{"id":27911,"date":"2006-03-18T04:55:00","date_gmt":"2006-03-18T04:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27911"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:57:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:57:44","slug":"saidah-the-phenomenon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2006\/03\/saidah-the-phenomenon\/","title":{"rendered":"Saidah! the Phenomenon"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

“Next time I say I want to do something like that [M! the Opera<\/em>], please bang me on the head, will you?” says Saidah Rastam. We are in Scat Productions. Her show opens in two weeks and she is busy putting together a tape to make up for the fact that many of her musicians cannot be present at the show — the Istana Budaya musicians have just been told they have to be in Sabah during those dates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fired up, but still talking in her\nusual carefully thought out sentences, Saidah is clearly happy: she has written\nthe music that has been in her head for two years now, music that is completely\nnew and that blends all of the sounds of Malaysia. It is a music she wants to\noffer her country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show opens this week and she has\npulled together a show that until three months ago had no financing.  This alone has been a testimony to her\ntenacity  (her husband says she was a\ngood lawyer —  “she never lets\ngo”), her contagious passion (the cast had no guarantee of being paid) and\nher deep, solid friendships —  long time\nfriend Chacko Vadaketh took on the thankless task of producing the show,\nlibrettist Jit Murad wrote most of the script and Jo Kukathas stepped in as\ndirector after two other directors fell through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 42, the petite lady often seen in\nbaju kurung has certainly achieved much in the ten years since she left law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She is now much in demand, with jobs\nthat will keep her busy until the end of the year. Among those: music for a\ncabaret show at The Esplanade, Singapore in July (her biggest show ever), and\nsoundtrack for Susuk<\/em>, Amir Muhammad’s\nnext film. Her music has been performed in contemporary concerts in Europe,\nCanada, the United States, Australia and Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it wasn’t always so easy and\nglamorous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She studied law, as her father was\nopposed to her studying music, and practiced at Skrine and Co. During her\npupilage under James Puthucheary, a famous advocate, trade unionist and\nopposition politician, she found law very exciting “because it wasn’t just\nlaw. It was about fights, about politics, people did all sorts of idealistic\nthings.” But with the legal crisis in 1987 and growing corruption in the\njudiciary came disillusionment. She started to play the piano at jazz and\ncabaret shows and co-produced them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She let her feisty, idealistic and\narty streak express itself when she became one of the founders of The Instant Caf\u00e9\nTheatre Company in 1989, which became known for its bitingly honest political\nand social satire. She was its first music director.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She finally summoned enough courage\nto quit law in 1996 to “do music — whatever that meant,” only to\nfind that no Malaysian college would take her as a music student. She then\nworked for two years composing music for commercials and corporate videos for\nScat Productions, a music production house. Says Michael Veerapen, director of\nScat and established jazz pianist, about why he hired her: “musicians and\narrangers, you get plenty of those, but composers, now that’s rare.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her attempts at a formal education\nin composition stopped there, apart from a summer workshop at New York University.\nIt seems writing music just came naturally — “that’s why I’m a poor sight\nreader [at piano], because it’s easier to make it up!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However she is very grateful for her\ntwo years at Scat. It taught her to follow a brief and deliver promptly, while exposing\nher to music she would never have chosen to listen to, helping her do away with\nthe notion that music was “a precious arty sort of thing.” Instead,\nshe learned to play with sounds and became totally enamoured with computer\nsound design and collaging, with which more traditional composers might not be\nso familiar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she left Scat she was in an\nenviable position — she could afford to be choosy about her projects even\nwhile her husband “brought home the bacon”. More work came in as she\ndeveloped a reputation for artistic integrity and high standards. Commissions\nincluded soundtracks for films, including Amir Muhammad’s Lips to Lips<\/em>, music for plays and musical theatre pieces such as\nInstant Caf\u00e9 Theatre’s Pulau Antara<\/em>\n(Kuala Lumpur, 2001), Huzir Sulaiman’s Occupation<\/em>\n(Singapore Arts Festival, 2002) and Toy Factory’s Spirits<\/em> (Singapore Arts Festival, 2005).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her style evolved and became more\navant-garde. The music for Jit Murad’s The\nStoryteller<\/em> (1996) combined gamelan and angklung with synthesizers and\ntape, and “Scintillations” (1997) blended jazz and Indian classical styles.\nShe composed for Rhythm in Bronze’s gamelan ensemble, for the Malaysian Chinese\nProfessional Cultural Chinese Orchestra and explored as many different\ntraditional styles as possible. At the same time she would listen to Frank\nZappa, Bela Bartok, Edgar Varese… “Saidah’s perspective is quite\ninternational and she is very aware of how her music has to measure up in terms\nof quality against other forms of new music around the world”, says\nAustralia-based music director Roland Peelman.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Feisty, sometimes cerebral,\nwhimsical, adventurous, unpredictable, and versatile are terms used to describe\nher music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kit Leee (now better known as Antares), a maverick and brilliant composer\/writer, reckons only Sunetra Fernando and Valerie Ross are in the same league as Saidah in Malaysia in terms of creating a new Malaysian music language. In fact, when Sunetra Fernando, who was the Malaysian mentor for the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra’s Forum for Composers, moved to the UK in 2005, Saidah was asked to replace her. The other two mentors, also appointed by the MPO associate conductor Kevin Field, are established composers from Australia and the United Kingdom. “She has a natural ability about her music, it communicates with people”, Kevin says, as he explains why he chose her. “If given a brief, she can do exactly that, whether it’s a TV commercial, a requiem, a cabaret.