Music as a tool of political\nconsciousness doesn’t happen often enough — perhaps unsurprisingly for a\nsociety wary about the uncontrolled consequences of freedom of expression. But\nthat rare occasion of bands banding together to bandy an important issue did\nhappen recently when, on the last weekend of May, groups like Farasu,\nCarburetor Dung, Revenge, Y2K, 360 Degrees Head Rotation and Negation rocked\nand raged at that no-tickets-required, arts-for-the-masses space that is Kuala\nLumpur’s Central Market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Called Free Voices<\/em>, the gig featuring local alternative rock bands was the\nculmination of a series of events organised by communication rights watchdog\nCentre for Independent Journalism (CIJ) to mark World Press Freedom Day which\nfalls annually on May 3.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Though this wasn’t my poison (too\nold to rock), I was nevertheless compelled to go on the second day as a CIJ volunteer.\nIn the end, like the 300-plus crowd who took some time to warm up, I couldn’t\ntear myself away from the bands. The budget-constrained acoustics could not\ncrank up enough energy or achieve the right balance of sound, causing the drums\nand electric guitars to render the vocals unintelligible. But standing right in\nfront of the stage where the speakers were, braving the direct hit of the\nafternoon sun, afforded one the full blast of the music. Most people however\nstayed sensibly in the shade of the building and trees. But there was no\nstopping them from surging to the front when rock legend YK2 made their\nappearance. Irresistible in their fearsome Mexican wrestling masks, the band\nattracted gawking attention from the usual downtown shopper unused to such\nsights. The antics of Revenge’s lead vocalist were even more engaging, coupled\nwith his cute, rotund figure and hard rock get-up (including minor costume\nadjustments). When he climbed onto a speaker to jump from it, I was positively\nworried for the speaker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sun not withstanding, things\nwere really heating up nicely. The crowd swelled in anticipation of the final\nband, Negation — they have saved the darkest, metalliest band for the last.\nScores of Indonesians got their heads and bodies shaking at the first beat,\nstaging spurts of wild body-surfing which didn’t last long due to the forbidding\npresence of a Special Branch officer who stood in front of them (well, I was\ntold he was Special Branch but the crowd couldn’t have known since he was in\nplain clothes; so it must be his frowning countenance and that walkie talkie\nthat gave him some authority; and he was not alone). It was interesting that\nthe Special Branch should approve of this concert and then turn up to monitor\nthe safety and security issues as opposed to the “internal security”\nissues — though we cannot be too sure if they weren’t also taking notes. In\nany case, frown or not, the show went on and the crowd kept on mashing. Kudos\nto all sides for keeping cool despite the heat, especially gig coordinator\nHasbee who kept an eye on the crowd. There were no “untoward incidents”\n(take note, DBKL) in spite of an anti-black metal and anti-punk exhibition in\nthe foyer (a paper titled “Ciri-ciri Black Metal” includes among the\nciri-ciri: “Gitar kencang dengan petikan tremolo” and “Bunyi\ngitar lemah atau bunyi gitar yang agak kuat, biasanya tidak berbunyi\nsederhana”).<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the music went down well, the\npoor acoustics made it difficult to decipher whether the lyrics added meaning\nto the whole event. Fortunately, a few politically aware musicians got the\nmessage out in between sessions. According to Lainie, a self-professed artworld\naddict who was there on both days, Chinese-language band NAO slammed the media\nblackout of the Bloody Sunday affair at KLCC which saw a public demonstration\nagainst the fuel price hike turning into a demonstration of police brutality.\nIt also urged support for independent online daily Malaysiakini, the only\nmedium which reported the news. The next day, the message bearer was 360 Degree\nHead Rotation’s lead vocalist Rafil Elyas, who presented the Kambing Hitam Awards:<\/p>\n\n\n\n No representatives of the honoured\npublications and journalists were present, so the award was accepted on their\nbehalf by CIJ’s executive director Sonia Randhawa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It may seem at odds for the musicians to be criticising the media for biased and bizarre reporting on an occasion to promote its freedom; but not to Sonia. “This is part of the same issue,” she said. “The lack of ethics in the media is directly related to freedom of expression and the lack of it… This (disillusionment with the media) is a reflection of the current media landscape. A highly controlled media such as ours is a breeding ground for the targeting of minority groups such as non-mainstream bands. Hate speech has been really effective where speech is controlled, such as in Rwanda [genocide of the Tutsis] and during the Nazi rule [of Germany]. To deal with such targeting, the minority groups would need to have their own space to have their say… That’s