Adil Johan | University Of Malaya (original) (raw)

Publications & Conference Presentations by Adil Johan

JATI- Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2022

Zahid Ahmad is one of Malaysia's most accomplished drummers. He experienced the transnational mob... more Zahid Ahmad is one of Malaysia's most accomplished drummers. He experienced the transnational mobilities and success of Malaysia's popular music industry, recording and touring as a drummer with Sheila Majid and Zainal Abidin in Indonesia and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. He recently published the book Tuk Tak: Cerita Zahid Ahmad tentang muzik Malaysia [Tuk Tak: Zahid Ahmad's story about Malaysian music] (2021) that details such experiences and his professional development as a musician in Malaysia's music industry. This article draws on narrative insights provided in his biography and examines key moments in Zahid's career; supporting and contributing to the live performances and recorded works of two Malaysian popular music icons. In reviewing the existing literature on interculturalism and race in Malaysia, this article applies a conceptual framework of musical mobility and interculturalism to analyse Malaysian popular music in the 1980s and 1990s. How might the concept of musical mobility be deployed to explain the unique transnational accomplishments of Malaysian popular music artists? What were the cultural conditions, collaborative musical relationships and creative processes that contributed to their local and transnational appeal? Zahid Ahmad's career as a professional musician, his transnational experience performing and his collaborations with musicians in Indonesia and Malaysia effectively set the stage for an intercultural approach to analyse the production of music that draws from the diverse rhythms and sounds of local, regional and global musical styles; ultimately contributing to the commercial success and creative flourishing of Malaysian music across borders in the 1980s and 1990s.

Proceedings from the XX Biennial Conference of IASPM 2019, 2021

As a singer, songwriter and national arts icon, Sudirman Arshad (1954-1992) remains a prominent v... more As a singer, songwriter and national arts icon, Sudirman Arshad (1954-1992) remains a prominent voice of Malaysian popular music that has eluded academic study and recognition by the state. At the height of his career in 1989, he won the title of ‘Asia’s No. 1 Performer’ in the Asian Popular Music Awards held in London. As an icon of national unity he sang and recorded a range of hit songs appealing across ethnic and class divisions. This public appeal culminated in a free concert he organised in Chow Kit Road, Kuala Lumpur, attended by 100,000 people in 1986. Tellingly, his performance of non-Malay songs (in Tamil or Cantonese), in recognition of the nation’s ethnic minorities, would begin with short proclamations about the importance of recognising cultural diversity in fostering national unity. This article argues for a culturally intimate approach to studying Sudirman’s impact over time on the Malaysian public in consideration of the discourses surrounding his music, performance and iconicity.

https://iipc.utu.fi/iaspm2019/Johan.pdf

JATI - Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020

Upon its independence in 1957, Malaysia was in the process of becoming a modern nation and theref... more Upon its independence in 1957, Malaysia was in the process of becoming a modern nation and therefore required modern totems to bind together its diverse population. Malaysia's postcolonial plural society would be brought under the imagined 'nation-of-intent' of the government of the day (Shamsul A. B., 2001). Music in the form of the national anthem and patriotic songs were and remained essential components of these totems; mobilised by the state to foster a sense of national cohesion and collective identity. These songs are popular and accepted by Malaysian citizens from diverse backgrounds as a part of their national identity, and such affinities are supported by the songs' repeated broadcast and consumption on national radio, television and social media platforms. For this study, several focus group discussions (FGD) were conducted in Kuching, Kota Kinabalu and the Klang Valley. This research intends to observe and analyse whether selected popular patriotic songs in Malaysia, composed and written between the 1960s to 2000 could promote and harness a sense of collective identity and belonging amongst Malaysians. There exists an evident lacuna in the study of the responses and attitudes of Malaysians, specifically as music listeners and consumers of popular patriotic songs. The study finds that unlike initially hypothesised, patriotic songs-instead of commercial popular songsare more popular and wide-reaching in appeal across different professions, ethnicities, religions and geographic locations of Malaysians. Patriotic music provides a means for social cohesion, not via the propagation of dogmatic patriotic content, but through the personal, intimate and affective associations that such songs solicit from individual citizens.

Jebat: Malaysian Journal of History, Politics and Strategic Studies , 2020

This article applies a conceptual framework that merges interculturalism and cultural intimacy to... more This article applies a conceptual framework that merges interculturalism and cultural intimacy to analyse Malaysian popular music as an expression of everyday-experienced social cohesion amidst the nation-state's ethnically diverse population. It draws on cases of intercultural intimacy found in the production, performance and studio recordings of Malaysian artists and groups with attention paid to Sudirman Arshad and the Alleycats. Sudirman was a Malay artist who became an intercultural pop icon in Malaysia, while the Alleycats (and other groups explored) are a band of non-Malay musicians that appealed to a wide Malay(sian) audience. The cases presented here uncover how Malaysian popular music, specifically from the stage of maturing nationhood during the 1970s and 1980s, provides an important means of intercultural cohesion among its citizens who intersect across various ethnicities, religions and social class. The article analyses aspects of musical production (style, genre, aesthetics) and musical-textual content (lyrics) from studio recordings as well as related contexts of performance (live shows, concerts). The intercultural and affective dynamics of these artists and groups highlight how Malaysian popular music offers intimate, creative expressions that enable processes of everyday-experienced social cohesion.

