#List lagu zapin melayu how to
Through their songs, the recording artistes contributed to the contemporary discourses about how to move forward and create a more progressive or advanced society, issues which were being debated in the Malay press and other literature by modernist reformist Muslims and Malay nationalists during the 1930s and 1940s in British Malaya and throughout the greater Malay world (Kahn 2006 Milner 1995). This type of colonial modernity was built on the values of European ‘liberal humanism’ as well as reformist Islam, a modernity which emphasized the ‘advancement of humanity,’ ‘individual autonomy’ and ‘an inner moral universe’ (Foulcher and Day 2002 Hooker 2000). It was not only characterized by currency, continuity and difference, but it also advocated change, progress and agency. The musicians of British Malaya appropriated western technology, media and music to create a new musical idiom which was ‘modern’ ( moden). The interaction of different cultures in pre-World War II colonial Malaya resulted in a fusion that Bakhtin ( 2001) describes as an ‘organic hybridity’ which led to the formation of a ‘new language’ or ‘world view’. As they adapted to changes in the British colonial society, the recording artistes and musicians actively merged elements of commercial Anglo-American popular music with Malay lyrics about the problems and hopes of ordinary people to generate new meanings.
Gramophone recordings stimulated fusion, stylistic borrowing and localization all at the same time. It also incorporated Chinese, Indian and Arabic elements. Even though the lagu Melayu incorporated instruments and musical elements from Anglo-American popular music and was commodified for consumption, the new music was neither completely Malay nor completely Anglo-American but a combination of both. 4 This article aims to illustrate that the control exercised by GC and its sister companies over the recording technology, production and dissemination of 78 rpm discs in the two decades before the Japanese Occupation did not lead to ‘homogeneity’ and ‘standardization of content’ (Adorno 1994), or ‘cultural grey out’ (Lomax 1968:4). Lagu Melayu refers to the hybrid popular music sung in the Malay 3 language which was disseminated through the mass media and local theatres to a large and diverse audience throughout British Malaya in the 1930s and early 1940s. This article examines the production and dissemination of the lagu Melayu (Malay song), which formed the main repertoire recorded by GC and its sister companies in British Malaya (including Singapore), as well as this music’s style and content. HMV was also known as ‘Chap Anjing’ (Dog Label) in British Malaya (Figure 1). Although a picture of a dog appeared on the labels of some of these early records, it was not until January 1916 that the label name ‘His Master’s Voice’ (HMV) was formally employed.
Until 1915, GC used label names such as the Gramophone Record, Gramophone Concert Record and Gramophone Monarch Record. 2 It is therefore not surprising that the English-based Gramophone Company (GC) was the first to make records in British Malaya in 1903 and dominated record production there until the Second World War. 1 The various companies tended to be most dominant in places where their own country’s colonial interests were strong. Gramophone companies were transnational in the early twentieth century and actively looked for new markets by following the trade routes of the colonial powers. Keywords: gramophone recordings His Master’s Voice lagu Melayu rooted cosmopolitanism colonial modernity nationalism
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