Yesterday I booked my ticket for this musical in Singapore for this August under some rather strange circumstances.
I have known the music from this musical since 1976 when our school band played excerpts. I loved the music and of course I didn’t know who the composers were or the storyline and it’s surrounding controversies then. Soon after playing this piece in the band, a friend from the band took me to Sungei Road to buy a pirated cassette of this musical for $2. I must confess that I didn’t appreciate the rock nature of the singing then.
Years later of course I was reintroduced to this musical via the movie soundtrack and I learnt about Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and what this musical was about.
This musical came out in 1973. The movie version came out soon thereafter and was shown here in the 1970s. So I couldn’t understand the noise in social media by some religious groups calling for a ban on the musical here and expressing concerns about the governments’ decision to allow it this here. Weird. This is not a new work. It has been around some 50 years and has been shown here and the movie has always been freely available here. Why the concern now? In any case, I have seen nothing controversial in the musical. If a religion is fearful of what a book or movie would do to the foundations of the religion, then surely something is wrong? Faith must be based on firmer foundation.
I purchased my ticket immediately after reading the concerns by the religious groups. Strange that they ended up encouraging me to go when under normal circumstances I may not have gone.
daily musings 
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