Tapak Integrasi: Wahana Penyatupaduan Negara, 2020

This chapter, written in Malay, examines cases of popular music in Malaysia that act as platforms... more This chapter, written in Malay, examines cases of popular music in Malaysia that act as platforms of social cohesion and cultural flourishing in Malaysia. The homogenous aspects of the Malaysia's National Culture Policy (1973) are critiqued. In varying degrees of alignments and challenges to this policy, I examine the cases of Balada Nusantara, Irama Malaysia, Sudirman, Alternative Rock and Indie music, in a broad overview across time (1980s t0 2000s) on how such popular music genres and artists contribute to an everyday-defined form of social cohesion in Malaysia.

Kajian Malaysia, 2019

In March and April 2019, a total of 12 focus groups were conducted in Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and ... more In March and April 2019, a total of 12 focus groups were conducted in Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and Klang Valley. The study interviewed informants about their everyday experiences and preferences in consuming popular music. It also sought to determine specific popular and patriotic songs, made and circulated within Malaysia from the 1960s to 2000s, that garnered a wide appeal and fostered a sense of collective Malaysian identity amongst the informants. The informants were divided into four demographic groups in each location: (1) youths (aged 19 to 39), (2) business owners or entrepreneurs (any age), (3) professionals (any age), and (4) arts practitioners and musicians. This research note provides a brief review of the existing studies on Malaysian popular music that inform the study. However, despite the significant amount of research on Malaysian popular music from the 1980s until the present day, there has yet to be a study that considers the responses and attitudes of Malaysian citizens – as music listeners and consumers – toward Malaysian popular music. More so, the study hopes to move beyond critical approaches that only focus on contestations between music producers and performers with the authority-defined structures and policies of the nation state. We propose an epistemological shift to focus on the musical preferences and everyday experiences of Malaysians as well as music producers and performers to determine if consuming popular music provides an unofficial and everyday-experienced space for social cohesion, integration and collective flourishing amidst a diverse multicultural nation.

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2019

This article illustrates historically, how the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Malay musical practices... more This article illustrates historically, how the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Malay musical practices operated in tandem with the cultural intimacies of vernacular Malay film narratives to express the complex interconnectivities of a fluidly linked and diverse region. The film music icon, P. Ramlee, employed a cosmopolitan approach to making music; merging Anglo-American jazz and Latin American rhythms with regional Malay and Javanese folk music, themes and cultural references. When screened, heard and reproduced in contemporary contexts, such films and music illicit nostalgia for an idealistic era during which the nation was in-the-making. A narrative of pity for P. Ramlee is affectively instrumentalised by the Malaysian state, local cultural producers and multinational corporations; recalling his image and works to appeal to the Malaysian public. An analysis of the film music in Ali Baba Bujang Lapok (1961) directed by P. Ramlee unravels the threads of cosmopolitan musical practices and culturally intimate expressions that challenge the rigid boundaries of the nation-state; expressing a unique inter-regional, multilinguistic and multiethnic collective identity. This paper argues for a conceptual approach that examines the cosmopolitan intimacies of cultural production; revealing the complex cultural, political, national and transnational contestations and connections of a postcolonial Malay world.

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2019

This is the introduction of a guest-edited special section for the Journal of Intercultural Studi... more This is the introduction of a guest-edited special section for the Journal of Intercultural Studies published in 2019.

The Malay-language films produced by the Cathay-Keris Studio in 1950s to 1960s Singapore were kno... more The Malay-language films produced by the Cathay-Keris Studio in 1950s to 1960s Singapore were known for their 'traditional' narratives based on Malay folklore and legends set in the pre-colonial Malay world. Made during a period of nation-making in the region, these films used musical accompaniment that had to be culturally-rooted in the music of the Malay Peninsula while expressing the region's aspirations for postcolonial independence. Interestingly, this task was undertaken prominently by the film composer, Zubir Said, who was not a citizen of Malay-majority Malaysia. Instead, he was commemorated as a national icon of Singapore, in which Malays form a minority. This paper aims to unravel the paradoxical process of 'traditionalising' national culture in a period of cosmopolitan postcoloniality in the Malay world. Through an intertextual study of his biography and film score analysed against the history of Malay nationalism, this article unravels the 'traditionalised' Malay musical aesthetic established through the musical compositions of Zubir Said in historically-themed Malay films. The article analyses the use of musical motifs and styles in Zubir Said's music for Hussein Hanniff's Dang Anom (1962). The juxtaposition of an aesthetically-traditional film score against the film's anti-feudal narrative results in a critique of archaic notions of tradition that articulates a subversive message of ethical modernity, freedom and self-determination. In conclusion, this intertextual analysis of film, music and history reveals how the melodic construction or scoring of musical tradition on the silver-screen was concomitant with the postcolonial aspirations and contradictions of nation-making in the Malay world.

