Awesome article about the Indiepretasi project by Daryl Goh (entertainment@thestar.com.my)
“Evading the malaise of predictability, Malaysia’s indie music scene pays an eclectic tribute to Tan Sri P. Ramlee’s catalogue on the Di Mana Kan Ku Cari Ganti: Satu Indiepretasi compilation.
TWENTY years ago, a young jazz-pop singer named Sheila Majid, then 25, released a landmark album, Legenda, which reignited the nation’s love affair with the Tan Sri P. Ramlee songbook. It was Bunyi Gitar all over again (the album’s single, incidentally, sold a whopping 10,000 cassettes). Hers was a slick and smooth tribute to the legendary Malaysian entertainer and Legenda also became Sheila’s career-defining release. Further back in 1983, a double vinyl release Abadi Dalam Sanjungan, now out-of-print, saw pop stars Sharifah Aini, Roy dan Fran, DJ Dave, Sweet September, Aman Shah, Zaleha Hamid and other EMI artistes of the day recording P. Ramlee’s catalogue of classics for the 10th anniversary of his death.
Over the years, there has been no shortage of them in the music circles – some memorable, some not. Whether Jamal Abdillah’s crooner darkness, the academic The Bolshoi Ballet Theatre Orchestra Of Tashkent Presents Tan Sri P. Ramlee album right to KRU’s expensively assembled “studio technology duet” with P. Ramlee on Getaran Jiwa or Kugiran D’Tepi Pantai’s spiky surf-inspired salutes, the legend’s music has been celebrated in diverse forms.
Owing more to the current indie climate of the Malaysian scene, a new P. Ramlee compilation project has taken shape in recent weeks aiming to introduce his music to a younger generation by having buzz-worthy indie artistes cover one of his songs in a digital-only format.
Echoes of the past: Yuna contributed two tracks to the compilation, singing Gelora Jiwa solo and joining The Ramlees for a version of Itulah Sayang. – Pic by Ili Farhana
As an extension of Astro’s P. Ramlee month-long celebration, the P. Ramlee … Di Mana Kan Ku Cari Ganti: Satu Indiepretasi compilation is a much-awaited labour of love assignment. It goes on air across Astro’s Malay radio channels on Monday while the project’s official download-only release date is Nov 1.
Though fashionably late for the P. Ramlee festivities on Astro, the 18 tunes in the project – from acts such as Sevencollar T-shirt, MonoloQue, Yuna, Hujan, Bittersweet, Couple, Meet Uncle Hussain, Pop Shuvit, Azlan & The Typewriter, Altimet and They Will Kill Us All – have generated immense interest through social media networks, viral videos and good ol’ fashioned word-of-mouth.
“It’s good to see young people talking about P. Ramlee in a cool way and buzzed about homegrown indie acts giving their very own spin to his songs. His unifying influence through music is so far-reaching that no matter what the generation gap, you eventually discover the man’s genius,” said Adly Syairi Ramly, XFM programme manager and project co-ordinator for Di Mana Kan Ku Cari Ganti: Satu Indiepretasi.
“Everyone in the project has tremendous love and respect for P. Ramlee’s work. However, the brief was not to produce a mere karaoke version but rather for each act to create a unique and modern take on his music,” he added.
Originally conceived as an internal XFM project mid last month, Satu Indiepretasi barely had a budget to work with but it had heaps of enthusiasm and support from the participating indie artistes.
Passion and pride: ‘Finally, now we have one project that puts together this P. Ramlee awareness front and centre! The place where it should have been ages ago,’ says Loque, the frontman of MonoloQue.
“There was no power point presentation or long-drawn proposals for this project. It was done the indie way. We just put out a suggestion about doing a couple of P. Ramlee covers for XFM through our BBM group (BlackBerry Messenger) … we got early responses from Hujan, One Buck Short, Altimet, Yuna and Pesawat, all of them eager to get involved. That set the ball rolling.”
Adly noted that once the indie scene got wind of the project, the number of bands requesting to get in snowballed and most had to be declined due to recording schedules and the compilation’s budget constraints. What started out as a five-song recording session ended up as an 18-track compilation knocked up in a three-week timeline, which began on Sept 19.
“Satu Indiepretasi is a statement that Malaysian indie music has undeniable talent and it is not a rag-tag scene to be frowned upon.”
Two names that must also be mentioned in getting the recording sessions running swiftly and on schedule are AG Coco (from Hujan) – who provided production support – and project manager Ili Farhana, who helped out with promotions and chasing the deadlines.
“There was a strong sense of community spirit from all the indie acts involved … no airs or celebrity egos. Some of the acts often spent hours in the sessions to help each other out or to lend moral support,” recalled Ili.
