mystical Brotherhood of Applied-Psychologists of the
“Yoga Method”’, who offered to teach ‘this uncanny and super-natural
OCCULT SCIENCE!’ such that one could ‘Know the Manifestations
of The Great BEJONG! Live again in a New Spirit! Conquer The Word
“FEAR”! Have a MASTER MIND & A DOMINATION WILL! BE A
MASTER OF MEN.’69
With the technological and supernatural combined, it was a short
step to science fiction in the popular imagination. The link to radio
was most directly expressed in the cover design of the Amateur
Wireless Society of Malaya’s official organ from 1933, the Malayan
Radio Review and Gramophone Gazette (see Figure 1). It illustrated sound
waves travelling upwards from a man at a radio console towards a
picture of the entire globe at the top of the page, with the world map
centred on Asia and the Malayan peninsula. Scenes from around the
world were depicted, from American-style skyscrapers, to snow-capped
mountains to minarets and Islamic domes, to Chinese roofs and palm
trees. In the same vein, the word ‘universal’ was a popular choice
at the time for Singapore businesses, particularly those associated
with new technologies and modern industries, for example, Universal
Cars Ltd.; Universal Motor and Accessory Co.; the Singapore branch
67
Rudolf Mrázek, Engineers of Happy Land: Technology and Nationalism in a Colony
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), pp. 172–73.
68
The Orient Gong, August 1936, pp. 464–66, 490–91.
69
Hollywood News Magazine, 1 May 1935.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
189
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
Figure 1. Cover of the Malayan Radio Review and Gramophone Gazette, July 1933.
Source: British Library.
of the Hollywood firm, Universal Pictures; and The Universal Trade
Co.70
70
Singapore and Malayan Directory, 1936, sub voce ‘Universal Cars Ltd.’, ‘Universal
Motor & Accessory Co.’, ‘Universal Pictures’, ‘The Universal Trade Co.’.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
190
CHUA AI LIN
Conclusion
The modern technology of wireless radio paved the way for many
changes in colonial society in Singapore. At the broadest level, wireless
radio created various levels of communities of listeners, drawing in a
wide range of social groups. In so doing, radio empowered more sectors
of society—non-Europeans, women, and young people—in a pattern
parallel to the growing spread of education. It did so not only in direct
ways through information dissemination, but also more indirectly by
opening up imaginative possibilities through access to broadcasting
from around the world. The relationship of Singapore residents to
wireless radio was more than a practical one of technological skill: it
was also about cultural exposure and cognitive shifts in understanding
the world in terms of time, space, science, and magic. Even the
fundamental auditory, lived experience of the city was deeply altered
by the allure of broadcasting combined with the phenomenon of
electrically amplified sound.
One key facet of this history of wireless radio in Singapore before
the Second World War is the passive role of the colonial state until
a very late stage. It loomed large only as a major obstacle to the
development of radio, especially through failing to develop and execute
an official policy for regulating the broadcasting industry. Instead, the
impetus for taking up this new technology and seeing the revolutionary
imaginative possibilities it offered came from members of the public—
amateur enthusiasts as well as entrepreneurs, supported by the press.
The field of wireless radio provided an important space for the
flourishing of civil society, functioning independently of the state, as
well a site from which to agitate for the authorities to play a larger
role in expanding broadcasting. This helps us to understand important
factors beyond the state and to locate agency in colonial society more
precisely. We need no longer be blinded by a narrow focus on the
slow pace of constitutional development in the Straits Settlements
when it comes to tracing the roots of democratic participation, and
we can begin to locate those roots in the interwar era, well before the
independence movement of the 1950s.
The sphere of radio also illustrated the opportunities for multiracial
interaction in colonial society. It was a combination of European
expertise and Chinese financing that lay behind the first broadcasting
venture, the Malaya Broadcasting Company in 1924. Subsequent
radio organizations all included non-European participants and had
to make active provision for the Asian listeners who formed the bulk
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69
RADIO IN INTERWAR SINGAPORE
191
of the population. More than a simple classification of European and
Asian, the sources show the immense diversity of the Asian ethnic
communities involved. The Chinese were the dominant ethnic group in
Singapore and were prominent as businessmen as well as in technical
services, but they were by no means the only Asian group present in the
history of Singapore radio. The full cosmopolitan range of Singapore
society was represented, and the lingua franca of English was where
the interaction and engagement was concentrated.
That cosmopolitanism was reflected in the truly international
scope of short wave radio. This challenged the dominance of British
cultural influence in its colonies, just as the popularity of Hollywood
films introduced widespread American influence across the British
empire during the same era. Although British programming became
a staple on the Singapore airwaves after the establishment of the
BBC’s Empire Service, there were many other reliable stations from
around the world that Singapore listeners were familiar with and
whose schedules were reported in the daily newspapers and the
radio magazines. The cultural landscape of the city was deeply and
diversely cosmopolitan, with the international scope of wireless radio
being a modern, mass-mediated extension of the mix of ethnicities,
cultures, languages, and religions that made up Singapore. The island
had always been a regional and global trading emporium in which
diverse peoples, ideas, and commodities were to be found, and even
under British rule, a much more international range of extra-British
influences existed. Hence, even though Singapore had a clear identity
as a British colony, it is important not to overstate the ‘Britishness’ of
the place and to recognize the full range of its external influences.
http://journals.cambridge.org
Downloaded: 12 Jan 2014
IP address: 137.132.123.69