why we need media freedom.” In the case of bands playing non-mainstream music, this is crucial especially since the likes of Harian Metro<\/em>, which reported the raid at jamming pub Paul’s Place for allegedly playing black metal, appear to have no obligation to be fair in their coverage. “Some of the reports were made up and gross lies,” Sonia said indignantly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She continued, “The media here are bound to follow the government’s agenda and choose easy scapegoats. When you have no fear of reprisal [from a particular group], it’s easy to target [them]. Yet when the police [a powerful group] are targeted for criticism, the media are immediately chastened,” she said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Yet ironically, the bands had been\ntold to tone down their language for the show — no cuss words. Though the\ncondition was not of CIJ’s making, Sonia had a justifiable explanation for it —\nthe open nature of the gig, with a mix audience of adults and young kids (not\nthe bovid kind, as per DBKL’s instructions), for whom the kind of music played\nmight be a first exposure. “This is more a question of making sure we’re\nsensible about spaces we use,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sensible or not, some members of the\npublic appeared emboldened by the events. The Bloody Sunday resurfaced at the\none-hour drama workshop held at the food court when some participants staged a\nfive-minute, improvised sketch on the issue. Artis Pro Activ’s Fahmi Fadzil,\nwho conducted the workshop, found the experience “scary and\ninteresting” because it was “out in the open” and there was no\nway to predict how the audience would react, especially as the dialogue had\nsomeone shouting “Police! Police!” However, this mini workshop as\nwell as others on film (by community communications NGO KOMAS) and radio\nproduction (by CIJ) held upstairs next to the food court didn’t get as good a\nresponse as the gig outside. Fahmi said the transitory jalan-jalan crowd there\nmade a poor source of participants. A targeted group, perhaps from colleges,\nwould have gotten things going. As it turned out, the few participants were\nindeed students who had participated in the government’s Tunas Budaya programme\nfor schools and had come purposely for the drama workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The gig and open workshops, the\nfirst ever of their kind organised by CIJ, marked a radical approach to the\ntraditional NGO events of talks, book launches, etc. where the same faces are\nseen. Ensnared by the music, people were more receptive to the flyers\ndistributed with the intention to reach out to fresh blood (none from goat\nsacrifices, DBKL can rest assured). The musicians, too, were enthusiastic,\nthough one suspects a large part of it was due to a chance to perform at what\nJoe Kid of Carburetor Dung calls their “spiritual home”, the site of\ntheir busking and busting days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n Chuah Siew Eng is born in the year of the goat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n First Published: 12.07.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Music as a tool of political consciousness doesn’t happen often enough — perhaps unsurprisingly for a society wary about the uncontrolled consequences of freedom of expression. But that rare occasion of bands banding together to bandy an important issue did happen recently when, on the last weekend of May, groups like Farasu, Carburetor Dung, Revenge, […]<\/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":3,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7758,7765,7776,7764,7774],"tags":[4255,4261,245,3555,1081,904,4251,4257,924,250,867,4252,3597,4260,3669,4259,4267,4265,4262,40,1056,4256,901,1082,221,792,4253,49,4264,3896,3968,4266,239,4258,4254,521,4263],"language":[7785],"writer":[7902],"class_list":["post-27558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artikel","category-penapisan","category-pameran","category-muzik","category-ulasan","tag-360-degrees-head-rotation","tag-akmal-abdullah","tag-amir-muhammad","tag-artis-pro-activ-apa","tag-black-metal","tag-carburetor-dung","tag-central-market","tag-centre-for-independent-journalism-cij","tag-concert","tag-dbkl","tag-fahmi-fadzil","tag-farasu","tag-freedom-of-expression","tag-harian-metro","tag-joe-kidd","tag-malaysiakini","tag-media","tag-media-freedom","tag-mohd-jamilul-anbia-md-denin","tag-music","tag-nao","tag-negation","tag-pauls-place","tag-punk","tag-pusat-komas","tag-rafil-elyas","tag-revenge","tag-review","tag-saipul-adli-mohd","tag-sonia-randhawa","tag-special-branch","tag-tunas-budaya","tag-workshop","tag-world-press-freedom-day","tag-y2k","tag-yasmin-ahmad","tag-zainal-zawawi-mohamaed","language-inggeris","writer-chuah-siew-eng-ms"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27558","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=27558"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38917,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27558\/revisions\/38917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27558"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27558"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}