Street entertainment may or may not be a new concept to you, depending on your age. Back in the day, itinerant street vendors distinguished themselves and the wares they sold using a hook or an entertainment gimmick such as a song or a visual demonstration. At other times, the entertainment was the commodity sold. Today street buskers are back in Singapore, but because of the licensing requirement they may not be as spontaneous or as colourful as they were in the past. Chinatownboy blogs about the reemergence of street buskers in Chinatown, and how different it was in the past.

He writes:

Long gone were the singers of yesteryears. For a while, there were no street entertainers in the streets of Chinatown. Not even the koyok man (street pedlars and performers who would use drums and gongs to welcome the onlookers like Ah Hia, Ah Chek in Hokkien, followed quickly by his assistant in Cantonese like Ah Kor, Ah Jie, each accompanied with a hit on the gong). There might be one or two “medicine man” demonstrating his prowess in gongfu and selling the traditional Chinese oil for rubbing tired muscles in some of the fairs organised.

Today, the street buskers and entertainers are of a different kind, perhaps more accurately described as open-air karaoke singers? You can see videos of them in Chinatownboy’s blog here.