SINGAPORE, Feb 19 — The second edition of the *SCAPE Invasion Tour kicked off today (Feb 18), with Singaporean singer-songwriters Charlie Lim and Nathan Hartono giving students at Canberra Secondary School a concert performance to end their school day.

This year, the music tour – an outreach programme that seeks to showcase made-in-Singapore bands and musicians to youth – will bring live music performances to 32 secondary schools, junior colleges and Institutes of Higher Learning and more than 19,000 students island-wide.

This year’s tour is split into two parts to coincide with school terms, and headliners include Charlie Lim, iNCH (Inch Chua), The Good Life Project, Grizzle Grind Crew and Sezairi.

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They will be supported by feature acts including JAWN, LEW, enec.e (pronounced “anecdote”), Cadence, Tim De Cotta and The Warriors, Gayle Nerva and Sign of Five.

“It’s the advocacy,” singer-songwriter Lim said in an interview after the show, about how the *SCAPE Invasion Tour can benefit students.

“The exposure that hey you actually have local musicians doing these things, and you could actually consider picking up music.

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“It’s that thought of potential, that you could actually do music,” he added.

Hartono, who was also one of the featured acts in last year’s tour, agreed.

“It’s always very heartening no matter what the show is.

“Every time I do an Invasion show the response is just always surprising it touches me every time,” said the singer, adding that when he did the School Invasion shows (the precursor to the *Scape Invasion Tour that ran from 2007 to 2012), he felt that it seemed that the students “were forced to sit there and watch us and it didn’t feel right”.

“But the kids are getting more and more receptive, they are being super-responsive and you can tell they really enjoy the time they spent with us. It’s always nice to come back to that,” he said.

The *SCAPE Invasion Tour is jointly produced by *SCAPE’s music programmes team and Invasion Singapore, a social enterprise that focuses on market research and development activities for English music made in Singapore.

The partnership revives the original School Invasion Tour, which started in 2007 and ended its run in 2012. — TODAY