Despite having performed in front of hundreds at the Singapore Street Festival earlier this year, local band And They Whisper In Silence recently played to an audience of fewer than 10 for the fourth episode of Radio Pulze’s “Live Lounge.”. 

Previous episodes of Live Lounge have seen similar turnouts despite inviting well known local bands such as “B-Quartet.” 

The program is a six-part broadcast series held at the Radio Pulze studio at the National University of Singapore. Local musicians perform three to four songs in front of a live studio audience and give interviews with Radio Pulze hosts. 

Dylan Loh, president of Radio Pulze, said Live Lounge was created to promote local music and provide a platform to bring local musicians to NUS. 

He said the program was conceptualized by Dr. Joseph Peters, conductor for the NUS Guitar Ensemble and NUS Rondalla. 

“It’s such a waste that so little NUS students come to Live Lounge,” said studio-audience member, Muhammad Nurikhwan Binsahri. “It’s such a great program, and Radio Pulze is the first campus radio to come up with such a concept.” 

Winniarti Marinni Donyada, Live Lounge’s project director, said the response was not ideal.
 
“To be really honest, I guess it’s not as good as we hoped it would be,” said Donyada. 

Donyada attributed the poor response to people’s not appreciating local music.  “They associate local music as merely a copy of international music (and) that lacks originality,” she said. 

Radio Pulze member Amanda Seah said another reason for the lukewarm response is the small market for local music. 

“There are people who support local music, but these are the people who like ‘indie stuff’,” said Seah. “And, as in any society, people who bother to go out to the fringes to look for indie stuff are not that common.” 

“Indie” refers to independent music or film, not affiliated with a major record or film company. 

Besides attributing the poor attendance at Live Lounge to the small numbers of indie music supporters, she said another factor for the lackluster response was the program’s lack of publicity. 

“Honestly, I wouldn’t know of the event if I wasn’t from Radio Pulze,” she said. “They should publicise it more aggressively.”

Donyada said Radio Pulze is trying to increase online publicity. 

“We’re trying to expand publicity a little bit more by working under online music portals that people know of, like Wake Me Up Music,” she said. “Other mediums include Facebook and MySpace.” 

Despite the small turn-out, Loh said, the response from the local music scene has been positive and many local musicians have expressed interest in the program. 

“We started off by just inviting bands that we know already were good, because they were established,” Loh said. “Now, bands send us their demo tapes. 

“A lot of them have written in saying that they would like to audition to perform on our program, so it is really encouraging for us,” he said. 

Muhammad Isa, drummer for “And They Whisper in Silence,” said the program provided the band with an avenue to perform in front of a live audience and to reach out to the NUS community. 

“It’s quite an honour for us to be here,” Isa said. “Even if there's only one person listening, that’s good enough already.” 

Some members of the Live Lounge audience said they hope to see more NUS students supporting these local bands. 

“These bands might very well be the next Electrico,” Binsahri said, referring to a local band that earned an MTV Asia Awards nomination in 2005. 

“When that happens, I think most NUS students will regret not coming to Live Lounge.”