Sonic Youth: This Is IGNITE!, The Student-Run Festival That’s Shaped The Music Industry

This annual spectacle is full of heart as a student-run endeavour (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

In a scene mercilessly bombarded by instability, consistency is the one thing it needs most. Plenty of programmes and venues have faded since the pandemic hit last year, with music festivals being one of the crisis’ biggest victims.

If you think of festivals that’ve defined the local music scene over the years, you’ll realise that most of them are already gone or unable to resurface – ZoukOut, Laneway, Neon Lights, and Mosaic, just to name a few. Yet there is one entity that has stood the test of time since its inception in 2008. It’s a brand that’s continually attracted scene heavyweights with its oft-stellar lineups, and – here’s the real kicker – one that is overseen not by industry professionals, but the students of Republic Polytechnic. This is the legacy of IGNITE! Music Festival, and it retains its glow in the turmoil of 2021.

IGNITE! traditionally takes place on the campus grounds of Republic Polytechnic (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

Just as it did last year, IGNITE! is accommodating to the restricted measures with a hybrid format, broadcasting the sets of acts who will perform on-site at the school’s campus. With a track record of hosting colossal performers like Electrico, Plainsunset, Caracal and Giants Must Fall, IGNITE! unleashes this star power again with another astounding roster. Over two days on 17 and 18 September, the adapted festival delivers a miscellany of noise-rock (Subsonic Eye), hip-hop (ABANGSAPAU), folk-pop (Lewloh), punk (Iman’s League), r&b (Charlene Su), emo (Forests) and several others. It’s a lineup that the kids of the current generation will eat up, and that’s essentially the purpose of IGNITE! when you consider the bigger picture of the scene.

IGNITE! has always been crucial in the equation. When it comes to alternative music especially, it’s often a culture that’s absorbed in one’s impressionable years of youth. As a dominantly student-organised event that’s run on campus grounds, it not only introduces such sounds to fresh batches of potential zealots, but it exposes its committee to the professional purview of running a music event which, in turn, builds the future of the industry’s infrastructure. The industry recognises this, and that is yet another reason why IGNITE! constantly receives positive support from its returning performers and publications, like this, that hold it in high regard.

Curious about how this event continues to operate under such circumstances, I reached out to the team of IGNITE! to reveal what goes on behind the scenes. When it comes to preserving a presence like this in the local festival circuit, let the organisers of IGNITE! take you to school.

IGNITE! inspires new batches of young music fans year after year (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

Hello team. IGNITE! is undeniably an institution within the scene. How does the team feel about sustaining the longstanding legacy of this event?

Glenda Tay Wee Kee (Festival Secretariat): I've followed IGNITE! since 2018 so it feels surreal and nerve-wrecking to be part of the team! We feel a sense of responsibility having to live up to the expectations and reputation that IGNITE! has established as well. Our staff advisors have definitely helped us a lot in this process, and we could not have done it without them!

Wong Liwern (Festival Producer): There are definitely a lot of things to look out for and it is honestly not an easy task to ensure that the festival always brings the same energy and excitement every year.

The lineup often features both revered veterans and trendy newcomers (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

With its reputation, the event is on par with other local music festivals, and it’s one of the longest-running alternative festivals that’s still active. Does the team takes cues or do research about the ongoings in the scene?

Nur Sarrah Bte Shahrin (Marketing Secretariat): With the help and guidance of the advisors, student secretariats as well as experienced student participants in the IGNITE! team, the members involved are constantly being assigned to do their own research on the local music scene and other information which they can use to help ideate or craft ideas, and ways to support and promote the event.

Liwern: I think what’s positive about IGNITE! is that it truly combines the effort of both the staff and students, and that helps a lot in terms of programming and targeting the demographics of our audiences. Each year, the trends and direction that the music scene is going in terms of genres and gigs, as well as what our youths listen to now, really help us have a bigger picture and broader understanding to find the balance between what is popular and what are some of the great bands out there that we could feature. This doesn’t only stop at the music, but it extends out to the Village Spaces and all the peripherals that represent the festival to truly help us stay current.

The festival’s organising committee faces the struggle of balancing school with the logistics of the event (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

What are the advantages and challenges of having such a young community behind the scenes?

Liwern: The advantage of having a student team and it being a student-led event is really the fact that there is constantly a lot of energy, many interesting undisrupted ideas, and a lot of passion in the mix. It has always been a pleasure working with the students and most of the time, it is really an exchange of knowledge more than just imparting to them because we learn so much more through our exchanges albeit with different topics and intentions.