Just like the subject matter’s heart-warming persona, there were also some delightful stories from the recording sessions. Ili remembered soul jazz singer Najwa Mahiaddin, who was suffering from a foot injury, being piggy-backed up two flights of stairs to the final recording session. Najwa was a part of the all-star girl group The Ramlees (featuring Yuna, Liyana Fizi and Amirah from Tilu), who came together specially for the project to sing a buoyant and breezy Itulah Sayang.
“Najwa was basically the last piece of the puzzle to complete the compilation. Despite being in pain, she insisted on taking part in the project. She could barely stand and had recorded her parts sitting down … that sort of shows you the commitment and enthusiasm here.
“There was also the story of Awanband guitarist Ully inviting his father Che Mat (a former RTM singer who never recorded material) to sing on the band’s version of Malam Bulan Di Pagar Bintang. It was a birthday treat for Che Mat and the tune turned out to be an epic recording,” she added.
Indie rock outfit Bittersweet, which delivered a dreamy Britpop-inspired Getaran Jiwa, even had family members singing back-up vocals.
Spirit of a legend
It was P. Ramlee’s pioneering spirit that made him a giant in music circles and beyond. A new generation has to be made aware of his vast influences, as laid out by the project’s mission statement. Whether or not the wide array of genres – indie rock, punk, experimental, alternative pop or hip hop – on the Di Mana Kan Ku Cari Ganti: Satu Indiepretasi compilation goes the mile in addressing this issue remains to be seen. The most important thing here is the presence of the nation’s new and vital voices realigning themselves with homegrown music’s rich lineage and past.
With artiste ages ranging from the early 20s to early 30s, the restless energy and fearless ambition on board cannot be denied.
Passion and pride for P. Ramlee stir up easily when talking to some of the more established musicians signed up for this project.
Life of the party: Indie pop outfit Couple’s lively version of Menche Che Bujang Lapok is very much in keeping with P. Ramlee’s playful and groovy persona.
This wasn’t just a case of plugging in and picking a P. Ramlee tune with MonoloQue. As a deep music thinker and compositional genius, frontman Loque took on the challenge of re-recording Tiada Kata Scantik Bahasa (sic) with feverish passion. Always a self-confessed junkie of P. Ramlee’s melancholy and obscure compositions (Mengapa Riang Ria, Tidur Di Rumput Yang Basah, Tudung Periuk) as opposed to the more commercial jazzy classics, the highly regarded musician turned in a blinding performance.
“I was amazed and awed again and again by the eerie melancholy imprinted in the song itself. It’s not your typical love song, it’s a ‘darker’ one, or specifically in the old times, we called it lagu seru.”
Given the spontaneity and deadlines for the project, was it a daunting task in giving Tiada Kata Scantik Bahasa the MonoloQue sound?
“It was a very tiresome one. I fell sick while recording main vocals for the song, got better the day after, went back to the studio, fell sick again. But everything turned up well during the third day. They say the spirit of P. Ramlee lives in his songs, you sort of have to ‘ask permission first’ in order for you to be able to sing it nicely and smoothly,” added Loque.
Mission accomplished: Hujan vocalist Noh’s quiet storm on Tunggu Sekejab doesn’t half tell the story behind the band’s obsessive undertaking to uncover the sad song’s structure and secrets.
Popular indie rock outfit Hujan is all about dimming the lights and heart-stopping sophistication on Tunggu Sekejab. This recording, purring under vocalist Noh’s quiet storm, doesn’t half tell the story behind the band’s obsessive undertaking to uncover the sad song’s structure and secrets.
AG Coco, Hujan’s soft-spoken guitarist, lighted up in conversation as he revealed that Tunggu Sekejab (which the band has covered live) has been a tune that the quartet were keen to tackle in the studio for the longest time.
“As I listened to more and more of P. Ramlee’s music I realised what a complex language it is. He mixed up a lot of influences – he absorbed all the styles possible, borrowing from jazz, Latin, Malay music, rock ‘n’ roll, orchestras, folk operas and re-articulated them in Malaysian form.
“He chose his own mix of instruments to great effect – be it the orchestral material or the Malay folk tunes, he put a special spin on them. Yet all you had to do was listen, pay attention to his melodies … the core of his songs was solid, but there is space in the music to explore and add new elements,” said AG Coco.
Lost classic, new directions
It didn’t take long for fans to scramble a search on YouTube and to find out more about indie singer-songwriter Yuna’s version of Gelora Jiwa. It was an early P. Ramlee tune lifted from the movie Anjuran Nasib (1952). It was done as a duet between P. Ramlee and Lena Abdullah in the movie.
According to Warner Music Malaysia, the label that releases P. Ramlee’s EMI catalogue, Gelora Jiwa is not in print and that makes Yuna’s remake possibly the only easily available recorded version of the song.
