Tuesday, June 06, 2006
The Unknown Song
Living at home for the past month or so has reacquainted me with the sights and sounds of my neighbourhood, as well as getting them used to having me around. The most common feature of my immediate surrounding soundscape is that of my next door neighbour playing mahjong in the afternoons with her fellow retirees. However, today the usual chaotic clatter of plastic tiles hitting each other was strangely absent.
A short downpour had just come and gone, and all that was left was a light drizzle. My neighbour’s birds began chirping again after being overwhelmed by the sound of rainfall, interrupted only by the light rumbling of distant thunder and occasional punctuation with barks.
And as suddenly as the rain came, a voice broke out in song. A female soprano gave a rendition of a song I had never heard before, but caught my attention nonetheless for the timbre of her voice and the inflections that she sang with. It was gentle in tone yet commanding in projection, and I stretched to look out the window to investigate the source of this impromptu musical outpouring. The mythical Sirens came to mind, but I feared not for I was not a lonesome sailor out on the open seas. Not in the literal sense at least.
She was sweeping the floor of the residence next door as she sang, occasionally bending down to pick up wayward twigs and tie up rubbish bags. Music and song were probably her means of alleviating the tedium of household chores, much like how the early Afro-American slaves sought to get through the laborious day through work songs and cleverly-disguised protest songs. Like them, she too came from far away, though in better living conditions and employment terms. In all probability, she had a family to finance back home and a future to build for herself.
Not all of her compatriots have had it easy though. Increasingly shocking cases of maid abuse surface from time to time, ranging from overwork, reckless endangerment to outright assault and mutilation. The relationship between maid and employer is a complex one, subject to much interpretation between the two parties but skewed enormously to the part of the employer. Absolute power over another in servitude can bring out the best and the worst in human beings, and the perpetrators range from the uneducated to the well-heeled professionals. Surely, such cases are the minority but the sheer ferocity of the abuse being meted out sometimes begs the question of how many more suffer in silence, even if to a lesser degree that nevertheless cannot be condoned.
Not wanting to be caught in a potentially embarrassing situation, I backed out of the window and contented myself with listening in anonymity.
For as long as she felt like singing.
A short downpour had just come and gone, and all that was left was a light drizzle. My neighbour’s birds began chirping again after being overwhelmed by the sound of rainfall, interrupted only by the light rumbling of distant thunder and occasional punctuation with barks.
And as suddenly as the rain came, a voice broke out in song. A female soprano gave a rendition of a song I had never heard before, but caught my attention nonetheless for the timbre of her voice and the inflections that she sang with. It was gentle in tone yet commanding in projection, and I stretched to look out the window to investigate the source of this impromptu musical outpouring. The mythical Sirens came to mind, but I feared not for I was not a lonesome sailor out on the open seas. Not in the literal sense at least.
She was sweeping the floor of the residence next door as she sang, occasionally bending down to pick up wayward twigs and tie up rubbish bags. Music and song were probably her means of alleviating the tedium of household chores, much like how the early Afro-American slaves sought to get through the laborious day through work songs and cleverly-disguised protest songs. Like them, she too came from far away, though in better living conditions and employment terms. In all probability, she had a family to finance back home and a future to build for herself.
Not all of her compatriots have had it easy though. Increasingly shocking cases of maid abuse surface from time to time, ranging from overwork, reckless endangerment to outright assault and mutilation. The relationship between maid and employer is a complex one, subject to much interpretation between the two parties but skewed enormously to the part of the employer. Absolute power over another in servitude can bring out the best and the worst in human beings, and the perpetrators range from the uneducated to the well-heeled professionals. Surely, such cases are the minority but the sheer ferocity of the abuse being meted out sometimes begs the question of how many more suffer in silence, even if to a lesser degree that nevertheless cannot be condoned.
Not wanting to be caught in a potentially embarrassing situation, I backed out of the window and contented myself with listening in anonymity.
For as long as she felt like singing.
# posted by BloozeGit @ 2:04 pm 