The challenge is probably the fact that we have to work around their school schedules which means a lot of the work that is done with the students can only start after classes in the evenings. This usually means we would technically have much lesser time in the planning of the festival than we could.

The festival has a relatively slim team of staff members who help the students steer the ship (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

How big of a role does the staff actually play in organising the festival?

Liwern: IGNITE! is actually organised under the umbrella of The Republic Cultural Centre at Republic Polytechnic. I am personally from the Programming Team of the centre. The proportion of the student team definitely outweighs the staff. We probably only have about five staff members really planning the event. However, as it is also organised by The Republic Cultural Centre, we do have our in-house technicians, venues team and production team whom we work with closely and are staff members as well. Otherwise, all the lead roles and the crews within the team are all students. In this year’s instalment, we have approximately 200 students involved. The staff are there to really guide, make some of the decisions as well as to facilitate portions which require the staff members to manage.

M1LDL1FE performing at IGNITE! 2018 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

From guiding the student organisers to educating the audiences that watch annually, do you feel that IGNITE! inspires a new wave of local passion year after year?

Liwern: I feel and hope that we do inspire the students to achieve what they love and discover interests that they might have as well. Especially in these current times, it hasn’t been easy. Likewise, every batch of students that we work with are mostly new batches that change year after year, and many in this current batch have never seen or experienced IGNITE! in its totality. So we try our best to slowly build it up this year through bringing back as much of the event as possible in this year’s instalment.

Pleasantry performing at IGNITE! 2018 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

Curiously, for the students, how did they juggle the event with their day-to-day academic pursuits?

Sarrah: There is no doubt that the students involved in IGNITE! have their studies and personal interest group activities to keep up with and, at the same time, juggle the IGNITE! workload such as crafting articles to post on the IGNITE! website, updating the music festival’s social media handles and so much more. The respective secretariats – who are students, heads of departments as well as staff advisors – help to keep track of the tasks and ensure that the students are given tasks with equity with understanding of their personal schedules. At the same time, we also emphasise the importance of commitment and teamwork to contribute to the successes of IGNITE!.

Adriana Binte Addernan (Entertainment Programming Secretariat): I think that we handled this well, juggling school and working on the event at the same time. Sometimes there are things that need to be done on the dot, so we would try and multitask both at the same time.

Matarage Luhith Manjitha (Video Team Secretariat): Sometimes our schoolwork and the event would clash, so I made sure to do all things that were needed of me before this period. I also made sure that I allocated my time wisely so that I was able to study and also do IGNITE! things without them clashing.

.gif performing at IGNITE! 2019 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

Nurin Afiqah Bte Shaiful Anwar (Admin Team Secretariat): It was no easy feat juggling IGNITE! and school. The start of IGNITE! was also the period where exams were around the corner and there were loads of work to be done. I was not shouldering the responsibilities alone as I had my team and other secretariats with me. All it takes is relying on the team to help one another and a sense of urgency.

Glenda: I would say it wasn't easy for the team to juggle it, and sometimes the team had to work late into the night to complete our tasks and study for our exams. The team really helped one another whenever we needed assistance with a task and also kept each other in check with what we needed to complete.

Sankari D/O Vaja Kumar (Entertainment Programming Secretariat): I learnt that it is essential to have good time management skills. For instance, I would try to prioritise the most important tasks first and then do the other task which required me to be done at a later deadline. On top of that, I would allocate myself a certain time aside to finish the tasks that were related to the event so that I had ample time to focus on my studies as well. With time management, I was able to balance my studies and the event that I am committed in.

Joie Tan performing at IGNITE! 2018 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

Let’s talk about this year’s edition. What inspired its theme of Passion and Compassion?

Liwern: The theme of Passion and Compassion has been a longstanding one with the festival since 2008. The intent was to spread the word on Youth Volunteerism through our passions. Over the years, we try to keep to the same spirit and bring our local bands into the limelight and share on the various social service organisations in Singapore. Each year, we try to inject it in little ways; for example in 2015, we did Project Compassion where we organised events with the students of BrightHill Evergreen Home and APSN Carnivals to do our part to help the communities. Each year, we would also talk to the bands on any volunteer organisations that they are passionate about to spread awareness.