“My dad and I watch a lot of P. Ramlee movies and when I was offered to record something for this project, my dad immediately suggested this song. It was different than the other familiar P. Ramlee tunes like Bunyi Gitar, etc, and I loved the change of moods in the song so I agreed with my dad and did a cover of this song,” said Yuna.
Yuna’s Gelora Jiwa, filled with jazzy flair and a fashionable twist, is a hidden gem from P. Ramlee that now awaits a warm embrace from the masses.
The sense of reconnection is one of the key reasons why Yuna was the first to put her voice forward for this project.
“I think that the more we move forward, the more we need to bring ourselves closer to our history – and being a singer-songwriter, I feel there’s a need for someone like me to get to know a legend. I mean it could mean anyone, it could be Janis (Joplin) or Jimi Hendrix, but someone closer to us, and that’s just one person who’s influential in that way and that’s P. Ramlee. He’s just an amazing performer. We could see how more young people are making music these days, so it’s a good thing that we have a project such as this one to actually bring both ideas together.”
On the subject of making music, two bands – Sevencollar T-shirt and They Will Kill Us All (TWKUA) – also registered their first Malay language songs in this project. Both acts, heavily indebted to the darker currents of music, felt a connection to P. Ramlee’s melancholic wonder.
For collective inspiration, Sevencollar T-shirt frontman Duan revealed that the entire band took the time out to watch the heart-tugging film Ibu Mertuaku in the studio before embarking on a mournful version of Jangan Tinggal Daku.
“We said yes to the project immediately because it was P. Ramlee. It is a good way to start singing in Malay, I guess. We chiselled in new elements to suit our interpretation. We also really wanted to bring forth the emotional, psychological experience of the song .
“We made some changes. We took dialogue samples from the movie and made a different solo with drums, bass and a bit of guitars replacing the sax solo. The intention, if we got it totally right, was to summarise the movie in the song,” said Duan, who wanted to heighten the classic song’s emotional weight under a blanket of breakbeats, delays and ambient sounds.
Edwin Raj, vocalist and guitarist for TWKUA, readily admitted that he was a newcomer to the depth of the P. Ramlee catalogue.
“I knew the classics but my housemate lent me seven P. Ramlee CDs for reference. I spent days listening out for a mood song that would fit the band’s sound. We didn’t want to do a ‘step on the distortion and go for it’ type tribute,” said Raj, who nailed one of the surprise highlights of the compilation with an eerie, downbeat version of Sepanjang Riwayatku.
“It was not an obvious song, but I connected with it. It has that ‘end of the world’ feel … a certain turmoil that tears you up inside,” he added.
A lot of the pop traditionalists have stayed true to P. Ramlee’s music with past tributes. Nothing too shocking. But a pertinent point raised among those interviewed here was P. Ramlee himself a restless musician during his career (spanning the orchestral sweeps and pre-rock ‘n’ roll era of the1950s, the swinging 1960s right to the more psychedelic and darker tones of the late 1960s and early 1970s)?
Indie pop outfit Couple’s frontman Aidil, who contributed a blast of power pop on Menche Che Bujang Lapok, agreed that the back stories and behind-the-scenes heroes are seldom mentioned in the golden era of Malaysian music led by P. Ramlee.
Nobody questions P. Ramlee’s genius, but some fans want to get deeper inside the stories with more background details.
Aidil laments the lack of literature and serious documentation when it comes to P. Ramlee’s music. Things like P. Ramlee’s early music beginnings with Teruna Sekampung in Penang, the playback singer years, his first film about contemporary showbiz in Hujan Panas (1953), his preference in writing tunes on the piano and his lyrical collaborations … all make for interesting topics.
“A project like Satu Indiepretasi is a new window of opportunity to get the younger generation all clued in on P. Ramlee’s music. Now they will be interested in checking out the original songs and more. But if his actual music legacy (official recordings by EMI) is not taken seriously, then half the effort is already lost in building up further interest. What we have are P. Ramlee CDs and box-sets without any liner notes, archiving … just shoddy, superficial packaging. This is the right time to document our music heroes, something definitive is needed to give the masses a better understanding of P. Ramlee,” said Aidil, an avid film and music buff.
For filmmaker/author Amir Muhammad, who released his acclaimed 120 Malay Movies book a few months ago, there is no doubt that P. Ramlee had a contemporary edge in the field of music.
“This experimentation was already predicted in a way, for example, the song Gelora was a wistful tune of romance in Seniman Bujang Lapok (1961) but was rendered as a harsh, guitar-laden instrumental thing in Gelora (1970), the only P. Ramlee film to never be screened on TV nowadays. It was meant to keep up with the times, to fit in with the more restless, confrontational mood of the youth then. I think it’s exciting that the seeds of de-construction were already there in the original texts, as they were,” said Amir.
The legend, as they say, was always ahead of the game.”
Source: The Star
