Cultural identity formation and\nnational belonging in the contemporary age is complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Most Chinese who are born overseas\nno longer look to China as their homeland, and the ethnically Chinese who now\nlive in Malaysia are no different. Malaysian Chinese who have visited southern\nChina — wherefrom their forefathers originated — have reaffirmed that they\nare indeed different from the people there. Many have problems communicating;\nthe Hokkien, Cantonese or Hakka dialects spoken in China differ greatly in\nenunciation. They might even complain that the food there is too bland, and\nlacks the spices found in Malaysian cuisine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nevertheless, the expression and\nmaintenance of Chinese culture and identity among those in diaspora remain\nimportant. Certain traditions are selected for revival, transmitted and become\nemblems of identity. Contrary to popular notions of identity as something\nessentialist, the Chinese identity — like all cultures in dissemination — is\nnot fixed, and is constantly being transformed and localised.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The visions of the Malaysian Chinese\nidentity also varies internally: the Malaysian Chinese community is not\nhomogeneous, and is differentiated in terms of educational background, religion\nand the degree of acculturation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The musical arts is one space where Chinese of all backgrounds articulate and rework their identities. Music has always been an important medium for the younger generation to forge new cultural expressions — and, while the majority of ethnically Chinese musicians in Malaysia continue to be inspired by sounds from mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, some are aware of the need for local relevance, so as to reach out to bigger, multiethnic audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
~<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You Can Laugh At Me But I Don’t Care<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Ah Gu or Ah Niu (‘bull’, in Hokkien and Mandarin, respectively) is the nickname for pop singer-composer Tan Kheng Seong, after his hit song ‘Ah Niu and Ah Hua’. Born in Kampung Benggali, Province Wellesley, 31-year-old Ah Gu is known for his country-folk songs — sung in Mandarin, Hokkien, Teochew or Cantonese — which nostalgically takes listeners back to nature and the village community. His music has achieved widespread popularity, and in 2001 Ah Gu starred in Aaron Kwok’s dance flick Para Para Sakura<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hit song ‘Speak My Language’, from the album Chang Ge Gei Ni Ting<\/em> (Sing a Song for You<\/em>, 1998), exemplifies the ongoing dialogue among Chinese musicians in Malaysia regarding their identity and culture. Ah Gu uses multilingual techniques to explore issues of language and identity. In Speak My Language<\/em>, he asks ‘What is my culture? What should it be?’: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Why do I have to speak other language[s]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n While I am talking to my people<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell me please what is my culture <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell me please what should it be <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell me please where is my future <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n North, South, West or East<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Tell me please how can it be.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can laugh at me <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n But I don’t care.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I [am] just looking for my ID <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So don’t blame me<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n For my broken Rojak Market English …<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Educated in Chinese-language-medium\nschools with Mandarin as his first language, Ah Gu asks why he needs to ‘speak\nother languages’ when talking to his people.’ In order to communicate with\nfellow Chinese who were educated in national schools, and who don’t speak\nMandarin or other Chinese dialects, he has to resort to ‘broken rojak Malaysian\nEnglish’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We Are Family<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The BM Boys (Vincent Ng Boon Seng,\nHo Ying Khee, Bonnie Ang Swie Chien, Tan Ming Yih, Tan Chin Teik, Cheng Kai\nYong and Goh Pin Aun) have adapted the ‘world beat’ style to create music that\nsounds both Chinese and Malaysian. Coming from Jit Sin High School in Bukit\nMertajam (hence ‘BM’), Province Wellesley, they have been able to shift their\nsounds away from the standard sentimental hits and local imitations of Hong\nKong and Taiwanese trans-national singers, which dominate the local\nChinese-language airwaves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To forge their own Malaysian Chinese\nidentity, the BM Boys use drums from China, India and Malaysia in their\ncompositions. They employ Chinese instruments such as the dizi (flute) and erhu\n(2-string spiked fiddle). They sing in Mandarin, and often use the Teochew,\nHokkien and Hakka dialects. They consciously adapt Malay words, folk songs and\nsocial music in their songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The highly popular ‘Tong Nian Xiong’\n(‘Song for Childhood’, from the 1995 album Tong\nNian Xiong<\/em>) is sung in Mandarin, using the Malay inang dance rhythm,\nincorporating the Malay folk song ‘Lenggang Lenggang Kangkong’. The folk song\nhelps the singers remember the good times they had together when they were\nyoung. With lyrical parts are accompanied by the erhu, this song is now often\nused to accompany muhibbah dances in today\u2019s national schools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The