Geylang Happy Hour

Geylang Happy Hour (美丽芽笼时光 / ジェイランハッピーアワー) was a bi-weekly internet radio show hosted by Mark Wong and Debbie Ding, broadcast on the internet radio channel unpopular.radio. The radio show played a selection of diasporic Southeast Asian cha-cha, Hokkien Ah Beng Techno, and the occasional Russki Disco.

Geylang is a colourful area with many night supper spots and Singapore’s main red light district, and it was where I was living during the time of the radio show. We wanted to produce a simple radio show to share our interests in scouring the backstreets for Singapore/Asian disco music.

The show focused on misunderstood and misappropriated musical influences from the west, such as Asian New Wave covers of italo disco songs, made-for-karaoke versions of tracks, mono-track recordings, incomplete or imperfect mixes, unprofessional singing.