2014. Barendregt, B. (Ed.). Sonic Modernities in the Malay World: A History of Popular Music, Social Distinction and Novel Lifestyles (1930s -2000s). pp. 135-161.

In this chapter, I discuss how Malay youth music culture in Malaysia and Singapore was policed by... more In this chapter, I discuss how Malay youth music culture in Malaysia and Singapore was policed by state authorities and youth themselves. I discuss examples from 'pop yeh yeh' music bands, fan letters from the youth music & lifestyle magazine "Bintang dan Lagu" (1966-67) and extrapolate some discursive themes of youth degeneracy and music from the film "A-Go-Go '67" (1967, dir. Omar Rojik). Malay youth music culture existed as an expression of modernity, individuality and subversiveness but it was also a product of a commercialised and cosmopolitan music, print and film industry in a Malaysia and Singapore that was vigorously defining its nascent independence by negotiating discursive and embodied boundaries of ethno-nationalist ideals.

You may access my chapter via the Brill website link (above) of the Sonic Modernities book (edited by Bart Barendregt). The entire book is Open Access so please share it widely. Thank you!

Two of the most well-known Malay films from the 1960s, Antara Dua Darjat (Between Two Classes, 19... more Two of the most well-known Malay films from the 1960s, Antara Dua Darjat (Between Two Classes, 1960) and Ibu Mertuaku (My Mother-in-law, 1962) feature ‘jazz-heroes’: a consummate jazz pianist and a tragically blind tenor saxophonist. During the 1960s, the vernacular Malay entertainment industry was based in Singapore; a cosmopolitan hub of international commerce and cultural exchange. In my paper, I consider how jazz-musician protagonists and their music articulated the concerns of an emerging nation and negotiated issues of class, gender and modernity in Malay ‘social’ films of the 1960s. This emerging genre of vernacular film, scripted and directed by local Malays, articulated the tensions and anxieties of a predominantly rural Malay community adapting to urban environments. Such films engaged progressive ideas about working-class rights and challenged Malay feudalistic elitism. I consider in the above mentioned films how ‘jazzy’ and cosmopolitan music negotiated the fissures between modernity and tradition, urban and rural, working-class and elites, autocracy and self-determination. P. Ramlee – an omnipresent national culture icon until present day - directed, starred, composed and performed music for both films. Both films feature musicians as a marginalised working class, performing for the elite classes in exclusive private parties or swanky nightclubs. In my intertextual historical-musical-narrative analysis, I note how the performance of jazz or jazz-like music allows such musicians to cross the class divide and Ramlee’s ‘jazz heroes’ cross further by courting women from the elite classes with their music. In turn, these female protagonists in their class-defying romances articulate notions of self-determination and challenge the patriarchal orders of elite Malay society. I argue that ‘jazz’ on the Malay silver screen provided a cosmopolitan musical aesthetic for the imagining of new class and gender roles; resonating the zeitgeist of modern postcolonial nationhood in 1960s Singapore and Malaysia.

Book Reviews by Adil Johan

SOJOURN, 2012

In Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol 27, No.1. 2012

My review of an excellent book by Azlan Mohamed Said and Juffri Supa'at on Malay musicians in Sin... more My review of an excellent book by Azlan Mohamed Said and Juffri Supa'at on Malay musicians in Singapore from the 1900s to 1965. Please click on the link above (kyotoreview.org) to access the review.

Books by Adil Johan

Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Era, 2018

The golden age of Malay film in the 1950s and 1960s was the product of a musical and cultural cos... more The golden age of Malay film in the 1950s and 1960s was the product of a musical and cultural cosmopolitanism in the service of a nation-making process based on ideas of Malay ethnonationalism, initially fluid, increasingly homogenised over time. The commercial films of the period, and in particular their film music, from national cultural icons P. Ramlee and Zubir Said, remain important reference points for Malaysia and Singapore to this day. This is the first in-depth study of the film music of the period. It brings together ethnomusicological and cultural studies perspectives.

Written in an engaging manner, thoroughly illustrated and incorporating musical scores, the book will appeal to dedicated film fans, musicians, composers and film-makers interested in Southeast Asia and the Malay world. But equally, the conceptual framework will be of interest to a broad range of scholars of Southeast Asia, as it brings together ideas of cosmopolitanism and cultural intimacy to narrate a history of nation-making in the region.

