WHEN I tour solo, George Town will always be on my itinerary. Aside from being the most cosmopolitan city in the northern region – which has venues that accommodate the type of music I make – it’s also a part of my wider and personal goal to get to know the local music and arts community outside of my tiny little world in the Klang Valley.

I don’t have much fond childhood memories of Penang because of the long eight-hour drive we’d have to crawl on trunk roads before the PLUS Highway.

I never really “discovered” the Penang way until my adult life in the 2000s when I played my first-billed gig supporting my hero and friend Francis Wolf (of legendary punk band Spunky Funggy), who was playing in a line-up with bands from different genres from heavy metal to progressive rock in 2003, at the now-gone performing arts hall on Jalan Green Hall.

I am reflecting on this as I’m taking my Grab ride to a venue of my gig at The Canteen At Chinahouse – a venue I have returned to performing annually for the past decade during my tours, since it opened its doors sometime in 2012.

I arrived in George Town last Thursday night, rushing straight away from my afternoon class to catch an evening flight.

It was my first trip back to Penang since the pandemic began. I performed last at Universiti Sains Malaysia for a performance-lecture in December 2019 on my Aku & Gitar (Letrik) Tour 2019.

Upon arriving at my hotel room, I was greeted with my room-mate, drummer and producer Ashwin Gobinath (a Penangite), editing a film on his makeshift mobile set up with a midi-keyboard, completing sound designing for a TV series.

“I’m editing one episode per day, I have to bring my set-up along, there’s a deadline on Monday,” he said.

This was an apt opening shot if my arrival was a documentary about musicking.

I am in town this time around for a symposium at the Penang Institute in plush Pulau Tikus – the first of its kind organised by the Penang House of Music in collaboration with Penang Institute and George Town Festival – bringing together practitioners and academics of Malaysian performing arts and culture titled Echoes, Shadows & Footprints – Symposium on Sustainability, Mobility and Nationalism.

Ash (as we call him) is one of the practitioners invited to speak on his journey. He is a band mate of saxophonist Adil Johan (also a Penangite) – a friend and fellow academic-practitioner who also plays in my folk rock outfit Azmyl Yunor & Orkes Padu – in their own band, Nadir, and also the founder of Nadir Studios.

I have known Ash since he first moved to Kuala Lumpur and playing in bands in the mid-2000s.

What is interesting is he is a living breathing example of what a practitioner needs to embody today: someone trained in a different field outside of strictly music making (a mass communication major).

Meanwhile, he has carried on developing and growing into a working independent musician, producer and studio owner who works also in film and television.

In Adil, you also see, to me at least, what an academic-practitioner should embody today: an understanding and desire to research and build networks to further as a researcher and a practitioner.

He has to juggle both worlds in an attempt to find a nuanced understanding of what drives and limits music making and the wider related ecosystem of the performing arts in Malaysia.

To cut a long story short, the four days and three nights we were in Penang was a busy and fulfilling trip because the symposium featured keynotes by important figures on the studies of all things Malaysian arts and culture: Ooi Kee Beng, director of Penang Institute; Prof Ulung Shamsul Amri Baharuddin, founding director of the Institute of Ethnic Studies, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM); and Prof Tan Sooi Beng, School of Arts, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM).

We also spent some time at The Canteen At Chinahouse catching shows by local musicians old and new and also jamming, and performed as a duo on the aforementioned Saturday night with Adil on saxophone, which meant that we hardly slept.

But hey, that’s life. I initially planned to present a current research idea I’m developing on independent live music venues in the Klang Valley but decided to change it to a sharing session on my attempts at engaging in the digital media (ie, social media) to give some breathing space from the thick (but admittedly rewarding) jargon you find in research presentations in such symposiums.

One of the highlights was the unveiling of a do-it-yourself work-in-progress documentary about the late musician and composer Jimmy Boyle by the Penang House of Music (narrated by the Penang House of Music’s own founder Paul Augustin), which was followed by a short performance of his songs by his pianist-academic son James Boyle and Adil (who also lead the organising academic committee of the symposium).

There was a lot to process mentally – a lot of new friendships made as much a lot of catching up with old friends from Penang, Ipoh and other places too who attended – but it was a much-needed trip to recharge myself from the jaded routines of life in the Klang Valley.

Here’s to much more musicking with a healthy serving of research. This symposium will be the first of many in the future and who knows what the future holds.

Hindsight is a luxury, the key thing is to document and preserve it in some tangible form for future generations. – July 8, 2022.

* 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.