BM Boys are also known for their\nlyrics, which deal with social concerns and the environment. ‘Nang Si Chit Keh\nNang’ (‘We are Family, from the album Fang\nYen Chuang Zhuo<\/em>, or Dialect Song\nComposition<\/em>) stresses that all Malaysians — whatever their ethnicity, rich\nor poor — should live together in harmony, communicate with one another, and\nwork hard together as a family. The song is sung in the Teochew dialect:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You play the Malay drum I carry the Chinese\nlantern <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Lighting this earth<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The boats in the sea resemble a family <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It does not matter where you come from <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n With toleration with communication <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Holding hands with one heart<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n We are family.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Cafes and Song-writing Competitions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The pioneers of the Malaysian Chinese popular music movement can be traced to a society called Kita, set up in 1986. Two of the members of Kita, guitar instructor Chow Kam Leong and art student Teoh Seng Tack, formed Alternative Music House and Halo Productions in the 1990s to bring together talented young singer-songwriters working in the Chinese-language medium. They started Halo Cafe to provide a space for Chinese-educated youth to perform and listen to unplugged folk sounds. Ah Gu, the BM Boys and other Chinese singers — many of whom have not only become popular in Malaysia and Singapore, but made it in Taiwan and Hong Kong as well — sang at Halo Cafe in the early days of their careers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Consequently, music cafes have sprouted throughout the country, catering to those who wish to jam in front of a live audience. These cafes are mainly frequented by college students and teenagers, and are important venues for creative brainstorming. Today Halo runs cafes in Malacca, Ipoh, Penang, Kuala Lumpur and Subang Jaya.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Song-writing competitions also\nprovide breeding grounds for local Chinese pop music. The Halo National Song-writing\nCompetition, organised by the Alternative Music House in the 1990s, helped to\npromote and popularise Chinese pop music with a Malaysian identity. Follow Me\nRecords signed the BM Boys after they won the first Halo National Song-writing\nCompetition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Radio Five, a radio station that\nfeatures Chinese-language programming, has done its share in promoting local\nChinese music. Together with Follow Me Records, the station organises the\nNational Mandarin Song-writing Contest. It provides airtime for local music to\nbe played, and invites winners of the contest to share their views on music\ncomposition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Music for the Lion Drum<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In an effort to revitalize and bring\nnew identities to traditional Chinese music, some Malaysian composers have\nfused the sounds and rhythms of Chinese instruments with those of other musical\ntraditions practiced in this country. These contemporary works form new\nconcertised music, is performed in concert halls to mixed audiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Bernard Goh-led Hands Percussion\nTeam has been responsible for the ‘creation of new directions to theatrical\ndrumming and contemporary percussion music’ using the shigu, or lion drum (the\n2004 Dialogue in Skin<\/em> programme\nnotes). Starting off with the 24 Season Drums repertoire, based on the sounds\nand movements of agricultural work, this group of Chinese drummers has since\nexperimented with Malaysia’s other diverse musical rhythms. Besides working\nwith Five Arts Centre’s Rhythm in Bronze gamelan performers, Hands has\ncollaborated with local and foreign percussionists, such as Lewis Pragasam,\nSteve Thornton and Billy Cobham.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The group engages in different forms\nof multicultural crossover: instruments, playing techniques, aesthetics, even\nthe musicians themselves. ‘Armour and Skin’ is a creative dialogue between the\nshigu and other Chinese drums, with the bronze knobbed gongs of the gamelan and\nother metallic Chinese cymbals. In ‘The Time Jungle’, five women drummers\nportray their experiences and conflicts as they cross boundaries and break from\nwhat is expected of Chinese women in Malaysia — they do this by performing\ndifferent drum strokes and rhythms at different tempos on five suspended drums.\nThe Indian sitar which plays a melody above the beats of the five suspended\ndrums, lures the performers ‘back into memory, and deeper into this time\njungle’ (Dialogue in Skin<\/em> programme\nnotes; 2004).<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is interesting to note that\nartistic director Bernard Goh, and some members of the Hands Percussion Team,\nrecently went to Beijing to look at how drums were being performed in Chinese\ncontexts. According to Bernard, the Chinese were excited — and, at the same\ntime, “shocked at our work,” particularly at the different forms of\ncrossover Hands’s music features. Their question: “How could you, a\nChinese, create something like this?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bernard’s answer was that ‘his music\nstems from a multicultural context, and he is guided not just by a passion for\nthe Chinese drum but also by the belief that drums can tell a story’. (The\nStar; 21st<\/sup> July 2004).