Kajian Malaysia, Vol. 31, No.1, 2013, 1–18
© Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2013
SYNCRETIC CULTURAL MULTIVOCALITY AND THE MALAYSIAN
POPULAR MUSICAL IMAGINATION
Shanthini Pillai
School of Language Studies and Linguistics, Faculty of Social Science
and Humanities, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM Bangi,
Selangor, Malaysia
Email: spillai2900@gmail.com
This article discusses modes of expression in selected contemporary Malaysian
popular songs and music videos in English. The article argues that such audio-
visual engagements can be best described as productions of syncretic cultural
multivocality. First, the fusion of the multiple musical styles that inundated
Malaysia's novel popular music industry in the 1950s is traced. Next, the
development of a creative pop multivocality in contemporary Malaysian "hip
hops" is described. The article proceeds primarily by reading the Malaysian
popular music scene as a cultural text and demonstrates that although the history
of Malaysian popular music reflects pop cosmopolitanism, the cultural
multivocality that characterises the Malaysian identity resonates as powerfully (if
not more powerfully) at the core of the nation's popular imagination. The article
concludes that the skilful integration of various influences from global popular
culture creates a musical palimpsest that is and will continue to be imprinted
with a multitude of signifiers of syncretic cultural multivocality.
Keywords: syncretism, popular music, Malaysian, transculturalism, nativisation
INTRODUCTION
This article seeks to discuss the creation of syncretic musical environments in the
Malaysian popular music scene. The idea of a syncretic environment is expressed
well in an episode of Burgess's
Time of the Tiger, where we are presented with a
scene from the birthday party of a Malayan ruler. Burgess describes a hybrid
ensemble of "ronggeng music, Chinese opera, [and] Indian drums" (Burgess,
1996: 94) and a few pages later a band that includes a "rakish
songkok over [a]
saxophone [and] a young
haji playing the drums" (Burgess, 1996: 99). Although
the scene relies on a strongly Orientalist depiction, it also describes the
cosmopolitan popular imagination in the making. In a single scene, we witness
the fusion of multiple musical worlds and their attendant cultural resonances.
Decades later, the contemporary Malaysian popular music scene reflects the
cumulative effect of the multiculturalism described by Burgess. This article
describes the modes of expression of such cultural syncretism in selected
contemporary Malaysian popular songs and music videos in English. The article
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2
argues that such multivocality can be best described as "pop cosmopolitanism," a
term that Jenkins has used to refer to the ways in which "transcultural flows of
popular culture inspire global consciousness and cultural competency" (Jenkins,
2004: 117). Furthermore, Stokes notes that cosmopolitanism is a significant tool
within ethnomusicology that "restores human agencies and creativities to the
scene of analysis, and allows us to think of music as a process in the making of
'worlds'" (Tsioulakis, 2011: 177). The ensuing discussion reveals the cultural
syncretism that has characterised the Malaysian popular music industry since its
beginnings in the 1950s and describes the syncretism's attendant creative pop
multivocality.
THE SYNCRETIC POPULAR MALAYSIAN IMAGINATION: OPENING
CHORDS
Chopyak (2007) notes that the influence of foreign culture on Malaysian music
can be traced to the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century. However,
Chopyak asserts that the actual impact on the local music scene formally began
with the advent of British colonialism and the arrival of European military wind
bands. These bands were originally intended as entertainment for the colonial
officials. However, the band members, who were brought mainly from the
Philippines and later India, settled in the country and married into the local
population. Eventually, the musicians formed dance and cabaret bands and
provided background music for the
bangsawan theatres. Some performed in
locally produced Chinese operas (Chopyak, 2007: 3–4).
