Among the many stories in our community, we bring to you one about a passionate individual who loves the sport of Kabaddi.
Mr Dalbir Singh (Dhandal) was part of a team of players who played Kabaddi for the Singapore Khalsa Association (SKA) in the 1980s-1990s. His team was even sent to Mumbai, India for a Kabaddi tournament in 1984 to compete against teams from 5 countries!
He started playing Kabaddi from the age of 10 with his brothers (2 of whom were also in the SKA team) and honed his skills with a band of muscular young men while touring the Kabaddi circuit in Singapore and Malaysia.
While the scene may have faded in Singapore, he still helps out in exhibition matches during major festivals and events as a Kabaddi referee, and hopes that the energy and enthusiasm for Kabaddi could one day be reignited in our community!
Check out our video interview with him to hear his story and his love for the game!
Many bands are known for passionate love songs or gut-wrenching riffs. Thambi K Seaow was not necessarily one of them but they sure did have a way of sending across their message! The parody band made waves in the late 2000s and early 2010s with hilarious and often vulgar tunes to break the monotony of politically correctness!
Inspired by fellow local band Boredphucks who were banned in Singapore and went to Australia to play as The Suns, Thambi K Seaow began in 2008 as grunge rockers who sang in sarongs and slowly gained popularity in Singapore, eventually landing gigs at venues like the Esplanade Outdoor Theatre, Fort Canning and St James Powerstation.
The band started as a quartet with Shyam Raj on lead vocals, Tharenii on guitar, Rory on bass and Karan Grewal on drums.Their amazing discography had songs in English, Tamil, Punjabi, Malay and a smattering of colourful dialects to complete the local flavour. One of their first music videos was “Yineh Da Pakere” featuring some incredible acting by the band to illustrate the significance of the title!
The name “Thambi K Seaow” stemmed from “Thambi” which means brother in Tamil and “K Seaow” which means “to disturb” in Hokkien. The band wanted had no desire to provide tasteful music and devoted themselves to performing comedic routines with some crazy rock music. LOFI-SG TV did an interview with them to find out more about them and their work.
Their outstanding work was recognised by CNN when they were listed in CNN Travel’s top 25 of “Who Mattered Most in Singapore in 2009”. The boys were also interviewed by Utt Tv ahead of the release of their album “Your Mother” in February 2010. Support for their work was overwhelming when their album was sold out at on the first day of release at HMV!
The band gigged like crazy through 2010 at all kinds of bars, restaurants and stages to flaunt their relatable and catchy tunes. Their song “Sebab Saya Shotgun” that had a delicious lyric was played on radio station 89.7FM.
The band constantly interacted with fans on facebook with endless jokes and jibes that was sure to make anyone burst out in laughter. Eventually, with 10 songs in their repertoire, the band also released the lyrics on facebook to help their fans memorise the songs and join them onstage during their sets!
The boys were not afraid of putting themselves out there and continued making DIY music videos for their songs “Bak Kwa War (CCB)” and “Sebab Saya Shotgun”.
Of course,we can’t end this article without mentioning their song “Bhangra Rock” that had some crazy guitar and drums.
While the band is working on a new album, you can listen to their previous one at their Bandcamp page. You can also check out the craziness over the years from their Facebook page.
Our first video story on feature is, “Chak De”, a film produced and directed by Gurjeevaan Singh who is studying Film BA (Hons) at the Puttnam School of Film and Animation in LASALLE College of the Arts. The film was done as part of his first year group project which requires students to produce 2 observational documentaries in pairs.
Gurjeevaan chose Rajay for his film as he was interested in learning more about how Rajay juggles his passion for the various art forms with work and family. It took about 5 days to film the various scenes and a further 2 weeks to edit the documentary.
For observational documentaries, Gurjeevaan had to follow Rajay as he went about his day rather than prescribing to Rajay certain things to do. Intead of meticulous planning to get the action in frame, Gurjeevaan had to be alert and capture as much as he could on the go!
When asked how he felt watching the dholis from SMU that Rajay coached, Gurjeevaan shared that at first, he was not sure if they would be able to pull of an authentic “punjabi sound”. But after hearing them, he was amazed and could feel the “punjabiness” during the performance. It was a credit to Rajay’s coaching to teach an art and transcend cultures!
As he was editing the film, Gurjeevaan tried different sequences to tell the story and eventually settled on starting the film with scenes from the family home to set the tone of how Rajay prioritises family and still makes time for his passions.
At the end of the project, Gurjeevaan felt that if he had more time, he would have wanted to do a longer piece to really describe the variety and depth of experience that Rajay goes through in his pursuits. He also learnt more about the art form of pyrography, something he had never knew existed!
On why he titled the short film, “Chak De”, Gurjeevaan shared, “Rajay naturally has the aura for teaching / playing the dhol and spreads positive energy to anyone around him. Each time I see him, I feel like saying ‘ਚੱਕ ਦੇ’, and saying that, makes me in a good mood as well!”
