Last week, the Wife bought a guitar, so we could 'do family singalongs' with Yakuza Baby.

'Um,' I said. 'Is this some sort of postpartum flashback to your secondary school xinyao days?'

Not quite a movement but not just a fad either, xinyao was that rarest of things in Singapore: a spontaneous nationwide flowering of original artistry.

For a time in the 1980s, everyone - even in my banana plantation of a school - toted a guitar and composed twee, folksy, shangalangalanging Mandarin songs about quotidian events such as how their hearts got broken at the Lucky Plaza bus stop, et al.

'No,' she said, somewhat offended (meaning I must have struck a nerve), 'It's just that when I take her to Mother Goose Hour at the library, she tries to sing along with the bigger kids.'

I'd seen it too, though I didn't know if I'd encourage Yakuza Baby's yowling attempts at singing. For her own safety - I didn't want neighbours flinging their slippers at her.

'Anyway, when she grows older, she can play it too,' said the Wife. I paused; it occurred to me that I didn't know anyone who'd taken up the guitar at the behest of their parents. Piano, yes. Violin, yes. Even cello and erhu. But never a guitar.

To underscore my puzzlement, as if on cue, the kid next door started plonking Chopsticks on his piano.

I checked with some of the other Asian families in my building, mainly Koreans and Chinese from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the mainland.

If their child was learning a musical instrument, it was invariably the piano or violin. And when I asked why, their eyes flickered - it was as if they hadn't really thought about it before.

Most didn't consider themselves classical music buffs - in fact, none had ever set foot in Lincoln Center to catch a concert - yet they dutifully trotted their kids off to Suzuki method classes.

Meanwhile, all said that growing up, they listened primarily to pop music, where the guitar has dominated at least since the 1950s.

Yet it didn't occur to any of them that the guitar might be an instrument their child should pick up.

'Could be just convenience,' said the Wife. 'Piano and violin schools are so established, whereas the guitar is very informal. Maybe parents just want classes they can dump their children in while they do other things.

'And it could be a class aspiration thing,' she continued. 'Piano or violin equals hobnobbing with folk who attend operas in tuxedos and gowns, while guitar equals messy hair, drugs, and hurling TVs out of hotel rooms.

It's not about whether you enjoy the instrument, it's about what the instrument says about you.'

This made me wonder what kind of freaky child people must have thought I was.

Because the two instruments I played as a kid were the electric organ and the trumpet.

I chose the organ out of purely Singaporean tendencies - the piano can only sound like a piano, whereas with some button-pressing, the organ could sound like a cello or marimba, or both simultaneously. Plus it had drum accompaniments.

It was more pow-ka-leow (Hokkien for 'all-in-one'). It was only later that I learnt how terminally uncool it was.

Friends would taunt me by imitating a drum machine. As for the trumpet, I picked it up when I joined the school band. I suspect it was imposed on me as a joke: 'Fat kid looks like a baby elephant, so give him the trumpet lor.'

Looking back, I wish I'd learnt the guitar instead. So did my old neighbours too because when I practised my trumpet, it must have been like living next to the zoo.

Needless to say, I haven't touched either instrument since school. And when I did a check round with friends, all but a small handful confirmed that once they grew up, they'd relegated their instruments to collect dust, like so much exercise equipment.

(Interestingly, however, several were now making their own kids pick them up.)

Conversely, my friends who play guitar all picked them up of their own accord, usually in their teens, without any parental prodding.

And the vast majority of them continue to play it, even into their 40s and 50s. Some of them even compose their own music, unlike the childhood pianists or violinists.

I guess one's choice of instrument does say something about you. But it's not the instrument that does so, it's the act of choice.

'I wonder what other folks will think of us if we make Yakuza Baby take up the guitar instead of the piano or violin,' I mused to the Wife. 'That we're contemporary? Laid back? Contrarian?'

'Probably just cheap,' she replied. Hmm. Lucky I didn't suggest the recorder.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.