新谣
XINYAO IS...
A genre of Mandarin songs that dates back to 1980s Singapore,
when it was popular. It had its beginnings in the 1970s where its music
was influenced by Taiwan’s Campus Folk Song Movement (校园民歌).
Composed and sung by college youths, these songs had a distinctive style of clean acoustics and traditional story-singing style; Shuōchàng (说唱).
Xinyao was coined at the 1982 seminar, 我们唱着的歌 (Wo Men Chang Zhe De Ge) where the topic of Singaporean composed music was discussed. It stands for a longer phrase: 新加坡年轻人自创的歌谣 which meant songs composed by young Singaporeans
Xinyao was the voice of the youths as they sang of their everyday life and experiences while growing up in Singapore. These songs would usually fall under five themes as seen in the below illustration:
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爱情 Love
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友情 Friendship
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亲情 Familial
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生命及世界感怀
Feelings Towards Life and The World -
文化、社会与家国之情
Cultural, Societal & National