Evidence of a globalised syncretic Malaysian popular music scene can be
traced as far back as the 1930s. According to Matusky and Tan (2004), the music
produced in the
bangsawan theatre and the
joget dance halls, then considered
popular culture, amalgamated a multitude of rhythmic styles: Malaysian, Middle
Eastern, Thai, Western and East Asian (Matusky and Tan, 2004 : 8). The main
traditional forms were the
bangsawan, the
keroncong, the
ghazal and the
asli
genres. Lockard notes that while there was evidence of a fusion of many
intercultural musical influences in early popular music, these influences are
recognised as a seminal part of the repertoire of the Malay popular cultural
tradition (Lockard, 1996: 1–2). This assimilation could have occurred largely
because the musical influences were rooted in what was understood as a
traditionally Malay rhythmic pattern and incorporated traditional folk themes and
tonalities (Lockard, 1996: 1–2). Thus, at that time, the "musical palimpsest"
primarily exhibited a local Malay identity, with foreign influences integrated into
this predominant, recognisably Malay identity. Perhaps Benjamin best expresses
this aspect of Malay music of that era:
Syncretic Cultural Multivocality
3
Melayu music, in its adoption of pseudo-Western harmony,
behaves much like Melayu dance. Just as the dancers elaborate
transition by constantly stepping forwards and back, so does
Melayu music merely sidestep momentarily into other keys
without actually modulating to them (Benjamin, 2004: 17).
In sum, the music of that era retained the larger Malay attributes while
incorporating other elements. In later years, Western cultural influences began to
enter the rhythmic patterns of the local musical ensembles instead of waiting on
the sidelines. In the course of this integration, local Malay musical ensembles
began to include predominantly Western instruments, such as the piano and drum
sets, which subsequently began to replace traditional instruments, such as the
Eastern accordion, the
keronchong, the
ghazal and other
asli instruments
(Lockard, 1996; Tan, 2005). The reasons for the change were connected largely
to British colonialism and the polemics of the ideological hegemony of racial and
cultural hierarchy that originated during this period. Thus, Western tones began
to replace the
asli overtones. The extent of such cultural domination of the local
musical culture culminated in the strong tones of cosmopolitanism that affected
the popular music imagination in the 1960s during what was known as the
Pop
Yeh Yeh era. The term
Pop Yeh Yeh is said to be linked to the global spread of
Beatlemania and has also been referred to as a generation that imitated Western
models:
The
Pop Yeh Yeh era between 1965 to 1971 was dominated by
Western pop star imitators, although the uniquely Malaysian
style of blending local musical cultures continued in some
quarters with some singers using
asli or traditional Malay vocal
techniques and others including elements of Indian film music
(Ang, 2002: 9).
This statement may emphasise the aspect of mimicry. However, one
could regard the prowess of the
Pop Yeh Yeh musicians in integrating various
elements of global musical traditions as a reflection of the cultural competence
that Jenkins mentions in reference to cosmopolitanism. If the earlier tendency
was to avoid purely Western styles, now, most music borrowed heavily from
Western rhythmic patterns while retaining the asli vocal techniques and adapting
them to the influences of Western and Eastern music. Ultimately,
Pop Yeh Yeh
was an era that increased the tempo of transcultural musical fusion. The era
represents the beginning of a transcultural flow of Western musical influence set
to the beat of a nascent Malaysian nation. In addition to the Beatles, flower power
and other emblems of the hippie generation made their way to Malaysian music
shores. One must only examine some of the album covers produced in the 1960s
Shanthini Pillai
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to witness the extent of the transcultural flow of popular culture, which
subsequently was intermingled with the local music scene.
Photo 1: The album cover of Wirdaningsih
and the Dorado Sound Unlimited
Source: Wirdaningsih and the
Dorado Sound Unlimited, n.d.
Photo 2: The album cover of Janis Joplin
with Big Brother and the Holding Co.
Source: Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the
Holding Co., n.d.
The similarities of the two covers depicted above, i.e., the psychedelic
style of the font, the design and the overall colour scheme, reflect the "canvas of
emerging possibilities generated by local negotiations of transnational currents,"
that Tsioulakis has used to refer to the popular imagination (Tsioulakis, 2011:
176). A distinct sense of place and a geographical space characterised the music
of the 1960s. This element has been inherited by modern popular artists, as
discussed below. In this connection, the following album cover from the group A.
