Song has been one of the earliest forms of expressing love, dating even further back than the Shakespearean sonnets and Bollywood ballads. While most of these songs may have been written for a person or a place, less often do we come across a song about food.
Some foods can conjure the same everlasting desire as a schoolgirl crush. For local artiste and music producer Bitty, it is none other than the humble prata.
Beth Yap, 32, who goes by the stage moniker Bitty, in October released The Crispy Prata Song – a soulful funk ode to the flaky supper staple, specifically prata kosong or plain prata.
The song is groovy and cheeky, with lyrics like “I know it’s a lotta ghee, I don’t let it bother me” and exclamations of “I want Satu – No, dua. Maybe tiga!”.
“The way that the song has resonated with people, it (prata) does seem to be a very universally loved Singapore icon in terms of our local culture and cuisine. Even people not from Singapore, who are from Europe, India, and Malaysia, tell me this is a great song and that they want to write a song about food as well,” said Bitty.
The concept was cooked up from continuous visits to her family prata haunt, Mr and Mrs Mohgan Super Crispy Roti Prata in Joo Chiat.
Eating prata was a family affair for her Peranakan upbringing, with early iterations of the song using Peranakan words. She later changed them to Malay words for it to be more universally understood.
Through her “Build-a-Beat” series on Instagram, an educational stream of short-form content on how to produce music, she showcased the song for the first time.
She set a goal for her audience that, if the reel posted in October this year received 50 shares, she would release the music video that she filmed at Indian restaurant Yummy Sedap. In less than 24 hours, the clip received 180 shares and now has nearly 700.
The Punggol restaurant is usually where she gets her biryani order every fortnight, and so she asked them if she could film them during less crowded times.
The music video is also bright and merry, with close-up shots of the dish and sequences of the restaurant staff not only showing off their cooking chops but also their “musical” skills with Bitty’s instruments in the background.
Music has been as intertwined in Bitty’s life as prata, with her earliest memory of writing songs coming from her trips to her grandmother’s house as a child. The moniker comes from the nickname her mother and family have for her.
She played in bands during her polytechnic music studies and eventually had to branch out as a solo artiste when her bandmates left for National Service.
“I had a looper pedal (beat-making device), a bass and my vocals. So I used the looper so that I could play by myself when I started at open mics and small gigs,” she said.
Since then, she has gone on to study music at Berklee College of Music in Boston and even completed a United Kingdom tour. Bitty also produces music for other artistes and media projects, a skill that she found her way in during her studies at Berklee.
On the evolving local music scene, she said: “I think music is becoming more of a subculture here, rather than the predominant culture that it used to be with government involvement. I guess that makes it more organic as we are transitioning into something more sustainable as an industry and a culture.”
Bitty continues to plan more shows and even a vinyl-listening experience of her album Lost and Found for later this year. Her music can be streamed on platforms like Apple Music and Spotify. The Cripsy Prata Song music video can be streamed on YouTube.
