Who gets the title reference? Anyone? Anyone? Answer: This song!

On Friday night, I joined two of my friends at the opening of the Night Festival here in Singapore. The Night Festival runs from 7pm-2am Friday and Saturday night for two weekends and consists of free museum admission to the Art Museum, National Museum, Peranakan Museum, and Philatelic Museum (that means stamp collecting!), as well as street performances, installation art having to do with light, dance performances, interactive stage performances, and food and drinks available on streets closed to cars. We were more than a little overwhelmed with options and choices, and largely unfamiliar with the wide area in which the festival was located, but we followed the crowds and the music, bought ourselves some strawberry margarita popsicles, and had a good time!

The New Stream Brass Band claims to be a New Orleans-style jazz band, and the word style is key. Growing up in Rochester and attending the Jazz Festival regularly has introduced me to enough jazz to recognize authentic New Orleans jazz. This wasn’t, but the musicians played and sang and got quite a large crowd. They were a lot of fun to watch because they were clearly enjoying them, and the music did remind me of bands of I’ve heard in the past.

I couldn’t help but take a picture of the food truck offerings from a truck called Cow. It was painted white with black spots!

The light installations all involved music or sound in some way, too. There were even fire dancers at one show!

These guitarists were really good!

I completely understand why children are fascinated with mobiles. So were we!

This was just sort of fascinating. The birds looked like they’d been made of wire.

Light show with fire dancers at the Singapore Art Museum

This group’s name is Alchemy – cool, right?

French graphic designers put together this display to celebrate Singapore’s 50th birthday

I got a good laugh at the civility of this festival. No one was walking on the grass to get underneath the giant mobile, but my American friends and I looked around at the lack of barriers or explicit signs, and did just that. People waited at crosswalks to cross the street. Only some streets were blocked off and there were crossing guards with whistles positioned at the streets that were still open to traffic. Even though alcohol was available, very few people were drinking. There was no trash anywhere. No one was climbing trees or light poles for a better view. It was all very, very calm. How strange!

I might go back next weekend to go to the Art Museum. I haven’t been there and this would be a good (read: free) opportunity to see what it has to offer.