Rahman Mohd. and the Fabulous Orchids is interesting.
Photo 3: The album cover of A. Rahman Mohd. and the Fabulous Orchids
Source: A. Rahman Mohd. and the Fabulous Orchids, n.d.
Syncretic Cultural Multivocality
5
A semiotic reading of the appearance of the performers on the album
cover reveals unmistakable signs of the influence of the attire worn by Western
popular musicians and characteristic psychedelic overtones. Another interesting
sign on the album cover is the identification of the performers hometown,
Pontian, in the Malaysian state of Johore. The album cover depicts a syncretism
of place and space within the popular imagination, i.e., a translocal identity. As
Rumford notes:
At the core of cosmopolitanism is a concern with new social
relations: to self, to others, and to the world. Cosmopolitanism is
very much about the place of the individual in the world, and the
way in which political communities of whatever scale orient
themselves inwardly towards individuals, and outwardly towards
the rest of the world (Rumford, 2005: 2).
The album cover epitomises the intertwining of all three of the aspects
that Rumford mentions. However, cosmopolitanism does not necessarily entail a
central concern with Western culture. We must only recall the syncretism of
multiple musical aesthetics in the passage from Burgess's novel to note that
Malaysian syncretism can also include Asian aspects. This realisation raises the
issue of cosmopolitanism's politics and ideological assumptions. As Appadurai
notes, cosmopolitanism should be studied "without logically or chronologically
presupposing either the authority of the Western experience or the models
derived from that experience" (Robbins and Pheng, 1988: 1). Appadurai's
cosmopolitanism is perhaps most significantly expressed in the Malaysian
popular imagination by the legendary late P. Ramlee, who was more inclined
toward Asian musical influences than Western. As Ang notes:
P. Ramlee's vision was to create a uniquely Malaysian style,
based on Malay folk music but infused with elements from the
various local musical cultures. His over 250 songs reflect the
influence of Malay syncretic music forms, especially the
inang,
zapin, masri, asli, boria and
joget forms, as well as Western
dance rhythms (rhumba, slowfox, waltz, cha cha, mambo and
twist), and
Hindustani and Arabic melodies and rhythms (Ang,
2002: 9).
Ramlee believed that the popular music of his time was being
overwhelmed by Western influence. The inclusion of Indian,
Hindustani and
Middle Eastern rhythms is best described as "postcolonial cosmopolitanism"
(Parry, 1992). Two other notable singers of Ramlee's time were Sharifah Noor
and Ahmad Nawab. Sharifah Noor was often accompanied by the band Orkes
Zindegi, which used predominantly Indian musical instruments. She was
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commonly referred to as the "Lata Mangeshkar" of Malaya, the famed Indian
songstress. The cover of the album by Sharifah Noor and Orkes Zindegi in Photo
4 semiotically expresses the incorporation of Asian cosmopolitan tones in the
popular musical imaginary.
Note the presentation of the lettering on the cover, which imitates the
Sanskrit script. By combining the lettering with the snapshot of the main artist,
Sharifah Noor, who is wearing 1950s cosmopolitan attire (a flower print top and
the sunglasses), the album cover dismantles the authority of Western
cosmopolitanism magnetism. A resistance to Western cosmopolitanism can also
be observed in Rocky Teoh, a popular music artist from Taiping, Perak. Although
Teoh was an Elvis Presley enthusiast (Photo 5), he creatively adapted the
rhythms of his idol and his own ethnic community. For instance, Teoh's Wolf
Call incorporates both Mandarin Chinese and English while unmistakably
reflecting the rock-and-roll aspect of Presley's music (garagehangover.com).
Teoh's performance of Wolf Call and the following image of the artist express an
obvious cosmopolitan syncretism.
The 1970s marked the onset of a sense of nationhood within popular
music, and while cosmopolitanism was not abandoned, it retreated to some extent
into the background as more pressing issues came to the fore in the wake of the
1969 racial riots. Matusky and Tan (2004) draw attention to the lasting effects of
the riots not only on the larger economic and social policies, such as Bumiputera
Affirmative Action, but also on the nation's cultural policies. The prominence
given to Malay as a national language and instrument of unity amongst
Malaysians resulted in the development of a Malay music industry that crossed
ethnic boundaries. Many choose to view the National Cultural Policy that was
established during this period as generally restrictive and ideologically restrictive.