"The best book on Malay film, bar none." — Tim Barnard, NUS

”a fundamental contribution to the scholarly literature on Malay cinema” – Liew Kai Khiun

"A dynamic interweaving of the ‘intimate’ relationships between Malay film music and the paradoxes in the making of postcolonial Malaysia and Singapore." —Tan Sooi Beng, Universiti Sains Malaysia

“Cosmopolitan Intimacies is the first overarching study of its kind. It fills an important lacuna and opens a new vista onto the multifaceted world of Malay film music and its ongoing meaning and relevance.”—Anna Morcom, Royal Holloway, University of London

Please order the book here: https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/cosmopolitan-intimacies-malay-film-music-of-the-independence-era

Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, 2021

Everyday hundreds of thousands of Malaysians commute from Johor to Singapore for work via the Sin... more Everyday hundreds of thousands of Malaysians commute from Johor to Singapore for work
via the Singapore-Johar causeway. Built in 1923, the Johar-Singapore Causeway links the
Woodlands Customs and Immigration Quarantine (CIQ) Complex Checkpoint (connecting to
Singapore's Bukit Timah Expressway) to Johor Bahru's Sultan Iskandar Building in Malaysia. A
second bridge known as the Tuas Second Link and completed in 1998 connects Singapore's Ayer
Rajah Expressway to Malaysia's Second Link Expressway. The term "across the causeway" is
commonly used among Singaporeans and Malaysians to describe each other's relative locations
and has manifested beyond geographic meanings, i.e., nationality, ideology, politics, and racial
hegemony. Aside from cultural and historical links, both countries remain mutually dependent
for labour and natural resources as the physical utility and conceptual notion of a causeway of
exchange is central to the Singapore-Malaysia relationship. This chapter seeks to explore this
common and complex Nusantara relationship through an ethnography of events that commemorated
one of Singapore's most prominent icons in popular music and the arts, Zubir Said.

Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, 2021

This chapter highlights how Nusantara popular music artists and their music are received beyond t... more This chapter highlights how Nusantara popular music artists and their music are received
beyond the shores of the region. The structure of this chapter is twofold: the first, historical and
the second, reflective. In the first, we provide a broad historical overview of the international
circulation of music from the Nusantara and its artists, who have travelled abroad and achieved
international recognition with their performances and recordings. In relation to internationalisation,
the discussion considers the revival of indigenous sounds in Nusantara music since
the 1980s by examining specific artists and groups that leveraged on the global “world beat”
and jazz fusion trends. In the second part of the chapter, Paul Augustin offers his personal
reflections as an international festival organiser operating within the Nusantara. He ponders
the possible emergence of a “Nusantara sound” developed by jazz artists in the region. The
investigation includes Augustin’s observations of two festival acts that exemplify regional aesthetics:
Bob Aves featuring Grace Nono from the Philippines and Farid Ali @Mr. Gambus from
Malaysia. This chapter lays the foundations to study the global impact of Nusantara popular
music and its artists in the international recording industry and music festival circuits.

JATI- Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2022

Zahid Ahmad is one of Malaysia's most accomplished drummers. He experienced the transnational mob... more Zahid Ahmad is one of Malaysia's most accomplished drummers. He experienced the transnational mobilities and success of Malaysia's popular music industry, recording and touring as a drummer with Sheila Majid and Zainal Abidin in Indonesia and Japan in the 1980s and 1990s. He recently published the book Tuk Tak: Cerita Zahid Ahmad tentang muzik Malaysia [Tuk Tak: Zahid Ahmad's story about Malaysian music] (2021) that details such experiences and his professional development as a musician in Malaysia's music industry. This article draws on narrative insights provided in his biography and examines key moments in Zahid's career; supporting and contributing to the live performances and recorded works of two Malaysian popular music icons. In reviewing the existing literature on interculturalism and race in Malaysia, this article applies a conceptual framework of musical mobility and interculturalism to analyse Malaysian popular music in the 1980s and 1990s. How might the concept of musical mobility be deployed to explain the unique transnational accomplishments of Malaysian popular music artists? What were the cultural conditions, collaborative musical relationships and creative processes that contributed to their local and transnational appeal? Zahid Ahmad's career as a professional musician, his transnational experience performing and his collaborations with musicians in Indonesia and Malaysia effectively set the stage for an intercultural approach to analyse the production of music that draws from the diverse rhythms and sounds of local, regional and global musical styles; ultimately contributing to the commercial success and creative flourishing of Malaysian music across borders in the 1980s and 1990s.

