MY folk-rock band Azmyl Yunor & Orkes Padu haven’t had a rehearsal session since 2017, when we did a Tom Petty tribute show at a friend’s venue and performed all the troubadour’s hits – something rare, as we usually play original songs.

We’ve been gigging ever since without the need to check everyone’s schedule, book a studio, travel across town to some desolate commercial shoplot, find parking and repeat songs for two, three hours into the wee hours. It has been a liberating and practical modus operandi for me and the boys, and it also helps keep the camaraderie and chemistry between us buzzing because we’re not in each other’s faces all the time, aided by the fact that most of us earn a living doing non-musical things.

This pragmatic approach to music-making has helped the band keep a very small carbon footprint, burn less fossil fuel (and save petrol or Grab money), drastically cut down our carbon monoxide emissions (Malaysia is a single-occupancy vehicle paradise still) and use less electricity. And since most of us are fathers, we get to spend quality time with our children, fulfil our expected domestic responsibilities and maintain roles in our lives outside the band.

I joke about this in my onstage banter, but I think the boys and I deserve some kind of medal, don’t you think? Where’s our environmental certification? We’ve turned our – well, mine, primarily – disdain for rehearsals into an environmentally and economically sustainable venture, something most Malaysian artistes seek to achieve. I try my best to be a living, breathing “sustainable artiste” minus the tree-hugging tendencies.

It is an understatement to say “sustainability” is the buzzword of our epoch. Sustainable this, sustainable that… it’s as if the mere mention of the word will conjure a fantastical utopia where toil, struggle and destruction are things of the past. What annoys me is that it’s often people in suits and multinational corporations preaching the gospel of sustainability.

According to Wikipedia, the No. 1 resource for students rushing to submit essays, sustainability is the ability to exist constantly. In the 21st century, it refers generally to the capacity of the biosphere and human civilisation to coexist. A tendency of the ignorant is to merely associate “sustainability” with environment-related issues, missing the forest for the trees. The word itself has been sucked dry of its original context by marketeers and advertising language, and its liberal abuse in the language of commerce has become a tenet of political gibberish. It has become all gestures, not a call to action.

In my humble folky way, I’m trying to reclaim the word (and the practice), which I attribute also to the DIY ethos of the oft-misunderstood punk subculture (more on this in the non-utopic future) that focuses on one’s ability to not only exist, but also coexist with others and the environment, based on moral and ethical choices made in mundane, everyday practices.

Music-making in Malaysia, in the common and commercial sense, is unsustainable, period. Music largely remains exclusively associated with entertainment, escapism and celebrities – it isn’t an activity associated with ruminating on and communicating a cause. There’s hardly celebration when the music’s over; pop singers often stop singing and become product ambassadors on the billboards that dot our sprawling highways. They sustain themselves by “selling out” their celebrityhood to associate their personable qualities with those of the products they are paid to endorse.

This is not the form of sustainability I wish to endorse. The boys and I in Orkes Padu keep our dignity and conscience intact by not rehearsing, and keeping the music real by singing our songs, our way. We don’t take requests, and neither should you, dear reader.

Find one thing in your daily life that you have great disdain for, and figure out ways you can make that disdain work for you instead. – February 21, 2020.

* 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.