New Age Music

Last night’s wedding had me grinning and has opened my horizons to see how the traditional music develop. Maybe its due to the fact it’s a marriage between Malaysia and the land of the Bolkiahs, but the way they played the kompang!!! Yeah, you read it right. Kompang!! It was a fusion of kompang, gendang, drum and gamelan played by over enthusiast teenagers to the style of modern percussionists. At first it was your normal kompang beat whilst the bride and groom walked down the aisle. The moment they stopped at the dais, all of a sudden these boys whipped out their sticks and started to thump on the kompangs like drums and jumping like chimpanzees on a drug binge! But ada style-lah. It was fun, exhilarating and it was the perfect music to transform the somber mood to a cheerful one.

How the music has evolved as such that without compromising the traditional instruments, we can now actually modernize it to give it a breeze of fresh air. I’m quite sure that there are some ‘katak bawah tempurung’ old fashion people who may brush aside these new ideas term it as rubbish or Cultural Cancer. But then again, these are the kind of people who time and time again make the same mistake of expecting that people will be loyal and respectful to them just because they were loyal and respectful to their tok moyang without questioning the right or wrong. Oh well…..



I didn't take their picture but you can just imagine based on these....go on, go wild with your imagination!