Proceedings from the XX Biennial Conference of IASPM 2019, 2021

As a singer, songwriter and national arts icon, Sudirman Arshad (1954-1992) remains a prominent v... more As a singer, songwriter and national arts icon, Sudirman Arshad (1954-1992) remains a prominent voice of Malaysian popular music that has eluded academic study and recognition by the state. At the height of his career in 1989, he won the title of ‘Asia’s No. 1 Performer’ in the Asian Popular Music Awards held in London. As an icon of national unity he sang and recorded a range of hit songs appealing across ethnic and class divisions. This public appeal culminated in a free concert he organised in Chow Kit Road, Kuala Lumpur, attended by 100,000 people in 1986. Tellingly, his performance of non-Malay songs (in Tamil or Cantonese), in recognition of the nation’s ethnic minorities, would begin with short proclamations about the importance of recognising cultural diversity in fostering national unity. This article argues for a culturally intimate approach to studying Sudirman’s impact over time on the Malaysian public in consideration of the discourses surrounding his music, performance and iconicity.

https://iipc.utu.fi/iaspm2019/Johan.pdf

JATI - Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020

Upon its independence in 1957, Malaysia was in the process of becoming a modern nation and theref... more Upon its independence in 1957, Malaysia was in the process of becoming a modern nation and therefore required modern totems to bind together its diverse population. Malaysia's postcolonial plural society would be brought under the imagined 'nation-of-intent' of the government of the day (Shamsul A. B., 2001). Music in the form of the national anthem and patriotic songs were and remained essential components of these totems; mobilised by the state to foster a sense of national cohesion and collective identity. These songs are popular and accepted by Malaysian citizens from diverse backgrounds as a part of their national identity, and such affinities are supported by the songs' repeated broadcast and consumption on national radio, television and social media platforms. For this study, several focus group discussions (FGD) were conducted in Kuching, Kota Kinabalu and the Klang Valley. This research intends to observe and analyse whether selected popular patriotic songs in Malaysia, composed and written between the 1960s to 2000 could promote and harness a sense of collective identity and belonging amongst Malaysians. There exists an evident lacuna in the study of the responses and attitudes of Malaysians, specifically as music listeners and consumers of popular patriotic songs. The study finds that unlike initially hypothesised, patriotic songs-instead of commercial popular songsare more popular and wide-reaching in appeal across different professions, ethnicities, religions and geographic locations of Malaysians. Patriotic music provides a means for social cohesion, not via the propagation of dogmatic patriotic content, but through the personal, intimate and affective associations that such songs solicit from individual citizens.

Jebat: Malaysian Journal of History, Politics and Strategic Studies , 2020

This article applies a conceptual framework that merges interculturalism and cultural intimacy to... more This article applies a conceptual framework that merges interculturalism and cultural intimacy to analyse Malaysian popular music as an expression of everyday-experienced social cohesion amidst the nation-state's ethnically diverse population. It draws on cases of intercultural intimacy found in the production, performance and studio recordings of Malaysian artists and groups with attention paid to Sudirman Arshad and the Alleycats. Sudirman was a Malay artist who became an intercultural pop icon in Malaysia, while the Alleycats (and other groups explored) are a band of non-Malay musicians that appealed to a wide Malay(sian) audience. The cases presented here uncover how Malaysian popular music, specifically from the stage of maturing nationhood during the 1970s and 1980s, provides an important means of intercultural cohesion among its citizens who intersect across various ethnicities, religions and social class. The article analyses aspects of musical production (style, genre, aesthetics) and musical-textual content (lyrics) from studio recordings as well as related contexts of performance (live shows, concerts). The intercultural and affective dynamics of these artists and groups highlight how Malaysian popular music offers intimate, creative expressions that enable processes of everyday-experienced social cohesion.

Tapak Integrasi: Wahana Penyatupaduan Negara, 2020

This chapter, written in Malay, examines cases of popular music in Malaysia that act as platforms... more This chapter, written in Malay, examines cases of popular music in Malaysia that act as platforms of social cohesion and cultural flourishing in Malaysia. The homogenous aspects of the Malaysia's National Culture Policy (1973) are critiqued. In varying degrees of alignments and challenges to this policy, I examine the cases of Balada Nusantara, Irama Malaysia, Sudirman, Alternative Rock and Indie music, in a broad overview across time (1980s t0 2000s) on how such popular music genres and artists contribute to an everyday-defined form of social cohesion in Malaysia.

