OUR dear friend singer-songwriter Hassan Peter Brown died on Monday.

It’s been a rough 12 months for the Malaysian singer-songwriter community – we’ve lost two important artists in Meor Yusof Azzidin on Christmas eve last year and Dr Wan Zawawi Wan Ibrahim earlier this year.

I received a message about a week ago from his wife Markiza – his soul mate, bandmate, and partners of Lemang Music – informing me about his hospitalisation which no one aside from close family knew about. We last met just about a year ago when I visited them.

Hassan and Markiza were not only fellow troubadours and dear friends. They were important figures of the Klang Valley independent and underground music circuit in 2000 onwards.

He and Markiza organised a series called “Acoustic Jam” at one of the function rooms in the Royal Commonwealth Society of Malaysia (we only knew it as Commonwealth Club) in Bukit Damansara.

The series was important in the development of the indie music and open mic circuit in the Klang Valley along with Joe Kidd’s Unclogged and Pete Teo’s Songwriters Round series in different corners of the capital when the public narrative of music making was solely in the hands of the mainstream music industry and the pub scene.

Such shows bridged the divide between the vibrant but hidden from plain sight underground music scene and the aforementioned mainstream.

I corresponded with Hassan online (via the Malaysian Underground Yahoo Groups mailing list – this was pre-social media times) before I literally bumped into him in person at one of the early No Black Tie gigs. He was handing out flyers of the next Acoustic Jam he was organising.

At gigs, he would always be upfront and completely engaged with the performance – right up into his 70s. I would often find myself in admiration of his stamina and passion for live music, a further proof that playing and loving music are elixirs of health and fitness.

Many bands and singer-songwriters who started out in the early 2000s are indebted to this series and had their first public performance there – some were even “discovered” there.

I, too, became inspired, and eventually co-organised the Troubadours open mic nights with fellow singer-songwriters Jerome Kugan and Tan Sei Hon.

Acoustic Jam was very inclusive to both solo and band acts of any genre and language. However, I never actually performed at the event although I attended several of the series because I was in transit between my sojourn overseas during the period.

Needless to say, when I did have a chance to check it out, the event was always packed with eager young wannabes checking out the featured act and also supportive friends and family.

As a singer-songwriter, Hassan’s songs covered a wide spectrum of topics and as someone who was in the thick of the action in the ’60s United Kingdom, he wore his British folk song-writing chops on his sleeve.

Musically speaking though, he and Markiza could play any genre they fancied since they were, several decades earlier, already knee-deep as working musicians and gig organisers in 1980s and 1990s Kuala Lumpur.

In person, Hassan was the warmest soul you could meet but also one with a wicked sense of humour, which was reflected in some of my favourite songs of his, especially those from his fifth and last solo album “Blues” (2015).

This is my favourite album of his because it consisted of his bread-and-butter topical songs about nature and the environment, but also more importantly candid, incisive, and satirical social commentaries about making and playing music in Malaysia with his wily sense of humour.  

As an academic, I’m grateful that I was able to include his insight and recollection of these seminal years in my chapter in the Made In Nusantara book (Routledge, 2021) to contribute to the small but growing overlooked history and local grassroots knowledge of music-making in Malaysia.

Hassan, I will miss your inspired presence at gigs and your laughter. The circuit will never be the same without you and I will make sure it won’t forget you.

We will keep the fire you lit burning and keep your songs playing. God bless your soul.

My deepest condolences to Markiza and children Rashid, Nafisah and Theo. – November 18, 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.