NEWS of a Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) raid on  Angkasa Event Space in Cheras and the popular indie music venue’s subsequent shutdown in Cheras raises the question of the line between entertainment and art.

I brought this up a while back and I’ll bring it up again: who gets to define the boundaries?

It’s an important and interesting debate in which the legal definition of “entertainment” often trumps a grassroots and community-derived definition.

It is the capitalist-derived notion of the word that shapes not only a city council’s definition but also the wider public’s idea of what constitutes “entertainment”.

This is concretised in the RM30,000 deposit DBKL charges the organiser per show.

An “entertainment” venue or event according to most local councils tends to be large nightclubs or even funfairs

Most small music venues – which operate and function as “live houses” (we’ll define this later) as opposed to concert halls or nightclubs – often house four to five gigs per session and RM30,000 is a large sum to fork out for something that is grassroots-driven. The deposit takes months to be returned.

This blanket definition is problematic when it comes to the independent and underground music because of its simplistic and general categorisation of anything involving live music.

Such a definition must change with the times.

Small live music venues such as Angkasa Event Space, Merdekarya, and Live Fact derive their form and function from the concept of live house – a concept born in the Japanese underground music scene in the 1970s.

Most live music venues in Malaysia tend to treat music as a form of “entertainment” or accompaniment to the food and beverage business.
 
Live houses are the exact opposite: these spaces primarily cater to small, intimateperformances which, to put it bluntly, won’t make anyone rich.

Like any community or grassroots derived activity, the primary economy here is a cultural economy, not a financial one. Most of the value paradigms in contemporary society (and its governing body logic) abide by financial economics, not cultural ones.

Yes, we see a lot of funding for the “cultural economy” but then again funding is a top-down flow which carries assumptions that these activities are able to profit from the funding given.

A cultural economy does not trade financial currency but cultural one – it is a trade of meanings and identities.

This logic is something lost to most bureaucrats and business leaders where I’m sure the running question in their minds is “why would someone do something if not for profit?”

These live houses also serve as stepping stones to a big musical career. Singer-songwriter Yuna and indie band Hujan earned their stripes by playing these venues, which are part of the wider independent music circuit (I know because I was there when they were starting out).

Not everyone has the financial and networking privileges of the average middle-class urbanite to access the scene so these small venues serve the youth community in helping them to develop their skills and talent while also keeping them away from so-called “social ills” unfairly associated with live music subcultures.

I repeat – live music is neither a social problem nor the cause of social ills.  

If Kuala Lumpur fancies itself to be an inclusive global cosmopolitan city, then those who govern it must also have an inclusive global cosmopolitan attitude and mindset. Start a genuine dialogue with the community, stop punishing people.

Maybe it’s time we hold local council elections again to let the community vote for their mayor. – July 29, 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.