Kajian Malaysia, 2019

In March and April 2019, a total of 12 focus groups were conducted in Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and ... more In March and April 2019, a total of 12 focus groups were conducted in Kota Kinabalu, Kuching and Klang Valley. The study interviewed informants about their everyday experiences and preferences in consuming popular music. It also sought to determine specific popular and patriotic songs, made and circulated within Malaysia from the 1960s to 2000s, that garnered a wide appeal and fostered a sense of collective Malaysian identity amongst the informants. The informants were divided into four demographic groups in each location: (1) youths (aged 19 to 39), (2) business owners or entrepreneurs (any age), (3) professionals (any age), and (4) arts practitioners and musicians. This research note provides a brief review of the existing studies on Malaysian popular music that inform the study. However, despite the significant amount of research on Malaysian popular music from the 1980s until the present day, there has yet to be a study that considers the responses and attitudes of Malaysian citizens – as music listeners and consumers – toward Malaysian popular music. More so, the study hopes to move beyond critical approaches that only focus on contestations between music producers and performers with the authority-defined structures and policies of the nation state. We propose an epistemological shift to focus on the musical preferences and everyday experiences of Malaysians as well as music producers and performers to determine if consuming popular music provides an unofficial and everyday-experienced space for social cohesion, integration and collective flourishing amidst a diverse multicultural nation.

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2019

This article illustrates historically, how the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Malay musical practices... more This article illustrates historically, how the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Malay musical practices operated in tandem with the cultural intimacies of vernacular Malay film narratives to express the complex interconnectivities of a fluidly linked and diverse region. The film music icon, P. Ramlee, employed a cosmopolitan approach to making music; merging Anglo-American jazz and Latin American rhythms with regional Malay and Javanese folk music, themes and cultural references. When screened, heard and reproduced in contemporary contexts, such films and music illicit nostalgia for an idealistic era during which the nation was in-the-making. A narrative of pity for P. Ramlee is affectively instrumentalised by the Malaysian state, local cultural producers and multinational corporations; recalling his image and works to appeal to the Malaysian public. An analysis of the film music in Ali Baba Bujang Lapok (1961) directed by P. Ramlee unravels the threads of cosmopolitan musical practices and culturally intimate expressions that challenge the rigid boundaries of the nation-state; expressing a unique inter-regional, multilinguistic and multiethnic collective identity. This paper argues for a conceptual approach that examines the cosmopolitan intimacies of cultural production; revealing the complex cultural, political, national and transnational contestations and connections of a postcolonial Malay world.

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2019

This is the introduction of a guest-edited special section for the Journal of Intercultural Studi... more This is the introduction of a guest-edited special section for the Journal of Intercultural Studies published in 2019.

The Malay-language films produced by the Cathay-Keris Studio in 1950s to 1960s Singapore were kno... more The Malay-language films produced by the Cathay-Keris Studio in 1950s to 1960s Singapore were known for their 'traditional' narratives based on Malay folklore and legends set in the pre-colonial Malay world. Made during a period of nation-making in the region, these films used musical accompaniment that had to be culturally-rooted in the music of the Malay Peninsula while expressing the region's aspirations for postcolonial independence. Interestingly, this task was undertaken prominently by the film composer, Zubir Said, who was not a citizen of Malay-majority Malaysia. Instead, he was commemorated as a national icon of Singapore, in which Malays form a minority. This paper aims to unravel the paradoxical process of 'traditionalising' national culture in a period of cosmopolitan postcoloniality in the Malay world. Through an intertextual study of his biography and film score analysed against the history of Malay nationalism, this article unravels the 'traditionalised' Malay musical aesthetic established through the musical compositions of Zubir Said in historically-themed Malay films. The article analyses the use of musical motifs and styles in Zubir Said's music for Hussein Hanniff's Dang Anom (1962). The juxtaposition of an aesthetically-traditional film score against the film's anti-feudal narrative results in a critique of archaic notions of tradition that articulates a subversive message of ethical modernity, freedom and self-determination. In conclusion, this intertextual analysis of film, music and history reveals how the melodic construction or scoring of musical tradition on the silver-screen was concomitant with the postcolonial aspirations and contradictions of nation-making in the Malay world.

2014. Barendregt, B. (Ed.). Sonic Modernities in the Malay World: A History of Popular Music, Social Distinction and Novel Lifestyles (1930s -2000s). pp. 135-161.

In this chapter, I discuss how Malay youth music culture in Malaysia and Singapore was policed by... more In this chapter, I discuss how Malay youth music culture in Malaysia and Singapore was policed by state authorities and youth themselves. I discuss examples from 'pop yeh yeh' music bands, fan letters from the youth music & lifestyle magazine "Bintang dan Lagu" (1966-67) and extrapolate some discursive themes of youth degeneracy and music from the film "A-Go-Go '67" (1967, dir. Omar Rojik). Malay youth music culture existed as an expression of modernity, individuality and subversiveness but it was also a product of a commercialised and cosmopolitan music, print and film industry in a Malaysia and Singapore that was vigorously defining its nascent independence by negotiating discursive and embodied boundaries of ethno-nationalist ideals.

You may access my chapter via the Brill website link (above) of the Sonic Modernities book (edited by Bart Barendregt). The entire book is Open Access so please share it widely. Thank you!

