This chapter uncovers how Malaya’s racially plural society was rearranged on the very material of celluloid. The connective tissues of the colonial documentary (such as editing, voice-over, narrative structure) converged colonial historicism with the mechanical unwinding of cinematic time. Films were rendered out of date, however, even before they were released when they were unable to keep up with Malayans who insisted on forging history on their own terms. Theorizing the asynchronicity of an indexical medium, this chapter argues that although colonial documentary films scripted Malaya through racialized periodizations of modernity, film was itself an asynchronous medium misaligned with the fractured temporalities of late colonialism in Southeast Asia.

British Malaya's toddy industry features in history as a problem that plagued the plantation economy, when the city toddy shop was no less important in contributing to a racialized discourse of modernity in Singapore. Although colonial policy served to engender the racialization of toddy drinking as a peculiarly Tamil vice, toddy's social life in Singapore demonstrates that it became the poor man's beer regardless of race. The alcoholic drink gave rise to new adaptations, enterprises, and innovations in colonial Singapore, thus carving out a unique place for itself in the city's cultural landscape. Yet, Singapore's toddy industry dominated the public spotlight for less palatable reasons, which rendered it the subject of numerous demands for increased government regulation. The colonial government responded with a slew of measures that often differed from the federation's toddy policy. Singapore's toddy industry yielded divergent imaginaries of modernity, particularly in the aftermath of the Second World War. Some reformers sought its abolition or relocation away from city spaces, whilst others demanded its modernization on the grounds that this meagre establishment was the labourer's sole source of recreation. In light of recent developments that have prompted the government's intervention in limiting migrant labourers’ access to alcohol, this article will examine the considerations that informed the colonial establishment's urban toddy policy and its corresponding impact on Singapore society as it sped towards decolonization. Through an exploration of toddy's treatment in the English-language press, oral histories, and colonial office records, this article seeks to contribute perspectives on an aspect of Singapore's social history that remains largely unexplored.

From the mid-1920s, Indian music scenes developed in Singapore that were not just about the construction of regional and religious forms of Indian diasporic belonging. Drawing upon European, Chinese and Malay influences (musical and otherwise), and performing in contexts that were uncommon in India, Singaporean Indian musicians contributed to non-Indian musics, while incorporating non-Indian influences into Indian genres. Such musical–communal interactions functioned in colonial Singapore to locate the island as a hub for the constitution of a ‘Malayan Indian sonic geography’. By encouraging links between various Indian and other communities throughout the peninsula via radio, films, recordings, touring networks, and performances at hotels and amusement parks, music became a means for Indian communication and integration in colonial Malaya — a sonic geography that would be significantly transformed, though not eliminated, after Singapore and Malaysia parted ways in 1965.