Singaporeans love a good sing-along song. Performed for the first time at Singapore Day 2014 in London, Singapore, It’s Where We Belong was written by Sharliza Rahman (aka her stage name Sharliza Jelita). Members of the Singaporean community in the UK mooted the idea of producing a community music video based on this song, hence the project was born. To date it has achieved over 200,000 impressions on social media and shared alongside official SG50 publicity in both Singapore and UK.
For Singapore’s milestone 50th anniversary of independence, an upbeat, exciting song which celebrates and acknowledges our success and ‘never-say-die’ spirit so far, with still more ambitions and dreams to look forward to, is a message that resonates with us. Indeed this jubilee year has been quite a rollercoaster ride for us as a nation, with the passing of our great leader Mr Lee Kuan Yew, winning the FA Cup with our spectacular LionsXII team, losing precious young lives at Mount Kinabalu and a record-breaking performance at the SEA Games, amongst many challenges and triumphs.
This video is made with encouragement from friends and family, and support from the SG50 committee, OSU and SUKA. We have showcased in this video Singaporeans from all walks of life and our day to day reality; eating, cooking, commuting, working, playing, hanging out together, implicitly capturing the spirit and sense of belonging which bonds our people and community. This theme is embodied in the ‘making-of’ the video – most of the footage was crowd-sourced, taken by real people, of real people, at real events and situations. We also featured two talented and promising Singaporean dancers, Zunnur Zhafirah and Maybelle Lek, whose beautiful choreography we get to enjoy in the video.
For Singaporeans overseas, hopefully the song brings on a call for us to remember where we belong, and that everyone can make a contribution to our homeland no matter where we are.