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Certainly music director Roland\nPeelman wouldn’t have taken two months from his busy schedule to be the music\ndirector of M! The Opera<\/em> if he didn’t\nthink some interesting music was going to be created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I worked with Saidah before\nand it was a very exciting experience,” he recalls. “She is creating\na Malaysian language,” he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a romantic and idealistic way,\nher music attempts to reconcile all cultural differences and enable Malaysians\nto meet on a new and common ground.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“What Saidah has wanted to do\nfor Malaysia perhaps and with Malaysian idioms is something I have always found\nvery exciting and worth supporting,” says Roland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As an outside observer who has\nworked in Malaysia, China and other countries, he believes one is witnessing a\ncoming of age in Malaysia, a young country where people are “looking for\nMalaysia’s soul” and searching for how they can best use Malaysian\ntraditions, some of which have been discarded, forgotten, transformed, and\nsquashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Indeed Saidah is doing in music what\nMalaysian playwrights such as Huzir Sulaiman, Jit Murad and Jo Kukathas with\nThe Instant Caf\u00e9 Theatre (Saidah has written music for all ICT’s plays) have\nbeen doing in theatre — create a new idiom that absorbs and fuses Malaysia’s\ndiverse cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For M! The Opera<\/em>, Saidah used workshops with asli singers, dikit barat\nplayers, classical opera and carnatic singers, Chinese opera performers and so\non to include their sounds in the music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But M<\/em>\u2019s tribulations with sponsorship and casting have been the talk in\ntown for over a year. Yet what she faces is not unique says Kevin Field, though\nit might feel unique in Malaysia. Berlioz struggled when he wanted 220\nmusicians. Yet the artistic process, Saidah says, has been totally fulfilling,\nif painful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M! The Opera<\/em>\nfaces two challenges however. One is whether the orchestration and the\nperformers can measure up to Saidah’s music. The second is whether her music\nwill touch her fellow Malaysians the way she wants it to. “I always\nbelieve that a good piece is relevant all over the world if it has the courage\nto deal with universal themes rather than local themes — though the flavour\nhas to be local,” says Roland. “But I hope it is first and foremost\nrelevant to Malaysians. Otherwise where’s the point?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With her busy schedule, one could be\nsurprised that she felt the need to create M!\nThe Opera<\/em>, a musical theatre that uses the fashion world as the stage for a\nstory about fame, love and other eternal themes. But she explains there were no\navenues for something that focused on music using a variety of Asian sounds and\ninstruments. The MPO Forum for Malaysian Composer is for compositions for a\nWestern classical orchestra. And since 2001, the Singapore Arts Festival has\nonly commissionned works outside Singapore for theatre, not music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But still, if Malaysia doesn’t buy\nher, Singapore might. Goh Ching Lee, director of the Singapore Arts Festival,\ncame to KL in October to see a preview of M<\/em>\nand she says, “This was the first time I heard her own compositions and I\nwas very, very impressed, she is very exceptionally gifted.” She has asked\nthe producers about possibilities of staging M! the Opera<\/em> in Singapore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When asked about the scary word “opera”, Saidah retorts, “Opera to me is a totally undesirable word. In retrospect I would have called it the music theatre piece!”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

M! the Opera<\/em> is staged at Istana Budaya, Thu 23 Mar – Sun 2 Apr 2006. The tickets are selling real fast due to corporate bulk purchase. Buy yours now!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 18.03.2006 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Next time I say I want to do something like that [M! the Opera], please bang me on the head, will you?” says Saidah Rastam. We are in Scat Productions. Her show opens in two weeks and she is busy putting together a tape to make up for the fact that many of her musicians […]<\/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":17,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3537,3535],"tags":[245,42,3087,4381,4380,600,518,4385,285,608,4383,4384,3611,1131,40,3117,263,240,3090,494,4378,4268,4386,1859,4379,46,4382],"language":[7523],"writer":[7632],"class_list":["post-27911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-music-2","category-theatre","tag-amir-muhammad","tag-antares","tag-chacko-vadaketh","tag-fashion","tag-goh-ching-lee","tag-huzir-sulaiman","tag-istana-budaya","tag-james-puthucheary","tag-jit-murad","tag-jo-kukathas","tag-kit-leee","tag-malaysian-chinese-professional-cultural-chinese-orchestra","tag-malaysian-philharmonic-orchestra-mpo","tag-michael-veerapen","tag-music","tag-music-theatre","tag-opera","tag-rhythm-in-bronze","tag-roland-peelman","tag-saidah-rastam","tag-scat-productions","tag-singapore-arts-festival","tag-skrine-and-co","tag-sunetra-fernando","tag-the-instant-cafe-theatre-company-2","tag-theatre","tag-valerie-ross","language-english","writer-jenny-daneels"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27911","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=27911"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39024,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27911\/revisions\/39024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27911"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27911"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}