Focus Focus: Warna Warni

Early February, I got the chance to check out Malaysia’s own Queen of Jazz in concert at the KL Convention Centre. It was a free ticket, courtesy of the guys at KLue (I was really teman-ing the photographer). But a ticket was still a ticket. I had no idea what the concert was about, but at least it was a Friday night on the town.

On our way there, I was informed that the event was a benefit concert in aid of the Institut Jantung Negara (IJN) Foundation, which provides assistance of up to RM1.5 million annually for needy heart patients. A good cause to get out of semi-retirement (it was Sheila's first concert in six years, apparently), for sure.

We settled into our seats in the reporters/photographers' section, amidst the cackle and hisses of “aunties” from the entertainment desks of various dailies. “Ooh, kau tengok tu Ji! Ee, dia ingat lawa sangat la tu! Ish, macam dia pulak nak bagi konsert!” came one sly remark as another entertainment reporter sashayed past. Aah, these entertainment “aunties” are truly a great Malaysian institution.

As the large auditorium filled up with aunties and uncles (Sheila would later remark that anyone who grew up with her songs are over 40, after which many laughed the comment away), as well as semi-young 'uns old enough to remember these songs, I came to a not-that-startling realisation: there were a lot of people who loved Sheila's songs! And not just people from only one ethnic group but completely across the board (of course those who came that night would have the means to buy the rather expensive tickets).

I couldn't immediately say what it was that I saw in that crowd that moved me: here was a lady who mainly spoke in English but sang in Malay, about any and all things under the sun, and people from all sorts of places sang along. I needed some time to process this.

The following day, I met up with a couple of friends who hit the nail nearly right on the head: Sheila Majid belonged to that group of Malaysians singers and musicians who were distinctly post-racial. Like Alleycats, Black Dog Bone, Carefree, and even Sudirman, Sheila's music was Malaysian in sensibility (although what that means exactly will certainly differ from person to person) and cosmopolitan in outlook - an updated version of P Ramlee-era sensibilities and social relations, you could say. It was not a cultural experience mired in the tired lingo of ethnocentrism, but rather pointed ahead to a fresh(er) mode of relating to one another based on our social experiences and realities.

This made me think a little bit more. Sudirman, that “Singer of the People”, was certainly singing songs that lay beyond ethnocentrism and even bridged the class divide; so did Alleycats and the rest from that era. So what happened? What happened to the optimism that lay beneath the veneer of these songs, that spoke of a Malaysia that was not about asking “What are you?” but “Who are you?” (as observed by writer and playwright Huzir Sulaiman in a daily recently).

Something had certainly happened: the momentum of this optimism was lost by the mid-90s with the disbandment, semi-retirement, and/or death of these bands/singers. Musicians were also taking stock of a post-1989 socio-political landscape, right around the time that Dato' Mohamed Rahmat forced Search and Wings to cut their locks. Trimming the growth of culture, as it were.

And now we reap what we sow: 50 years after independence, 44 years after the formation of our nation, we still cannot let go of the ethnocentric paradigm of nation building, and many people believe that it's running us into the ground.

But perhaps it's wishful thinking to ask of musicians to do more than entertain us. They're musicians, after all! In the final analysis, we are a constitutionally democratic nation and so only the People can affect that kind of change. The question is, do we know we need it?

TEXT Fahmi Fadzil