Meet the Singaporean DJ taking local sounds to the global stage

Meet the Singaporean DJ taking local sounds to the global stage Likie Low’s playlist at Tomorrowland wove Singapore train announcements and bird calls together with electronic dance music They included the MRT warning to “Sila berhati-hati di ruang platform” (“Please mind the platform gap” in Malay), familiar to millions who ride the city state’s metro system, and the piercing, repetitive call of the Asian koel, a bird whose cry is instantly recognisable in many Singapore neighbourhoods. Threaded through the set was the sound of the erhu, a two-stringed Chinese instrument that local DJ Likie Low has played since childhood. For the 27-year-old, whose stage name is Likki, her 30-minute set on July 25 at Tomorrowland was a chance to turn the everyday Singapore sounds into dance music for a global crowd. As one of the few Singaporeans who had had the chance to play at the annual music festival, she wanted to bring a piece of herself to one of the world’s largest electronic dance festivals. “Since I got to play Tomorrowland, and it might be the first and the last chance in my life I get to do that, I wanted to incorporate every single part myself and all my own music is very Chinese. So it’s like showing myself as a Singaporean Chinese, even though people there won’t understand what an Ang Mo Kio Avenue is,” she said, referring to a residential district in Singapore.