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Jean Iau

At one of the world’s biggest electronic dance music festivals in Belgium, entranced revellers recently found themselves dancing to sounds more often heard on a Singapore commute than a Tomorrowland stage.
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.












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“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.
Her music seems to have resonated. Clips that Low uploaded on Instagram from her set, replete with those quintessentially Singaporean sounds, have since gone viral.
Other parts of her set included bus announcements for various destinations in Singapore, and recordings of children playing at playgrounds in public housing neighbourhoods, blended with Chinese instruments such as the pipa and suona and the Indian hand drums, tabla.
“Everywhere I go, I’m always collecting sounds and wondering how they will end up in my tracks,” Low said from her recording studio.
Animal instinct
Low has been playing the erhu since she was eight and went to the School of the Arts, Singapore, before attending the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, where she learned music production.
Her passion for electronic dance music began in 2013, when she was in secondary school, largely prompted by Dutch DJ and producer Martin Garrix’s hit song “Animals”.
She and her schoolmate downloaded the digital audio workstation Logic Pro and taught themselves how to produce music by researching and watching YouTube clips.
“At the time, I was playing in the Singapore National Youth Chinese Orchestra and whenever I attended the rehearsals, I was always wondering how these little melodies and instruments would blend and sound together with EDM [electronic dance music],” Low said.

She admitted that the first few tracks were “very bad” and there were people who thought it was not respectful of traditional Chinese music. “I understand because my first productions were quite bad and maybe it didn’t sound correct.”
A milestone came in 2021 when her lecturer, Christel Hon, now head of music at Esplanade, asked her to take the stage at the performing arts centre.
“I’ve always performed but that was the turning point for me to have a stage to test the DJing and erhu [sounds] out … Honestly the first show was quite bad. I had never DJed in public before then and I didn’t know how to hype up the crowd. But it was fun,” Low said.
Since graduating in 2022, Low has been supported by grants from the National Arts Council that allow her to put on more shows.
Things came full circle last year when she got into a JBL Music Academy, an exclusive mentorship programme created by the sound equipment company alongside Garrix and American singer-songwriter Benson Boone.
“I had watched tutorials he shot in that room and then I was in that room. We took pictures there too. It was very surreal and quite insane,” Low said.

Eight musicians were chosen from the programme to play at Tomorrowland, with Low finding out in March that she would be one of them.
Despite her recent success, the level-headed Low believes she will still have to scramble to sell tickets to her shows. She has one lined up for next January.
“It’s always been difficult to sell tickets to my shows because the theme is something that people don’t really understand,” she said. “It’s not like people will just suddenly come to my concerts now that one video went viral. There’s a huge possibility that this attention will just go away after a while.”


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Likie Low’s playlist at Tomorrowland wove Singapore train announcements and bird calls together with electronic dance music


Likie Low’s playlist at Tomorrowland wove Singapore train announcements and bird calls together with electronic dance music.


Meet the Singaporean DJ taking local sounds to the global stage

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Likie Low’s playlist at Tomorrowland wove Singapore train announcements and bird calls together with electronic dance music

Likie Low’s playlist at Tomorrowland wove Singapore train announcements and bird calls together with electronic dance music