However, the period witnessed the rise of a new wave of Asli music, which
brought not only Malay music and musicians into the public eye but also
introduced performers of other ethnic backgrounds into the flourishing music
scene. The music of this period belied the hostility and cultural duress that are
often cited as a predominant characteristic of the Malaysian cultural milieu of the
early 1970s. Popular bands such as Roziah Latiff and the Jayhawkers, the
Alleycats, Discovery, Carefree and Cenderawasih were visually multi-ethnic but
sounded Malay. Songs such as "
Sekuntum Mawar Merah" by the Alleycats and
"
Rindu Bayangan" by Carefree remain today lyrical masterpieces that cross
ethnic divisions. Similarly, solo artists, such as DJ Dave, Sudirman and Sharifah
Aini, who were known for their particular blend of Western folk and popular
music with local
asli rhythms and the Malay inflections, had a large following
that transgressed ethnic boundaries. Therefore, nationalist policies might have
been formally implemented and enforced and perhaps disliked in certain quarters;
however, at the same time, the music industry displayed a lyrical flair for the
national language and perhaps created one of the rare moments when the
nation defined by authority and the nation defined by public opinion (Shamsul
Syncretic Cultural Multivocality
7
Amri, 1996) coexisted. This musical mixing was continued until the 1990s
by an increasing number of musicians and vocalists who amalgamated the
various themes, styles and rhythms of the nation in popular productions.
Photo 4: The album cover of Sharifah Noor and Orkes Zindegi
Source: Sharifah Noor and Orkes Zindegi, n.d.
Photo 5: The album cover of Rocky Teoh
Source: Rocky, T., n.d.
Shanthini Pillai
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Many associate this style with the more liberal cultural policies of the
1990s (Ting, 2009). Perhaps such policies facilitated the Malaysian appearance of
international hip-hop culture. The difference between the Metropolitan influence
in the 1990s and the music of previous eras could be the more inclusive
integration of the multi-ethnic sounds of the nation. In the 1970s and 1980s,
asli
rhythms or the Malay language predominated, even when the bands were multi-
ethnic. In contrast, the music of the 1990s reverberated both visibly and audibly
with the sights and sounds of various ethnic communities and the global rhythmic
patterns of international hip-hop culture. The following section elaborates on the
progress of Malaysian music to a more globalised, syncretic cultural
multivocality, i.e., a pop cosmopolitanism that draws from the local and the
global communities simultaneously and symbiotically.
SYNCRETIC MULTIVOCALITY AND THE "HIP HOPS" OF
CONTEMPORARY MALAYSIAN POPULAR MUSIC
If in the early years Malaysian popular music was played or recorded live, the
new millennium witnessed the advent of the global influence of the music video,
i.e., short films that project the artistic visualisation of a song. The advent of
music video redrew the boundaries of cosmopolitanism's influence, particularly
after the spread of the Internet and the YouTube video-sharing website. An
additional factor was hip-hop music. Originally a musical genre from the United
States of America, more specifically Black American culture, hip-hop music has
become a global phenomenon that has resulted in the appearance of what Alim
terms "Hip Hops", i.e., heterogeneous negotiations of the global phenomenon set
to the rhythms of local language, culture and ideological practices (Alim, 2011:
123). Expanding further on the intricacies of the idea of hip hop
s, Alim uses
account of a hip-hop concert in Shanghai:
two rappers "face off, microphones in hand," trading
improvisational rhymes in a competitive verbal duel. On first
glance [��] the verbal artists appear like "typical" Hip Hop
emcees, dressed in "baggy pants" and "baseball caps," but a
closer listen reveals that they are performing in multiple
language varieties. "One rapper spits out words in a distinctive
Beijing accent, scolding the other for not speaking proper
Mandarin," whereas "his opponent from Hong Kong snaps back
to the beat in a trilingual torrent of Cantonese, English, and
Mandarin, dissing the Beijing rapper for not representing his
people" (Alim, 2011: 58). The crowd—not in Los Angeles, not
in New York, but in Shanghai—"goes wild!" (Chang cited in
Alim, 2011: 123).
