SOMETIME back in 2007, I had the pleasure of travelling to Laos with my singer-songwriter and gig organiser friend Reza Salleh and fellow musician Zalila Lee to perform at a cafe bar in the capital of Vientiane.

As with most countries I visit for the first time to perform, I would research the internet for details or interesting information about the country, culture and people.
 
This is to me the greater pleasure of being a touring independent musician – yes, the music is secondary because let’s just say the music comes naturally and automatically after you’ve been doing it for so long.

Anyway, back to the trip. When Reza asked me over the phone call if I’d like to perform in Laos, I thought he was referring to some hip new restaurant in Bukit Bintang.

We do have so many restaurants named after the country of the cuisine’s origins with exorbitant prices that few of the origin societies are able to afford.

Of course, I was delighted when he corrected me and said he was referring to the country, not some fancy overpriced restaurant in the capital.

One thing that strikes you upon arrival in Laos is, aside from the vehicles – they drive on the left-side of the road over there, a legacy of the French along with baguettes – is how semi-rural and rustic the capital is.

As we drove past the main road from the airport – a four-lane road with a dusty sidewalk – and beautiful golden Buddhist temples that dot the capital – you could say I felt a nostalgia for a Malaysia I had never experienced.

While nostalgia is not always dangerous thing, national narratives are often soaked in nostalgia that is not as innocent as it seems 

This is probably why there are so many great thinkers on nationalism compared to other -isms.

Ater grabbing a meal (served with probably the best Vietnamese drip coffee I had ever had up to that point) and settling in at our hotel, we checked out the show venue which turned out to be on the Mekong River riverbed just a block or two from the city centre and owned by two Malaysians.

Across the river was Thailand – literally a stone’s throw away. If Kelantan wasn’t so conservative, I could imagine a music venue similar to this on the Sungai Golok riverbed, which would be more amazing because across it would be in the past (for your information, Thailand is one hour behind Malaysia). 

Coming from a country like Malaysia with an ample coastline, I often wonder about the psychology of epople living in a landlocked country like Laos.

While present Laos is a communist military one-party state, like most Southeast Asian countries, it used to have separate kingdoms which the modern state is the most recent union.

Why am I going on and on about Laos, you may wonder. Well, the Laotian under-23 national football team recently beat Malaysia’s national under-23 football team recently. 

I’m no armchair football commentator but this yet another loss sustained by the national football team (in whatever permutation or category we compete in) on the regional and international stage is emblematic of what I feel is a national problem: complacency.

Of course, it’s hard to empirically quantify complacency – there may also be little will by researchers to pursue this – so I’ll just take this on then.

This complacency, mind you, is also symptomatic of countries with stable economies, something Malaysia was (and is still depending on who you ask) and encompasses not just sports but all areas of life – political complacency, cultural complacency, SOP complacency, etc.

To put it simply, when life is good people tend to get complacent and forget.

Never in a moment during my few days stay in Vientiane did I think Laos was a backward country – quite the contrary, the nostalgia I felt was the result of what my elders often told me about life in Malaysia in the past.

My turn is already coming, being in my mid-40s and surrounded by my grumpy peers whose grumblings I often meet with sarcasm. 

Malaysia is already lagging behind our supposedly backward and “lowly” neighbours not only in sports (remember how Thailand surpassed us in sepak takraw?) but in attracting foreign investors which in the long-term will impact us not only economically but also socially and culturally – they are all interrelated and consequential. 

The source of this lagging is of course dynamic. Just look at how the “pious” in our system stubbornly persist in not understanding the supremacy of the constitution over shariah law

While the resistance and battle continue, it’s a grim, hard reminder of the slippery slope we are heading towards and there seems to be no sign of the battle abating. 

So when I think of Laos, I hope Vientiane succeeds in maintaining some of its rustic charm I experienced when I performed on the banks of the mighty Mekong 15 years ago.

And I also hope that 15 years from now I can still perform freely as an independent-minded artist in this beautiful and mad country we call home.

Whatever it is, let’s mitigate the complacency around us and buckle up for the homemade battles ahead. – February 25, 2022.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.