MALAYSIA, oh, Malaysia… so the lament goes.

Enough of lamenting. It is such an urban middle-class thing to lament and post or share on social media to the converted.

I have had enough of lamenting – I do it professionally in my songs, and I thank God for that ability and talent (and hard work too) for it keeps me sane and draws like-minded people, audiences, and sometimes new fans into my orbit.

It is interesting, for me at least, to trace the path of artists or public figures with whom people associate patriotic zeal or ideals.

There seems to be only two permutations that currently exist in the public eye: the government-friendly (in public at least) and government-endorsed artists, who are on the payroll to varying degrees, versus the, well, there’s hardly actually a binary opposite to this breed when you think about it.

There is the patriotic breed like me, but we exist in our underground or independent music habitat mostly out of the gaze of the mainstream public.

We tend to cater to the well-read, the curious, the open-minded, and most of all, the marginalised – not necessarily from economic inequality or ethnic discrimination but primarily because you had novel ideas about patriotism and nationhood that the official discourse doesn’t necessarily endorse.

It is the official discourse’s loss anyway, because Malaysia is more diverse than the sum of its parts in the propaganda appears to be.

Judging by the lack of decorative zeal on the streets of the Klang Valley this year, one may surmise that the official discourse remains peninsula-centric.

Add to this, the scale of the recent Hari Merdeka official celebrations as an indication – that’s how I still like to call it and insist on calling it still because that’s what I was taught in school.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that in some ways, we have regressed.

I use “we” here because I’m tired of the finger-pointing that we are wont to do when things go wrong.

To finger point in our current times is to lower ourselves to the level of our national dealers.

They are not leaders to me because backroom politics have dictated our beautiful nation since the mob gathered at a five-star hotel in Petaling Jaya, which used to be a parking lot in front of a live music bar at which I used to perform.

Never in my wildest imagination would I think that the same parking lot I used to gaze out over, smoking a cigarette after my gigs, would one day be the site of the hijack of the nation by a group of ethically bankrupt elites.

I believe in using “we”. To take ownership of the country – regardless of the politics that dictate the governance of the land – we must accept that sometimes we let things happen or slip out of our hands.

To not reflect on what we did wrong or acknowledge any shortcomings is just as unpatriotic.

Be that as it may, here I am today, on an overcast and rainy Thursday, finally sheltered away from the mad Klang Valley rush hour (is it just me or has the traffic gotten progressively worse in the past months?), contemplating my band’s set list for our gig this evening.

The band – Azmyl Yunor & Orkes Padu aka Ayop (we’re an acronym nation, I can’t help it!) – haven’t played together live at a gig since 2019.

We had a gig scheduled right at the start of the pandemic that had to be cancelled when the whole country (and the world) was equally cancelled as the pandemic rolled into town.

Come Malaysia Day, if you’re not getting busy waving the Jalur Gemilang bought during Hari Merdeka, you are hitting the highway and getting caught in another now-traditional long weekend good ol’ Malaysian traffic jam.

Yet, most of all, let’s reflect again on the past two years, especially the pandemic, and take heed of the lessons it has taught us in all aspects of both private and public lives.

The greatest fallacy is not learning a lesson or two about how we have lived in such an oblivious and reckless manner.

Judging by the way things are now, most of our public and private institutions haven’t really heeded much: there is an urgency to “return” to how things were aside from the vacuous “new normal” (whatever that means).

Selamat Hari Malaysia my fellow Malaysians, far and wide, wherever you are.

We citizens are protectors of her sovereignty. Don’t believe otherwise. – September 16, 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.