Syncretic Cultural Multivocality
9
The listener's progression from a preliminary assumption regarding the
performance to the awareness of the distinctive meanings that emerge as the
performance unfolds reflects the extent of pop cosmopolitanism and its
dynamically fluid negotiations and manipulations of global cultural borders.
More significant in the scene described above is the grounding of local identity
politics, that is, of the question of who one is even as one adopts a global identity.
These issues are relevant to the contemporary Malaysian popular music scene.
The following discussion chooses to focus on a selection of popular music and
the evidence of pop cosmopolitanism revealed in audio-visual compositions. The
discussion begins with the work of Point Blanc (Nicholas Ong) and Yogi-B
(Yogeswaran Veerasingam), both formerly of the hip hop/rap group Poetic
Ammo, and ends with a relatively new song in the American folk song genre by
Ezra Zaid and Azmyl Yunor using mainly acoustic guitar.
The song "Ipoh Mali" (2007) remains Point Blanc's most popular
composition. Whereas the title is a strongly nativised signifier of the origins of
the performer in the town of Ipoh in the northern state of Perak, Malaysia, the
lyrics reflect a vision that is infused by cosmopolitan multilocality and
intertextuality. The line "Ipoh where you at?" in the first stanza alludes to the
song "In the Ghetto" by Rakim, an influential Black American rap artist. The
song subsequently ends with the full phrase from Rakim's song, "it ain't where
you're from/it's where you at." Whereas on one level, this reference may indicate
an overt Western influence, the presence of a multitude of other inflections within
the song reveals a strongly localised ethno-musical cosmopolitanism.
In the repeated phrases, such as "yo" "holla" and "y'all" we may observe
varied inflections of "Black American hip hop nation language varieties" (Alim,
2011). However, the cityscapes that are imprinted on the hip hop artist's poetic
space reveal a highly localised consciousness. We perceive this consciousness in
the lines "yo I was born and raised in a place/where the hottest women come
from/Ipoh city/that's where I'll always belong/don't get me wrong yo/I'm KL lite
now/" and again in "to all mah' peeps all down at JB/throw your hands up if y'all
hear me/to all mah cats down at KL city/holla at me if y'all hear me/to all my
pheng ew across the sea now/Penang khia are y'all still down?/and everybody
across the nation/you can make it just be patient/" (Point Blanc, 2007a). Thus, the
lyrical space becomes an amalgam of the quintessential Malaysian metropolitan
cityscapes while the words
pheng ew (friend) and Penang Khia (Penangites)
smoothly incorporate the ethnic Chinese.
Ultimately, as Alim and Pennycook have argued, "the relations between
transcultural flows of popular culture, the localisation of hip-hop and English,
and the mixing of other languages, suggest that hip-hop is a site where languages
and identities are refashioned, where new dynamics of language use and identity
are produced in the performance" (Alim and Pennycook, 2007: 94). The notion of
performance can be further extended to the genre of the music video. When the
song is set to a visual spectacle, as in a music video, the aspects of syncretic
Shanthini Pillai
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cultural multivocality become more apparent. In the "Ipoh Mali" music video,
after an introductory scene played in Malaysian-Chinese domestic setting, the
video narrates the transformation of the performer from the young boy sitting
quietly hunched over at the table into a cosmopolitan hip hop artist in the familiar
baseball cap, baggy pants and oversized t-shirt. The next scene introduces a row
of stylish trainers, another distinguishing characteristic of a hip-hop artist.
However, as the scene concludes, the artist puts on a pair of white sneakers of the
immediately recognisable inexpensive brand Bata, as shown sequentially in
Photo 6.
