IF you’ve been following my column and yet to get my drift, I have a great distaste for the entertainment industry.

Not only do I think the entertainment industry, particularly pop music, is always in danger of being vacuous and exploitative, I also detest the word “entertainment” because it expects the artist’s priority is to entertain a crowd at all costs.

This is why in Malaysia, most musicians are trapped in the bar band mode—playing covers of other people’s songs to entertain and amuse them, thus lowering the potential of audiences expanding their critical tastes on what music can be beyond something you merely dance or groove to.

I’ve even seen some young musicians falling into this trap because of the allure of a better but unsustainable payday.

In the indie music scene, most just hang up their their music instruments in favour of a day job.

I notice that a lot of older musicians, including my ageing Generation X peers, are also trapped in what I call the “grumpy old men” syndrome (yes, it is specific to the male gender) which many tend to fall into as they find their youthful vigour sapped as they ride into the sunset.

As someone who is still kicking out the jams on my own terms as I inch closer to 50, here are my tips on how to remain relevant not just to audiences but, most importantly, to yourself.

Listen and learn

Contrary to popular belief, most musicians are terrible listeners. I don’t mean listening to songs but listening to what others have to say.

It is a vocation that is centred on the self and, if not mitigated and guided, could lead to selfishness.

Of course, a bar musician will listen to their audience’s requests really well, but to be an original artist with a singular voice that remains relevant with the times, and especially with youths, one has to keep an open ear and heart, listen to what their blues are, take note, and learn from it.

Learning is lifelong, and once one stops learning, one falls into irrelevancy. The same goes for the musical artist.

Some artists become cover versions of their younger selves, a self-tribute band of sorts, especially if the money is good. This is actually really sad artistically.

But if one discards the financial rewards of being an on-demand human jukebox, connecting with youths and contemporary audiences goes beyond just some musical thing—it’s about connecting with the present and with the zeitgeist of the times.

Learning is like a muscle – if one does not flex it, it will lose its vigour and become flaccid and inflexible. Be amused by present trends and find out why they are popular. Don’t just sneer.

Tell your own stories in songs

As a singer-songwriter, the heart of my vocation is storytelling, not music or singing.

Playing covers in a dive bar doesn’t really offer much opportunity in storytelling except something that relates to the popular cover song you are about to play or requested by the audience.

One of the blights of the Malaysian entertainment industry is that the people who pass off as artists often are not really creators – they are just conduits that channel what other lyricists and songwriters have produced.

Hence, most of them do not enjoy the rewards of creation in the creative industry, such royalties or publishing. They end up being glorified labourers.

If one composes their own songs, they have the opportunity to not only tell their own stories but also share their journey and wisdom in song. A good storyteller draws in people better than a Top-10 cover.

This also opens up the opportunity to pass down their precious and hard-earned knowledge to the next generation, which brings me to my final tip…

Stop moaning about “the good old days”

Nothing bores me more than listening to someone talking about “the good old days” and how kids nowadays “have it so good and easy”.

One of my bandmates moaned this once, and I reminded him that he is in danger of becoming the people we hated when we were first starting out.

It is also a sign of someone who rues their expiring relevance and masks it with some form of jadedness and cynicism. It is a sign of weakness in an artist to me.

Let bygones be bygones. Yes, you may reminisce, and that is fine, but don’t deride the present purely out of some long-lost nostalgia that will never return.

Weren’t you once young yourself? Let the young be young, and you act your age by displaying some class and wisdom.

Don’t be an old brat. – June 21, 2024.

* 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.