Inch Chua and SSO Revive Seldom-Heard Song About Vanda Miss Joaquim

If your first reaction to this tune was, 'Huh?! Got such a song meh?!", that was our reaction too. Who knew someone (Hong HIng Fun) actually wrote a song about Singapore's national flower in 1992 for Sing Singapore?

What's Sing Singapore? That's a festival inaugurated in 1994 by the National Arts Council to discover and promote homegrown artists and music. More importantly, if it weren't for Sing Singapore, we would never have had National Day classics like "Where I Belong" by Tanya Chua (2001) and Dick Lee's "Home" (1998). (Incidentally, you can hear "Home" sung in a 500-year-old creole language called Kristang here.)

Anyway, back to this song about the Vanda Miss Joaquim, which looks like this:

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A post shared by Orchid Valley (@orchid.valley) on May 6, 2019 at 5:39pm PDT

Like a fresh bloom, the seldom-heard song has been given new life by singer-songwriter Inch Chua and is featured on a new digital album of reimagined National Day classics. Entitled "Truly, SSO", the album is jointly presented by Warner Music Singapore and the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, and features 14 tracks arranged by Singapore composer and Cultural Medallion winner Kelly Tang.

"I've always love orchestral arrangements and have worked with an orchestra in Europe for my previous releases," says Inch. "Working with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra for a fresh take on 'Vanda Miss Joaquim' has been a wonderful experience."

Listen to the track below:

And for reference, listen to the original track here. It's a bit, um, high-pitched for our liking, but hey, if you can come up with something better, email it to us at [email protected]. We'd love to hear your composition!

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