Photo 6: The music video of "Ipoh Mali"
Source: Point Blanc, 2007b
The reason for wearing the Bata shoes emerges halfway into the song,
when the singer says "as my story drops/I recollect I never had them fancy kicks,
fancy clothes all I had was Hip Hop/and peer pressure left me with a scar/cos'
when kids were rockin' Airwalks/I was rockin' Bata" (Point Blanc, 2007a). As the
visual narrative develops, we observe the imprints of the local landscape
mentioned above combined with a range of cosmopolitan young men and women
and the affirmation of the global phenomenon of the successful young rap artist
who has "seen it all/the ladies, the groupies, the fancy parties, award ceremonies,
glory and all that money" (Point Blanc, 2007). However, as has been the case
from the beginning with other Malaysian popular music performers, the sense of
place and space is ineradicable from Point Blanc's ethno-musical consciousness.
The video calls attention audibly and visually to familiar Ipoh landmarks, such as
Ipoh Garden Eastside, Wooley Food Centre and the Hotel Excelsior. However,
the video ends with an interlude in Hokkien Canto rap, similar to the scene of the
Syncretic Cultural Multivocality
11
Mandarin rappers cited above. Thus, the video reveals the various ways in which
the cosmopolitan tones of the Black rap identity are appropriated and projected in
a dynamic between Asia and the West.
Similar linguistic and semiotic signifiers are evident in the work of the
Malaysian Indian rap artist Yogi-B. "Madai Thiranthu" is a remix of a song by
the South Indian composer Illayairaja. The song begins with an introductory
Carnatic interlude, which is subsequently overlaid with hip-hop poetics: "waa,
now y'all/oh no/oh no it's Yogi-B and Natchatra/that's why Emcee Jesz, Dr. Burn,
Mr G, so Yogi-B
/vallavan makkalukku nee eduthu sollu'' (Yogi-B and Natchatra,
2006a). Naming the artists who appear in a song is considered to be a significant
aspect of Black American hip-hop culture and part of a strategy of self-assertion
and self-affirmation (Kellner, 1995: 178). Thus, this allusion reveals a
cosmopolitan intertextuality, as was observed above with respect to Point Blanc.
The chorus develops the song's global syncretism the lyrics fluidly move between
hip-hop and Tamil poetics:
dam it's gonna blow
thaavum nadhiyalai naan (in a cascading river)
baby u should know
koovum siru kuyil naan (I'm a singing bird)
isai kalaingan en aasaigal aayiram (I'm a lover of music with many
dreams)
ninaithathu paliththadhu (that have come true)
Yogi-B appeared at a conference on South-Asian hip-hop culture
(Hiphopistan) organised at the University of Chicago, where he performed this
song, which attested his cosmopolitan reach. This influence is alluded to in the
song as Yogi-B asserts his status as a significant Tamil rap artist who travels the
globe:
Kola lumpur ho��chennai london
tamilan mc mudhalvan vallavan rap isai kalai vidhiin (pioneer
Tamil MC and a king of rap within music)
The juxtaposition of Kuala Lumpur with London and Chennai marks the
home city as part of the collective metropolis and thus elevates the status of the
rap artist when the Malaysian city is included in that lyrical landscape. As with
Point Blanc, the song ends with an affirmation of the hip-hop identity of the
performers. However, this affirmation is strongly tempered by the accentuation of
the ethno-musical awareness of the performers through the integration of Tamil:
Shanthini Pillai
12
We the hip-hop homie
Kavithai gundar for life�� (king of poetry for life)
isai, alli alli parugevendiya (there is sweetness in giving)
amulztham ada athu (and giving toward music)
The song's music video increases the impact of this facet. In the video,
the Carnatic interlude mentioned above emerges in a scene that shows an Indian
male dressed in the traditional attire of a Carnatic musician and carrying a
traditional portable hand-pumped wooden harmonium, which he plays with much
spirit (see Photo 7). Considered to have been introduced into India by French
missionaries during the Raj, the harmonium symbolises cultural adaptation.
