SO, here we go again – deja vu all over – at least for us in the Klang Valley and some lucky states across the nation. Stuck at home with the MCO/PKB blues, with a bonus emergency as a treat.

I won’t get into a rant about Malaysian politics and the ensuing hypotheses that tends to trail along with the topic for there are better writers and commentators on the topic – although like most patriotic Malaysians I make a pretty good armchair political commentator over teh tarik or cold fermented beverages.

I’d like to wax lyrical about how musicians and artists can take the bull by the horn and make it work in their favour – creatively, that is, for economically musicians and filmmakers have been detrimentally affected not just by the coronavirus but also as innocent bystanders of political whims and fancies.

One may also work things to their favour by looking back at their body of work and mine something for it to make it relevant and in tune with the times, while also inadvertently “reviving” the work for all artworks are timeless – don’t believe the rhetoric of the market and pure trivia of the entertainment media. 

As the new year dawned, I launched another music video, a popular song of mine called Kinchang Penindas (Tricks of the Oppressor – includes English subtitles!) to commemorate the 10th anniversary of my 2010 album Warga – continuing my collaboration with my current and former film students. This time it’s the talented duo of Fahmi Sani and Aaron Chieng (watch these names!) who were part of a group of students who made an award-winning poignant short documentary (watch it!) about the end days of the nation’s first shopping mall, Ampang Park, in their first year of university.

The music video they produced is the closest to home you could say to me – I pitched it as a “love letter to Kajang” (director Fahmi’s hometown) – and the montages of daily life in the town they captured tugged at my heartstrings when juxtaposed against the song.

To me, the song and music video is a fitting coda to 2020 (what a bloody year!) whose chorus refrain is really a prayer and hope for one to toughen up and make things to get better to the best of our abilities, no matter how small.

I’ve been told the song was blaring on speakers during the Bersih street rallies in the early 2010s so you could say the song served its purpose although I never consciously intended it to be a “protest song” per se.

Allow me to digress to provide some context: I wrote the song in one sitting back in 2006 after my first visit to my (future) in-laws’ Iban tribe longhouse in Sarawak for my maiden Gawai Dayak Festival – and oh boy, what a celebration it was (if you‘ve been to one you’d know – for those who haven’t, toss out what you were told in textbooks)!

My faith in Malaysia as a nation, honestly, was restored when I got to know more about the society, cultures, values, and general attitude of East Malaysians. It’s the balance that keeps Malaysia from falling into lopsided peninsula-centric demagoguery.

As a Klang Valley-ite, it’s easy to be caught up in the echo chamber of disillusionment and cynicism (that the internet perpetuates at times) – many are still caught in this and some may never realise that the Klang Valley is not Malaysia.

The trip also, more importantly, revealed the large economic and social rift in our supposedly egalitarian society (we’re not technically – ask non-Malays) – closer to home, more notably teary-eyed tales over tuak of families split through marriages to West Malaysian Malays seemed prevalent when I did my round of ngabang (visiting family rooms in longhouses).

Ibans, who married Malays, were discouraged or not allowed to balik kampung for Gawai since the culture and celebrations were non-halal in spite of some parents – mostly farmers – who went out of their way to prepare separate plates and dishes to accommodate their Muslim in-laws from the peninsula.

So, my trip was not just that of a curious visiting orang laut (the Iban term for Malays). It became a diplomatic mission to clear the name of my community, a community across the ocean (Bornean Malays are a different breed from the West) that had a certain reputation to the peoples of the East.

That was easy to do, honestly, and I fell in love with the culture and community (and of course the fair maiden whom I married). I made it clear to them that I was “not like the rest”.

I even earned my own Iban nickname – Libau, after the famous warrior (oh the pressure!) – picked up a new language, extended family, and perspective of our young nation.

So, that’s how the song came to be and it took a long, long while for it to find a fitting visual home (at one point, a Malaysian new wave filmmaker friend pitched an idea of it being a Western cowboy setting many years ago, but alas it was not to be).

In my collaborations with my current and former students, I am encouraged by their vision and heart while also reminding myself to keep the fire in their bellies and spirits burning and innoculated against political apathy.

One does not have to be a party politics junky to be “political” for understanding our own personal and every day politics (through our own social experiences even the mundane) helps shape us way more effectively and meaningfully than crass armchair consumerism and political partisanship, which are existentially-speaking just noise.

One must be vigilant in spirit and be conscientious in their hopes and prayers – not just for worldly and materialistic gains, but a fair deal for all against oppression.

Make your angst work for you, not against you. Stay safe and more importantly, stay sane everyone. – January 15, 2021.

Note: Agi idup, agi ngelaban translates to “still alive, still fighting” in Iban. 

* 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.