WHILE most Malaysians believe that the country’s prominent musical exports of late are chanteuses like Shila Amzah and Yuna, they only represent a part of the larger picture of our cultural export.

Malaysian punk bands have been touring overseas for the past couple of decades along with the informal punk subculture network and the sub-genre that Malaysia is actually noted for: extreme metal music.

In fact, the metal subculture scene, which coalesced sometime in the 1980s, provided fertile ground for the broader Malaysian underground music scene to germinate and flourish from the 1990s onwards.

At the turn of the millennium, two bands from the fledgling Chinese underground music scene toured China below the radar.

Luckily, they made a documentary of this important footnote of an oft-overlooked history of Malaysian music.

The broader spectrum of the underground music ecosystem is an inclusive space, which consciously keeps out of the view of the prying eyes of the status quo to stick it to The Man.

When American heavy metal legends Metallica came to Kuala Lumpur to hold a concert at Stadium Merdeka in August 2013, music fans (myself included and not necessarily metal heads alone) made their pilgrimage and congregated in the capital city for a night of good ol’ headbanging and sign-of-the-horn saluting on a balmy Wednesday night.

I had relatives from Borneo who also took leave from work just to fly over – their hotel room coincidentally had the direct view back stage and we saw the band members and their entourage arrive in the evening as we knocked a few cold ones in the air-conditioned hotel room before heading out.

As we walked to the stadium gates in a sea of black T-shirts – the important attire of all metal and underground music lovers that equalises everyone regardless of class – the uninitiated would probably be baffled with the Muhibbah crowd, all ages, and broad smiles all over.

After all, if one believes the media, metal fans are often portrayed as long-haired drug-abusing no good layabout kutus (head lice) who tend to be malnourished Malay male youths in their 20s.

Well, this couldn’t be farther from the truth. Most metalheads (as they are called) are regular responsible people with jobs and a family – they just have eclectic music tastes that see through the veneer of pop music sheen.

In my years in the underground circuit, the nicest people I have met have been metal and punk kids, contrary to the stereotype, if you take the words of demagogues and politicians at face value.

This has been documented lucidly in rocker/traveller/writer Marco Ferrarese’s book Banana Punk Rawk Trails and it is important that in spite of the all-round good spirits of the Metallica concert eight years ago, we need to also understand the history of the contentious relationship music subcultures has had in the past with politics, which are often instigated by the latter.

Growing up in the 1990s as a teenager, I often read in the newspaper headlines about warnings by people in power – politicians and religious leaders – of the dangers of music subcultures.

Rock, punk and hip-hop music were the target sporadically in the 1990s and one of the darkest days for Malaysian rockers came on November 1, 1992, when band members from seminal rock bands Search and Wings had their long locks cut by then-minister of information Mohamed Rahmat, live on television from Angkasapuri.

Artists with long hair were banned from the media (this was before the Internet), so while it was pragmatic move on the musicians’ part, the symbolism of the event is not lost on rock music lovers. The Man won.

The underground music scene, however, carried on as usual until the early to mid-2000s when politicians and demagogues needed a convenient scapegoat again to distract the public from their own fallacies.

Several incidences of raids on music events and the detention of music fans in 2001 and 2005 by authorities is symptomatic of the modern state flexing its muscles in a show of power over communities that really just mind their own business but are convenient targets in the theatre of politics.

This is not unique to Malaysia – the history of rock & roll music in the Americas in the early to mid-20th century was set to the backdrop of racism, profiling, and scapegoating. Itis an evergreen cautionary tale of institutional authority versus the people.

While politicians hoot and holler about unity, harmony, and the Muhibbah spirit, us ordinary folks who love and play music on the side are way ahead of the curve and see through their charades.

We save our energy and fanfare for our music gigs and music making in the community. While we may not make the majority, we are all around and hidden in plain sight as functional human beings and citizens.

If you step on our proverbial blue suede shoes and black t-shirts again, watch out – we are voters too. – February 12, 2021.

* 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.