Temporal Paralysis

I have a few cliques and significant others of mine who have started listening to Malay indie music. I had been ignorant about the scene for a long time — give my thanks to Los Angeles and Tokyo for infilitrating my consciousness — because, truth be told, my last interest in the Malay music scene was probably in 1997. Perhaps the only other song that I hold personal feelings with is Exist’s Untukmu Ibu (back in primary school the teacher asked me to sing that as a small mock karaoke contest with another – female – classmate of mine who sang another song that I forgot whose band it belonged to).

So for most of my musical journeys, I wandered to the West, searching for music that fits my interests at heart. When anime became a staple of my entertainment consumption, naturally I adopted the various idiosyncrasies of the Japanese music scene to suit my taste. Even so, I only favoured a few artists that came to mind – none of them are too niche to be considered “indie.”

So when my significant other tell me of Yuna, I was floored.

In my absence in the Malay music scene, both now-popular and indie bands have begun a series of transformation in the music scene, not because of the changing taste in music of the Malay population. With the advent of the Internet and the social changes inherent in the Malay Archipelago region, the transformation is but at its infancy, but promising.

Granted, the still-favoured jiwang, Malay ballads and traditional ethnic music still dominates the psyche of the Malay music scene, but increasingly the indies have made a conscious awareness in the region, with Indonesia leading the way to experiment new ways to create music. Bands like Ungu, Ritmic-Traumatic and others made successes in not only in their home country, but also Malaysia and Singapore.

Across the Causeway, names like One Buck Short and OAG have also made waves, and several have appeared live on television as well as radio.

I contrast this to the Mandarin music scene. The music industries of Hong Kong, Taiwan and the Singapore-Malaysia collective has always been a behemoth; hence their “modernization” of music has already been smooth-sailing since the late 1990s. The Mandarin-speaking audience do not mind the extravagant concerts and lifestyles of their pop sensations (they seemed open-minded about this) because the industry is self-supporting. The keyword is “self-sufficent,” because even with the proliferation of P2P music sharing in China, the industry can still cope with the demands of the consumers: the Chinese diaspora (and, to a lesser extent, the Chinese populations in South East Asia) can cover up the losses. Thus the Mandarin music scene usually projects an image of opulence and diverse musical talents.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a Malay diaspora to speak of with pride (most of the Malay-based populations in South Africa and Suriname have since been integrated into the common culture of those countries). The only market that the Malay music scene can depend on its from within the Nusantara. The limited powers of the industry meant that outside the Malay-language markets, they’re a relative unknown – or relegated as “world ethnic music.” As per my experience with the local newspapers, the Mandarin scene dominates even the English-speaking newspapers, not giving enough attention to the Malay (and to be fair, the Tamil) music scene and suss out the really deserving acts.

Thus, the Internet comes into picture as the next platform for advertisement and promotion of Malay acts.

I give it a few more years for the musical talents in this scene to mature. (I’ve yet to hear of a fusion of dangdut and nasyid >.> )  The only restricting factor in this matter isn’t the so-called “taboo boundaries” (Islam still plays a perogative role in the social life of the Malay-speaking audience), but inertia to experimentation of ideas. I hope that there is a movement to instill a sense of the arts within the community and explore other branches of music genre. This is so that Malay culture continues to be reinvented and preserved for the benefit of both future generations and the cultural wealth that follow with the proliferation of artistry that the Malay Archipelago has always been silently respected for.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 22nd, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under all and sundry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.