Subsequently, the instrument was used in local music. When considered against
the backdrop of the song's hip-hop poetics, the harmonium draws attention to a
little-noticed historical manifestation of cosmopolitanism and liberates the song
from the limitations of contemporary Metropolitan consciousness.
Photo 7: The music video of "Madai Thiranthu" (youtube.com)
Source: Yogi-B and Natchatra, 2006b
The video also reveals a similar fusion of hip-hop identity with the local
landscape. We observe the familiar hip-hop MC rappers striding through Kuala
Lumpur as the camera pans and focuses on a number of important signifiers in
the local background. These scenes are interspersed with visual affirmations of
the status of the performers as recording artists using recording studio scenes and
images of the production of the group's album as a compact disc (see the collage
from the video in Photo 8).
Syncretic Cultural Multivocality
13
Photo 8: The collage from the music video of "Madai Thiranthu" (youtube.com)
Source: Yogi-B and Natchatra, 2006b
The song concludes with an integration of Tamil
sangeetham notes and
the well-known Tamil poetic discourse
puthukkavithai of the famous Tamil poet
and freedom fighter Bharathy, or Mahakavi Subramanya Bharathiyar. The
discourse is particularly significant in its references to struggle and sacrifice, as
expressed in the lines "Iraivan mattum arivaan...Naan sinthiya
vervai...ratham...thiagam..." (Only God understands the sacrifices of my sweat
and blood/poetic fighter for life...). The evocation of Bharathiyar's struggle can
be considered to refer to the struggle of the artists to establish themselves on the
local and global musical stage. Thus, the song's images and lyrics represent the
dismantling of orthodox cosmopolitanism's Western framework while including
and emphasising Asian multiculturalism.
In contrast to the hip hop of the preceding artists, "That Okay Song" by
Ezra Zaid and Azmyl Yunor might be best described as a contemporary folk
song. The song is primarily distributed over the Internet and originated in the
Internet television series popteevee.com. The song is an example of an emerging
facet of the popular imagination and, again, speaks of the transgression of
multiple borders and spaces. The song includes a strong political message and
celebrates national cohesiveness through a seamless integration of nativised
ethnic multivocality. The song also integrates localised cityscapes, similar to the
audio-visual productions of Point Blanc and Yogi-B.
As the music video begins, we encounter the cosmopolitan figure of Ezra
Zaid, who is wearing a Nike-embossed t-shirt and strumming a guitar as he
wanders through a well-known Kuala Lumpur neighbourhood, Jalan Bukit
Bintang (Bukit Bintang Street).
Shanthini Pillai
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Photo 9: The music video of "That Okay Song"
Source: Ezra Zaid and Azmyl Yunor, 2010a
This sequence is accompanied by soft acoustic guitar during the
introductory verse of the song. Such guitar playing is characteristic of Yunor's
compositions, which are considered to exhibit the influence of the important
American folk musicians Bob Dylan and Neil Young. However, these
cosmopolitan facets of the song are nearly immediately countered by the
nativised multivocality of the first verse, in which Zaid's American accent is
interwoven with the Malaysian enunciation of Yunor:
Going downtown going underground
"What's the best place to get good DVD9's lah macha?"
Well I kinda know a guy in Chinatown
"Petaling Street? Aisey-man situ selalu kena raid lah beb"
(Petaling Street? Oh no, man, that place is always raided)
But my taukay always brings all the prices down
"Okay-lah, but that one if kena saman cannot get diskaun wan"
(Ok, but if that place gets a summons we cannot get a discount.)
It's all settled coz the guy is from my hometown
"Wah. Eh can help settle mine ah? Dah bertimbun-lah, bro."
