In the 60s, a home-grown country music band took to the
stage wearing long silk Chinese gowns with mandarin collars won the attention
of the honchos of Country Music. They were called Matthew and The Mandarins. The
band left behind a legacy in the form of a hit song called ‘Singapore Cowboy’ –
a song that sings of dislocation, cowboy in the tropics and ‘shanghaied’
country music. The documentary ‘Singapore Cowboy’ by Wee Li Lin pays tribute the song as well
as Matthew Tan, the voice behind the song who very much personifies everything
about it.
Aside from the strange choice of featuring the interviewer
like it was Adrian Pang’s Talk Show, the documentary brings us very close to
the heart of Matthew’s journey with this song ad of course, with his whimsical
country music career as a whole. The documentary is thoughtful in the way it
romantically analogises the highlights of Matthew’s life with the song. What we
see are not just a chronological sequence of events but anecdotal extensions of
the song which sings of ‘pipe-dreams’ and wanderlust. The only difference is of course Matthew did
not live in a pipe dream, it came true.
High octane moments like his first big time performance and
the US appearances aside, the documentary lives for a moment in our heads with
Matthew short episode of escaping to Nashville. While no one will bat an eyelid
if a young person decides to go on a life sabbatical to a faraway place for few
years, Matthew’s escape Nashville was in some measure audacious for his era.
The sepia-tinged old photo of him lounging in a seat with a dog in the midst of
a quiet town stokes in us a sense of reckless adventure that we sometimes
secretly desire. That was perhaps for me my point of entry into his world and
the heart of the film.
Check out Li Lin's film in this link.