<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Change’ in Gamelan Music<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n My own composition, ‘Perubahan’, in\nthe Sunetra Fernando-led gamelan troupe Rhythm in Bronze’s self-titled album,\nalso exemplifies the new trend of redefining Chinese shigu with the assistance\nof gamelan music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Written in the late 1990s, at a time of political and social change in Malaysia, this piece contrasts two musical cultures — or styles — in the first section. The Malay gamelan plays a composed melody, using the linear structure and gong cycles found in traditional gamelan and other Southeast Asian gong music. This is followed by Chinese shigu drums performing the various rhythmic patterns of the 24 Season Drum ensemble (portraying rhythms associated with agriculture: digging the soil, growing and thrashing padi, rain, and so on). The conclusion of the piece finds the two styles — or cultures — coming together through fusion: of Malay drums (gendang ibu and anak) and shigu; of the rhythms of wayang kulit and the 24 Season Drums; with the shigu drums playing with the gamelan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Perubahan’ signifies change, and\nadvocates a Bangsa Malaysia: a common and plural identity based on the\ncomponent cultures of Malaysia’s various ethnic communities. In Rhythm in\nBronze, instrumentalists are not bound by ethnicity. Malay, Chinese, Indian and\nEurasian gamelan performers collaborate with members of the Hands Percussion\nTeam on shigu drums.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Chinese Orchestra’s Burung Kakak Tua<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Contemporary efforts to create a\nMalaysian identity is also reflected in new arrangements of Chinese and local\nMalay music for the Chinese orchestra (huayue tuan). Chinese conductors in\nMalaysia realise that, in order to be relevant, they have to be less dependent\non China, Hong Kong or Taiwan for new compositions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Malay folk songs such as ‘Burung\nKakak Tua’, ‘Kenek-Kenek Udang’, ‘Chan Mali Chan’ and ‘Potong Padi’ are now\nstandards in the huayue tuan repertoire. ‘Potong Padi’ combines the Malay\nkompang with Chinese instruments. Popular Malay-language songs, such as P\nRamlee’s ‘Getaran Jiwa’, have also been arranged for the Chinese orchestra.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kuala Lumpur’s Dama Orchestra and\nProfessional Cultural Center Orchestra (PCCO), the Penang State Huayue, and the\nKeat Hwa Association of Kedah are just a some of the Chinese orchestras that\nhave transcended Chinese music by experimenting with western chamber musicians,\nclassical Indian instrumentalists and jazz-fusion musicians — and, by doing\nso, these ensembles have been able to attract non-Chinese audiences to their\nperformances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~<\/p>\n\n\n\n Appealing to All Malaysians<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n A small group of Chinese musicians\nhave consciously incorporated Malay and Indian folk music and instruments, as\nwell as Malaysian themes, into their respective compositions — with increased\ncommunication through mass media, and with travel overseas, some are beginning\nto draw inspiration from other parts of Asia, as well. These musicians also\ncollaborate with practitioners from other disciplines — theatre, dance, the\nvisual arts — of various ethnic backgrounds to initiate new form, content and\nvocabulary in performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cross-cultural musical works are few in number. Usually idealist, these might not necessarily reflect Malaysian reality — but they do propose alternatives for a Malaysia that is more integrated, more inclusive. Musical cross-cultural exchange and collaboration needs to be encouraged: as is true for all ethnic music traditions, the Malaysian Chinese sounds that cross borders will not only speak to Chinese, but to all Malaysians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tan Sooi Beng is a professor in ethnomusicology at the Universiti Sains Malaysia Penang’s School of Arts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 15.02.2007 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cultural identity formation and national belonging in the contemporary age is complex. Most Chinese who are born overseas no longer look to China as their homeland, and the ethnically Chinese who now live in Malaysia are no different. Malaysian Chinese who have visited southern China — wherefrom their forefathers originated — have reaffirmed that they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7764],"tags":[3863,3860,3861,3876,590,3883,3864,3867,3870,530,3874,38,3887,247,3879,589,3871,3878,3877,3881,3866,3872,3886,3873,991,40,3885,3884,3880,240,3882,3869,3862,3868,784,3875,2099,3865],"language":[7785],"writer":[7881],"class_list":["post-27525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-muzik","tag-aaron-kwok","tag-ah-gu","tag-ah-niu","tag-alternative-music-house","tag-bernard-goh","tag-billy-cobham","tag-bm-boys","tag-bonnie-ang-swie-chien","tag-cheng-kai-yong","tag-chinese","tag-chow-kam-leong","tag-dama-orchestra","tag-ethnomusicology","tag-five-arts-centre","tag-follow-me-records","tag-gamelan","tag-goh-pin-aun","tag-halo-cafe","tag-halo-productions","tag-hands-percussion-team","tag-ho-ying-khee","tag-jit-sin-high-school","tag-keat-hwa-association-of-kedah","tag-kita","tag-lewis-pragasam","tag-music","tag-penang-state-huayue","tag-professional-cultural-center-orchestra-pcco","tag-radio-five","tag-rhythm-in-bronze","tag-steve-thornton","tag-tan-chin-teik","tag-tan-kheng-seong","tag-tan-ming-yih","tag-tan-sooi-beng","tag-teoh-seng-tack","tag-universiti-sains-malaysia","tag-vincent-ng-boon-seng","language-inggeris","writer-tan-sooi-beng-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27525"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38728,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27525\/revisions\/38728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27525"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27525"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}