Coolies' Chorus
2025
Single-channel video,
Black and white,
Sound,
1 hr 10 min
2025
Single-channel video,
Black and white,
Sound,
1 hr 10 min
Coolie's Chorus presents fourteen Malaysian Tamil folksongs across a range of genres, including lullabies, work songs, laments, and romance songs. More than a historical restoration, Gogularaajan captures a conversation rooted in call-and-response, improvisation, and experience.
As folk singers from Tamil Nadu respond to one another's prompts and ideas, the songs are coaxed into being, occupying a space between memory and imagination. Many of them express longing for a distant homeland as they reckon with their present land of Malaya.
By bringing together deep knowledge of Tamil folksong traditions with diasporic memory, Coolie's Chorus enacts a homecoming, not to recover what was lost, but to carry forward their voices as a missive of their experience.
Coolies’ Chorus is now showing in Plantation Plot exhibition at Ilham Gallery. The exhibition features artists and collectives from Southeast Asia and the Americas, exploring the impact of the plantation system on people, culture and land — including the forced migration and labour of Tamil communities across the world.
Find our video exhibition on Level 5 @ Ilham Gallery and it runs from 20 April – 21 September 2025.
Entrance to the exhibition is free.
Ilham Gallery is closed on Mondays.
Credits
Singers: Kalaimamani Chinnaponnu Kumar, Mu. Athi Raman, K.P. Ambikapathy, M. Santhirasekaran, Dr. Gobu
Director : Gogularaajan Rajendran
Producer: Kumanavannan Rajendran
Translator: Deena Dakshini
Additional Translations: Mutharasu Ramasamy
Sound Engineer : Neroshen Thanaseharan