Two of the most well-known Malay films from the 1960s, Antara Dua Darjat (Between Two Classes, 19... more Two of the most well-known Malay films from the 1960s, Antara Dua Darjat (Between Two Classes, 1960) and Ibu Mertuaku (My Mother-in-law, 1962) feature ‘jazz-heroes’: a consummate jazz pianist and a tragically blind tenor saxophonist. During the 1960s, the vernacular Malay entertainment industry was based in Singapore; a cosmopolitan hub of international commerce and cultural exchange. In my paper, I consider how jazz-musician protagonists and their music articulated the concerns of an emerging nation and negotiated issues of class, gender and modernity in Malay ‘social’ films of the 1960s. This emerging genre of vernacular film, scripted and directed by local Malays, articulated the tensions and anxieties of a predominantly rural Malay community adapting to urban environments. Such films engaged progressive ideas about working-class rights and challenged Malay feudalistic elitism. I consider in the above mentioned films how ‘jazzy’ and cosmopolitan music negotiated the fissures between modernity and tradition, urban and rural, working-class and elites, autocracy and self-determination. P. Ramlee – an omnipresent national culture icon until present day - directed, starred, composed and performed music for both films. Both films feature musicians as a marginalised working class, performing for the elite classes in exclusive private parties or swanky nightclubs. In my intertextual historical-musical-narrative analysis, I note how the performance of jazz or jazz-like music allows such musicians to cross the class divide and Ramlee’s ‘jazz heroes’ cross further by courting women from the elite classes with their music. In turn, these female protagonists in their class-defying romances articulate notions of self-determination and challenge the patriarchal orders of elite Malay society. I argue that ‘jazz’ on the Malay silver screen provided a cosmopolitan musical aesthetic for the imagining of new class and gender roles; resonating the zeitgeist of modern postcolonial nationhood in 1960s Singapore and Malaysia.

SOJOURN, 2012

In Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, Vol 27, No.1. 2012

My review of an excellent book by Azlan Mohamed Said and Juffri Supa'at on Malay musicians in Sin... more My review of an excellent book by Azlan Mohamed Said and Juffri Supa'at on Malay musicians in Singapore from the 1900s to 1965. Please click on the link above (kyotoreview.org) to access the review.

Cosmopolitan Intimacies: Malay Film Music of the Independence Era, 2018

The golden age of Malay film in the 1950s and 1960s was the product of a musical and cultural cos... more The golden age of Malay film in the 1950s and 1960s was the product of a musical and cultural cosmopolitanism in the service of a nation-making process based on ideas of Malay ethnonationalism, initially fluid, increasingly homogenised over time. The commercial films of the period, and in particular their film music, from national cultural icons P. Ramlee and Zubir Said, remain important reference points for Malaysia and Singapore to this day. This is the first in-depth study of the film music of the period. It brings together ethnomusicological and cultural studies perspectives.

Written in an engaging manner, thoroughly illustrated and incorporating musical scores, the book will appeal to dedicated film fans, musicians, composers and film-makers interested in Southeast Asia and the Malay world. But equally, the conceptual framework will be of interest to a broad range of scholars of Southeast Asia, as it brings together ideas of cosmopolitanism and cultural intimacy to narrate a history of nation-making in the region.

"The best book on Malay film, bar none." — Tim Barnard, NUS

”a fundamental contribution to the scholarly literature on Malay cinema” – Liew Kai Khiun

"A dynamic interweaving of the ‘intimate’ relationships between Malay film music and the paradoxes in the making of postcolonial Malaysia and Singapore." —Tan Sooi Beng, Universiti Sains Malaysia

“Cosmopolitan Intimacies is the first overarching study of its kind. It fills an important lacuna and opens a new vista onto the multifaceted world of Malay film music and its ongoing meaning and relevance.”—Anna Morcom, Royal Holloway, University of London

Please order the book here: https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/cosmopolitan-intimacies-malay-film-music-of-the-independence-era

Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, 2021

Everyday hundreds of thousands of Malaysians commute from Johor to Singapore for work via the Sin... more Everyday hundreds of thousands of Malaysians commute from Johor to Singapore for work
via the Singapore-Johar causeway. Built in 1923, the Johar-Singapore Causeway links the
Woodlands Customs and Immigration Quarantine (CIQ) Complex Checkpoint (connecting to
Singapore's Bukit Timah Expressway) to Johor Bahru's Sultan Iskandar Building in Malaysia. A
second bridge known as the Tuas Second Link and completed in 1998 connects Singapore's Ayer
Rajah Expressway to Malaysia's Second Link Expressway. The term "across the causeway" is
commonly used among Singaporeans and Malaysians to describe each other's relative locations
and has manifested beyond geographic meanings, i.e., nationality, ideology, politics, and racial
hegemony. Aside from cultural and historical links, both countries remain mutually dependent
for labour and natural resources as the physical utility and conceptual notion of a causeway of
exchange is central to the Singapore-Malaysia relationship. This chapter seeks to explore this
common and complex Nusantara relationship through an ethnography of events that commemorated
one of Singapore's most prominent icons in popular music and the arts, Zubir Said.

Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, 2021

This chapter highlights how Nusantara popular music artists and their music are received beyond t... more This chapter highlights how Nusantara popular music artists and their music are received
beyond the shores of the region. The structure of this chapter is twofold: the first, historical and
the second, reflective. In the first, we provide a broad historical overview of the international
circulation of music from the Nusantara and its artists, who have travelled abroad and achieved
international recognition with their performances and recordings. In relation to internationalisation,
the discussion considers the revival of indigenous sounds in Nusantara music since
the 1980s by examining specific artists and groups that leveraged on the global “world beat”
and jazz fusion trends. In the second part of the chapter, Paul Augustin offers his personal
reflections as an international festival organiser operating within the Nusantara. He ponders
the possible emergence of a “Nusantara sound” developed by jazz artists in the region. The
investigation includes Augustin’s observations of two festival acts that exemplify regional aesthetics:
Bob Aves featuring Grace Nono from the Philippines and Farid Ali @Mr. Gambus from
Malaysia. This chapter lays the foundations to study the global impact of Nusantara popular
music and its artists in the international recording industry and music festival circuits.

Made in Nusantara: Studies in Popular Music, 2021

Made in Nusantara serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, ethnography, ... more Made in Nusantara serves as a comprehensive introduction to the history, sociology, ethnography, and musicology of historical and contemporary popular music in maritime Southeast Asia. Each essay covers major fgures, styles, and social contexts of genres of a popular nature in the Nusantara region including Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei, Singapore, and the Philippines. Trough a critical investigation of specifc genres and their spaces of performance, production, and consumption, the volume is organised into four thematic areas: 1) issues in Nusantara popular music; 2) history; 3) artists and genres; and 4) national vs. local industries. Written by scholars working in the region, Made in Nusantara brings local perspectives to the history and analysis of popular music and critically considers conceptualisations developed in the West, rendering it an intriguing read for students and scholars of popular and global music.

Sonic Modernities in the Malay World, 2014

Jebat: Malaysian Journal of History, Politics & Strategic Studies, Dec 7, 2020

Malaysian Journal of Music, 2017

Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 2020

Journal of Intercultural Studies, 2019

ABSTRACT This article illustrates historically, how the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Malay musical ... more ABSTRACT This article illustrates historically, how the cosmopolitan aesthetics of Malay musical practices operated in tandem with the cultural intimacies of vernacular Malay film narratives to express the complex interconnectivities of a fluidly linked and diverse region. The film music icon, P. Ramlee, employed a cosmopolitan approach to making music; merging Anglo-American jazz and Latin American rhythms with regional Malay and Javanese folk music, themes and cultural references. When screened, heard and reproduced in contemporary contexts, such films and music illicit nostalgia for an idealistic era during which the nation was in-the-making. A narrative of pity for P. Ramlee is affectively instrumentalised by the Malaysian state, local cultural producers and multinational corporations; recalling his image and works to appeal to the Malaysian public. An analysis of the film music in Ali Baba Bujang Lapok (1961) directed by P. Ramlee unravels the threads of cosmopolitan musical practices and culturally intimate expressions that challenge the rigid boundaries of the nation-state; expressing a unique inter-regional, multilinguistic and multiethnic collective identity. This paper argues for a conceptual approach that examines the cosmopolitan intimacies of cultural production; revealing the complex cultural, political, national and transnational constestations and connections of a postcolonial Malay world.

Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, 2012

This book is currently the most exhaustive ethnomusicological study of the dangdut genre of music... more This book is currently the most exhaustive ethnomusicological study of the dangdut genre of music in Indonesia. Dangdut Stories is an essential preliminary study of dangdut in Indonesia that examines the social and political dimensions of a music genre. Weintraub observes music as a cultural discourse of a nation’s political history. The book achieves this by exploring the historical, cultural, and stylistic origins of dangdut. The major themes discussed in the book are ethnicity and nation, dangdut and its association with “the people” or rakyat, and the embodiment of gender and Islam. The methods the author uses in investigating dangdut range from analysing numerous dangdut songs, observing social gatherings and public events where dangdut is featured, and drawing from a wealth of interviews with musicians, composers, arrangers, producers, and fans. The popularity of dangdut and its impact on political, social, and cultural life in Indonesia is discussed in the first chapter. The ...

Discourses, Agency and Identity in Malaysia

Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia

Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society

Journal of Intercultural Studies