Songs for gods, music for men

Tua Pek Kong celebrates his birthday this lunar month, and boatloads of pilgrims overrun Kusu in waves of devotion and hope. During this season, the members of the Siong Leng Musical Association pack their instruments and arrive to deliver a faithful tribute to the pantheon that resides in the temple's halls. In their songs and chants, they offer a aural reminder of the days when deities lived not on altars but amongst men as guides and guardians between truth and calamity.

This night, the songs were less a celebration than an eulogy, for the lady who once maintained the shrines and delighted in these airs had passed into the invisible realm. One of her daughters now takes her place, listening and weeping as the singers pierced the damp and heavy halls with cries punctuated by woodblocks and borne by the plaintive strength of a dizi. Bowed and plucked by old hands and young arms, strings in sets of twos and threes mourn the late keeper in melodies that have outlived their makers to bear the burden of diminishing memories and forgotten lives.