A CHOIR, defined by the Oxford Dictionary, is "a group of trained singers".

The word brings up images of men and women singing in harmony as a self-contained body.

Choirs are a common sight in Singapore today. In schools, at churches; within community centres, at concert halls and malls each Christmas - you will find groups which call themselves thus. There are some few hundred choral groups here today, many of whom meet regularly for weekly practices.

How did choral singing begin in Singapore?

Backtrack a few centuries to the time when Singapore was still Temasek, and you will find the concept of a "choir" very different.

300 years ago, apart from solo vocal music of the court, choral music (taken in its broad definition) could be argued to have existed. It was found in the male chorus of the Javanese gamelan tradition; the religious chanting of forms like dikir barat.

300 years ago, further afield in India and China, choral music still had not taken off in a big way. In China, men and women sang their solo folksongs in the mountains. They put on the high drama with an opera show. The closest they came to making choral music, was through singing in unison while weeding the fields.

300 years ago, Singapore had not existed yet. But it was against this backdrop of choral activity (or lack of) that the genre took off in a century to come.

In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles founded the island, and invited these very peoples of China, India and the Malay archipelago itself to populate the port. With him came European residents who brought along their religion and choral traditions. The four-in-one mix began to spawn interesting musical results.

Dikir barat - native to the region - thrives till today, somewhat marginally, and will be discussed separately later.

But Western choral music - alien to non-Western settlers - began to enter the island with a force that would soon lead to an avalanche of general Western musical expansion. This influx of choral music was to have ripple effects on Chinese and Indian vocal forms.