This year, we are featuring five Social Service Organisations which sell their items to raise funds for their individual stakeholders – The Art Faculty, The Animal Project, Design For Good, Cat Mama Shop (Cat Welfare Society) and Ugly Cake Shop. This replaces our Festival Village which we are unable to hold this year due to the pandemic and we’ve termed it as the IGNITE! Virtual Village. We will spotlight each of these organisations once a week and during the mainshow as well.

Fingerfunk performing at IGNITE! 2019 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

What can you tell us about the batch of audition bands this year? Has it been an exciting one?

Glenda: It was really exciting to see the bands perform live and there were a variety of genres that made the experience special! All the bands were talented in their own way and it was a real challenge to choose a favourite.

Sarrah: The batch of audition bands this year has been really interesting and exciting since I only discovered local artistes whose music genres appealed to me when I entered Republic Polytechnic. IGNITE! Music Festival has given me a great opportunity to find out more about local music because, personally, I feel that Singaporean artists are not very much recognised in the media, especially since the popular artistes are usually those who are featured on national television. There were different genres of music being performed by the audition bands such as electro-pop, alternative-rock, and even punk, and after getting to watch and hear their performances, I definitely grew more interested in the bands and have gotten my other friends to support local music.

Indie-rock rookies, Hijack Hayley, are the winners of this year’s auditions (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

Liwern: Our judges – Sara Wee, Gordon Khoo and James Lye – really provided insights during the judging. I think it is also interesting that we tried to include the voice of the audience in this year’s instalment where 50% of the scores were based on the Likes they got from their performances which was premiered on YouTube. I think this really helped many of the bands gain exposure and support which is something we were unable to do as much when the IGNITE! Band Auditions Finals were held physically.

And as for the main lineup, IGNITE! never fails in roping in a star-studded bill of local veterans and up-and-comers. How do you usually determine the bands that make the list?

Liwern: Each year we compile a long list from bands who write into the festival, student picks, as well as staff picks. We would then run through a few rounds of listening through all their music and finally come up with the list that would be featured in the event. However, we always make it a point to feature a good number of up-and-coming bands as well, as we truly believe that it is important to give all good bands a platform to showcase their craft.

Yung Raja performing at IGNITE! 2019 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

This is the second time IGNITE! is going online in light of the pandemic. What were the lessons learnt from last year’s, and how do you plan on one-upping the festival in 2021?

Liwern: The hardest part of the festival last year was that we were just out of Circuit Breaker and that meant that we were unable to film the event on campus with our gear. This year, even though we are unable to feature the festival in its full glory, we are grateful to be able to have all bands come on campus to ensure that the best audio and visual quality – even though it is recorded – come to life.

Sobs performing at IGNITE! 2018 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

And lastly, what were some of the most memorable IGNITE! experiences amongst the team?

Sarrah: The most memorable IGNITE! experience, I feel, would be the IGNITE! crew training sessions. Many of us, in my opinion, were comfortable with the learning environment because even though we were students who were new to IGNITE!, we were being guided by experienced students and staff advisors. This was also a good opportunity for the crew to integrate with one another despite their various backgrounds.

Adriana: One memorable experience is working on band auditions together and juggling schoolwork. It was a hectic time in our lives and it was stressful to keep up with everything. But it was a great experience that I learned a lot from.

Manjitha: For me, it’s seeing the end product for videos my team did. It showed the hard work everyone put in and also showed that everyone was giving their 100% even though the filming days were very long.

Afiqah: A memorable experience would be doing the lip-sync challenge with my admin team. The courage to go beyond my comfortable zone and also doing it with my friends really brought out a new side of me, haha. It was also an honour to appreciate and give recognition to the local artistes.

Hopefully, IGNITE! can revert to its fully physical format in 2022 (Credit: IGNITE! Music Festival)

Glenda: Seeing the bands and artistes live, definitely! Having followed the local music scene for a while now, it was enjoyable seeing them perform live and enjoying the entire process!

Sankari: The most memorable experience would be IGNITE! production training where we got to meet members from different interest groups under the production team. It was an eye-opening experience for me as I got to learn more about the audio and lighting tech from the staff. Through the members from Jammerz Arena, I was also able to understand more about the instruments and how to be a bass tech, which enabled me to acquire good knowledge about production.

Liwern: I think personally for me, the most memorable experience is always when we all work together and strive towards a similar goal and finally seeing it all come to fruition. That camaraderie and the atmosphere of having like-minded people in the same space is something that is hard to replace.

Ignite! Music Festival 2021, 17 & 18 September 2021, 7pm-10pm. Watch it live on the festival’s YouTube and Facebook pages.