“MUSIC is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife.”

This quote (which I discovered on Google), attributed to Lebanese-American writer and poet Kahlil Gibran, may seem mystical on the surface but it holds a lot of pragmatic truths to anyone who has made music a part of their lifeblood (not necessarily a “career”).

It is difficult to make any judgment about the “value” of music because as an art form it is deeply personal but at the same time seemingly pervasive like the wind.

Yet, judge what we do when it comes to music. Youths find solidarity with peers who love the same singers, band or music genres while adults elevate themselves as a self-professed cognoscenti of whatever music or artist they admire or love.

Then there are the naysayers – the religious bigots, opportunistic politicians, online trolls, and whatnot – whom at every turn demonise this ancient artform (yes, it is ancient – the most basic element of music is a beat and our hearts beat, if you don’t know already).

They point their rude fingers and lay blame on so-called “yellow culture”, Satan, drugs, etc. for dispensing it upon the populace, specifically youths, as if the slightest whiff of its rhythm or beat would destroy every fabric of society and denigrate us to the level of dumb beasts.   

I confess, growing up as a music-loving Malay-Muslim teenager, that sometimes even a brief glance of such assertions in the mainstream media (there was only the mainstream media when I was growing up in the pre-Internet world) would elicit a certain doubt in me that sparked the question, “What if they’re right?”, and this question hounded me throughout my teens.

What if the simple act of me strumming a simple G chord on my kapok guitar will condemn me to the deepest pits of an eternal Hell and damnation along with the other sinners like non-believers, murderers, liars, and all?

I never really asked anyone about this then, not even my parents or my music teacher, because as much as these annoying questions bugged me, my gut feeling told me that the premise of this question was somewhat illogical.

This burning defiance in my belly is what I came to discover later as “rock n’ roll” – the spirit, not just the genre – and self-discovery of the pervasive power structures that keeps us dumb and subservient.

So, what is this ‘language of the spirit’ that Gibran was alluding to? Honestly, it’s whatever you make of it.

We – humans, animals, nature – are all spiritual beings. That “spiritual” to me, as a musician, is the connection we make with each other at the moment of contact.

But “whatever” leaves it open to different interpretations, including dumbs one, so let me use an anecdote to make my point.

A couple years later in the late 1990s, while busking on the streets of Perth in Australia, one particular experience (and I had many inimitable experiences during my three-year busking “career”) put this question to rest.

I used to busk on a Friday night in the city centre street mall – Hay Street Mall – because it was also the street where weekend revellers would walk pass towards the clubs and bars on the other side of downtown (busking is also about geography and knowing the best walking and economic routes by the way) and since they were in their best TGIF mood, they were more generous.

Oh yes, of course there were shoppers too because Friday night is “late night shopping”  night – shops in Perth close by 5pm on other nights – so shoppers too were pretty generous with their spare change (especially those AU$2 coins).

On this particular winter night, I decided to busk a bit longer until close to 10pm. By then the streets were pretty empty save for a few cafes nearby.

Around the corner of the main street in the street mall to my right I noticed a group of men straggled along, their chatter pretty evident from a distance that they were inebriated. As they approached, I realised they were a group of Aborigine males, comprising an elderly, several middle-aged and a youth or two.

Now, if you were a typical Malaysian student in Australia, you may have been noted the Aborigines as being generally destitute and at worst alcoholics who roam the streets begging for spare change or cigarettes.

Indigenous populations are no better off in the Western world for your information. In my regular daytime guise as a student, I too had encountered them in and around the city although rarely the suburbs and parted with my spare change and cigarettes too.

Naturally, with this prior knowledge in mind (along with the pervasive stereotypes that circulated the general community), I prepped myself as they took notice of me.

“Play us a song, brother,” one of the middle-aged men requested, although I was more taken by his endearing address to me as a “brother”.

“Sure thing, mate!”, I replied, putting on a brave face and stance as I broke into Bob Dylan’s ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ – my usual go-to when I run out of songs to play – and they gathered around me and soaked it in.

As I finished the song, they dropped whatever spare change they had and me knowingly realising that they weren’t well off by how they looked and dressed said “It’s ok mate, it’s on me,” but yet they insisted. “You’re good, mate!” Then one of them asked for my guitar.

“Sure thing, mate,” I said, masking my reluctance – what if they took off with my guitar? – which gave way to further endearment as he broke into an Aboriginal ballad, which elicited sobbing and tears from the elder man and one of the youths consoled him.

I then realised that they were probably a family consisting of a grandfather, father, uncles, and sons or cousins.

Then they formed into a semi-circle – got me into it – arms around each other’s shoulders and sang away, me humming along since I didn’t know the song nor the language.

As the ballad carried on, so did the stench of alcohol from them but it didn’t matter: they brought me, this Malay-Muslim stranger, into their circle, and I felt humbled and honoured as much as bewildered.

As he finished and returned my guitar, the elder man wiped away his tears to reveal a warm smile and said, ‘Thank you, brother’.

The middle-aged man tapped my shoulder, smiled, and wished me, ‘Take care, brother’ as they waved goodbye and continued their stagger up the street mall into the cold winter night.

I stood there perplexed and enriched at the same time. Music did its magic. Again.

This is the “spiritual” and empathy that are hard to explain and not experienced by many that I will cherish forever not just as a musician but also as a human being in this mad world, for in the face of strife, peace lies in the crevices of an empty street mall to a glimpse of life’s secret.

Such experiences reduce naysayers as just annoying noises I silenced like the mosquito I just flattened on my upper arm. – July 30, 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.