Majulah Singapura: Zubir Said and the National Anthem honours the man whose life and works offer an insight into the socio-political structure of Singapore from the late 1950s to 60s. In particular, the national anthem Majulah Singapura by Zubir Said (1907-87) can be said to bridge the diverse social, cultural, and political landscapes of Singapore during turbulent times. As an early advocate for national music, Zubir wrote songs, articles, and delivered speeches on this topic.
The objective of this online exhibition on the Majulah Singapura is to represent the network of concepts to support visualization, associative browsing, and research. Its mindmap-like feature helps one make correlations between the various artefacts and events surrounding this work. Zubir’s manuscripts and printed scores, official and personal correspondence, as well as interviews on various print and online media will help the user build a coherent narrative on the significance of the national anthem for its people.
Majulah Singapura Online Exhibition
The music scores selected for this online exhibition include the early City Council versions of the Majulah Singapura! in numbered notation, as well as print and handwritten versions of the official anthem, and the familiar children’s day song Semoga Bahagia. The writings in this collection comprise some 30 items, representing official and business letters, unpublished drafts of material for articles, lectures, and speeches, and his personal correspondence with O. T. Irene (Old Timer) which captures Zubir’s sharp observations, wit and humour in private moments, adding a colourful element to his personality. The dozen photographs selected for this online collection feature Zubir formally and informally, alone, or with family and friends.
Research & Technology
The web of relationships among the artefacts, Web resources, concepts/topics and people are represented as a Knowledge Graph–a social network of information–to support associative browsing of related content, through two kinds of visualization interfaces: a text-based browse screen and a graph (network) visualization interface.
The Knowledge Graph and visualization interfaces are part of a research project to develop cutting-edge information representation and visualization systems for digital heritage portals–to support research and learning, and other kinds of information integration and knowledge synthesis.
This online exhibition is hosted on two linked websites: zubirsaid.info and zubirsaid.sg. The technologies employed include:
- A WordPress (content management) installation to host articles and digital files (at https://zubirsaid.info)
- Cytoscape.js javascript library for graph (network) visualization (hosted on https://zubirsaid.sg), with layout libraries (cola, fcose, cose-bilkent)
- React.js javascript library for implementing the text-based browse interface (hosted on https://zubirsaid.sg)
- Node.js javascript runtime environment + Koa Web framework (deployed on a Google App Engine) to host the middleware and API connecting the graph/text interface to the backend graph database.
- Neo4j graph database (as a Neo4j Aura cloud service) to store the knowledge graph and support graph matching and other graph operations.
Use of user behaviour data
Anonymous data derived from user behaviour on the Web pages and interfaces (page access, clicks and page scrolls) are captured using Google Analytics. They will be used by the project team only for research and development, and system management. Results from analysis of the data will be reported in research papers.
Project team:
Dr Eleanor A. L. TAN (School of Music, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts) — PI focusing on research and content (articles and digital resources).
Dr Christopher S. G. KHOO (Wee Kim Wee School of Communication & Information, Nanyang Technological University) — co-PI focusing on knowledge graph, system and interface development.
Ms NG Siam Gek (Independent Researcher and Web Author) — WordPress site development and management, and Webmaster.
Ms CHAN Chwee Fong (Independent Researcher) — knowledge graph and content development.
Ms Audrey Khoo (Georgetown University) — IT support and system prototyping.
Acknowledgements:
We would like to acknowledge the support of Puan Sri Datin Dr Rohana Zubir, Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Library (NAFA), Dr Rebecca Kan (NAFA), Mr Peter Linnitt (RCM), Emeritus Professor Malcolm Gillies (AM, KC), and Dr Emily X. X. Tan (Oxford).
We are also appreciative to Ms Reshma d/o Jethan, Ms Calista Lee Min Jun, and Mr Desmond Yong Thiam Ming for their contributions to the ontology development.