Getai in Singapore’s seventh month

Song stages: from amusement parks to neighbourhoods

Getai (歌台), literally “song stage,” is live popular entertainment built around singers, hosts and interaction with an audience. In Singapore, its glittering costumes, amplified music and multilingual banter are especially familiar during the seventh lunar month. Hokkien has a prominent place, alongside Mandarin and other languages. A host's jokes, introductions and exchanges with spectators connect the individual songs into a shared evening.

Getai was already part of Singapore's amusement-park entertainment in the 1940s, during the Japanese Occupation. Singing venues combined resident performers and live bands, and programmes expanded to include dance, sketches and other acts. By the 1950s, getai was well established in the city's major amusement parks, with competing venues and audiences who could request songs.

The neighbourhood stage developed through a change of setting. Television challenged amusement-park entertainment in the 1960s, and getai performers increasingly found engagements at temples and in residential districts. Invitations from seventh-month organising committees gave them a new circuit. The growth of public housing in the 1970s provided further neighbourhood venues. This movement brought a popular entertainment form into an expanding calendar of community observance.

Entertainment within seventh-month observance

During Singapore's seventh-month Hungry Ghost observances, a getai show can entertain living spectators while being offered to spirits. The familiar practice of leaving front-row seats empty for spirit guests makes that unseen audience part of the arrangement. The reserved seats have a religious purpose even when the programme consists of popular songs and comic banter.

Temporary stages occupy places such as housing-estate courts and car parks. Lighting, sound equipment, screens and elaborate outfits give some shows the scale and appearance of a pop concert. Behind the performance, committees commission the event, organisers book artistes and production teams prepare the stage. The show belongs to a wider gathering that may also include offerings and a communal meal.

Getai became a major alternative to opera in the seventh-month entertainment circuit. Both can be commissioned for observances, although their music, performance conventions and repertoires differ. Getai's use of Hokkien songs and conversation also gives the language a lively public setting beyond the home.

Performance dates and changing settings

Seventh-month shows are scheduled across the lunar month by the committees and venues hosting them. They are not all concentrated on Zhongyuan itself, lunar month seven, day fifteen. Performers move between engagements, so a local audience may encounter different singers on successive evenings.

Getai also appears at community celebrations and on theatre or broadcast stages outside the seventh-month circuit. Livestreaming extends the audience beyond those seated at the venue, and recordings allow songs and performances to circulate afterwards. A ritual engagement and a staged concert can share performers while remaining different kinds of event.