(Wow, can you help settle mine? It's piling up, bro)
Source: Ezra Zaid and Azmyl Yunor, 2010b
Note: Text in the bracket is the author's translation
With Point Blanc and Yogi-B, the emphasis was on the evolution of the
artist as an individual and the integration of the global hip-hop recording
industry, which was presented against a background of global capitalism and
cultural materialism. In contrast, here, there is an immediate engagement with the
dialectics of resistance to global capitalism, which commences with the issue of
digital piracy. Significantly, in the dialogue between the two singers, the
seemingly cosmopolitan character is well informed regarding the whereabouts of
Syncretic Cultural Multivocality
15
the invicible DVD pirate, the bane of the local authorities and the multinational
media corporations. In this way, subtle echoes of Scott's concept of "everyday
resistance" using the everyday social networks of concealment, cooperation and
coordination (Scott, 1989: 39) become audible within the blatant contravening
and dodging of global digital copyright law. The verse ends with references to
other illegalities: an unpaid traffic summons and a bribe, which is commonly
used to influence public officials. Again, we observe a subtle manifestation of
Scott's "tacit conspiracies" (Scott, 1989: 46) because both the lawbreaker and the
law enforcer partake in a clandestine ritual of folk culture. One needs only to hear
the jaded tone of the vocals to detect the existence of this ritual.
Additionally, whereas the previously discussed rap songs of Point Blanc
and Yogi-B reflected the global scope of Malaysian hip hop, here, the musical
palimpsest reveals the imprint of a more nativised popular imagination. As the
song progresses, it begins to integrate stronger tones of lexical multivocality and
includes popular folk dialogues from the nation's the three major ethnic
communities:
Hey, it's okay.
We gotta live for a better day (Hey!)
Now we give a little a love, and we're on our way
Kita kaotim everything,
parava-illay (We settle everything; it's
all right)
You say, don't play play
Kita mudah lupa but we say "nay" (Nay!) (We often forget, but
we say "nay")
Now we got a little love; keep it on replay
You say semua tak boleh, tapi we all okay aje! (You say all this
is not possible, but we are all okay!)
It may be argued that the Indian terms used in the song, particularly
parava-illay (loosely translated as "it's all right") and
macha ("brother-in-law"),
reflect ethnic tokenism compared with the more predominant Malay and Chinese
terms. Nevertheless, the Indian terms increase the visibility of a community that
is often marginalised in the Malaysian popular imagination. This aspect of the
song is another example of the everyday resistance to formal authority and the
guilt-inducing rhetoric of nationalistic propaganda. The song's resistance to the
state's anti-racism propaganda reflects the dichotomy between state-defined and
everyday social reality. This point is particularly obvious in the progression and
culmination of the music video. As with Point Blanc and Yogi-B, the video's
imagery corresponds to the element of multivocality. As the video continues,
characters of various ethnic backgrounds enter the scene. The video becomes a
dramatic spectacle of folk performance art that progresses from the harmonious
Shanthini Pillai
16
space of cheerful engagement to an outbreak of disruptive altercations, then to a
period of sleep before camaraderie is restored at the end. In many ways, these
scenes are metaphorical rebuttals of the state's interventionist propaganda and
firm warning against celebrating such differences. Thus, the video invites the
viewer to re-imagine the public spaces that the average Malaysian occupies and
to understand them as sites of syncretic multivocality.
The three examples discussed in this section are not representative of the
entire spectrum of Malaysian hip hop. However, the examples provide an
indication of the multivocal music that is being generated in contemporary
Malaysian music halls. The examples clearly reflect "nation language," to use a
phrase of the Caribbean poet Edward Kamau Braithwaite, a language which "in
its contours, its rhythm and timbre, its sound explosions, it is not English, even
though the words, as you hear them, may be English to a greater or lesser degree"
(Briault-Manus, 2006).
CONCLUSION
The Malaysian popular music world displays significant multiple trajectories of
ethno-musicality of Western and Eastern origins. More significantly, as much as
the history of Malaysian popular music reflects pop cosmopolitanism, the cultural
multivocality that characterises the Malaysian identity resonates as strongly (if
not more strongly) at the core of the nation's popular imagination. The skilful
integration of the varied influences of global popular culture creates a music
palimpsest that is and will continue to be imprinted with the multifarious signs of
syncretic cultural multivocality.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This study was funded by Geran Penyelidikan Universiti Malaya (UMRG)
[RG102-10SBS].
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