TESTOSTERONAL OVERDRIVE, TERRITORIALITY... AND THE MALAY MALE (revisited)

Self-portrait @ sixteen

I was only 16 when I met Azizah at a "grownup" party where couples were slow-dancing and drinking alcoholic beverages. My classmate Suhaimi had invited Johnny Khoo and me to the party. As a fifth form student in Batu Pahat High School I was still a Walt Disney kid and as naïve as Dumbo the Flying Elephant. 

[Note: When I wrote this essay in May 2009, I was blissfully unaware of Walt Disney's secret life as an initiate of the Cabal; only found out after 2016 when Donald Trump declared war on the global pedophile network and came under relentless attack by the Mockingbird/Talkingturd media!]

One afternoon I saw Suhaimi sitting alone in the school canteen, busy rolling a balut (reefer). "What's that you're smoking?" I asked. Suhaimi winked and said conspiratorially: "We call this ganja." I had no idea what he was talking about so Suhaimi explained that in English it was known as marijuana. He pronounced it "mari-jew-anna."

I was horrified. "Suhaimi, you're my buddy and I care about you, so please listen to me and stop this dangerous habit before it destroys your life."

Suhaimi grinned and nodded amicably but didn't bother arguing with me. Nor did he offer me a toke on his glowing reefer. Two years later when I had my first joint I thought back to this early encounter with "illegal substances" and felt like a complete twit. What a namby-pamby twirp Suhaimi must have thought I was! But he was kind enough not to mock me and I'm still grateful for that.

Gaia by Sabrine

But I digress. Coming back to the party where I met Azizah: I remember her grabbing me by the hand and dragging me to the dance floor. Though I felt awkward and shy I managed to pretend to be cool and sophisticated. I was on cloud nine dancing with the vivacious and extremely friendly Azizah. To top it all she was very pretty too. Before we parted she told me she lived in the Gunung Soga government quarters. She even gave me her address and invited me to visit anytime.

About a week later I found myself driving around the Gunung Soga area with Johnny in tow. My dad, bless his soul, trusted me with his car even though I was too young to possess a driver's licence.

"Hey, let's see if we can find Azizah," Johnny suggested. It only took a couple of turns around the neighborhood to locate her house. We walked up to the front door and boldly knocked. Azizah opened it and broke into a big smile when she saw us. She began chatting with us but made no move to invite us in. A moment later we understood why.

A heavyset bloke sporting a policeman-style mustache suddenly emerged from a bedroom and sauntered to the front door. Azizah appeared a tad nervous as she introduced her fiancé Azlan to us.

Azlan gestured to Azizah and she gave us a weak smile as she disappeared into the kitchen, as if to fetch us some drinks. Her fiancé's hunky body blocked the entrance. "How do you know Azizah?" he asked curtly.

"Oh, we met at a party and she invited us to visit," I began... but Azlan wasn't listening. He took a step forward and kneed Johnny in the groin.

Johnny reflexively got into fighting stance but I put a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. "Let's leave. I don't think we're welcome here."

That was my first experience of testosteronal overdrive, territoriality and the Malay male. It was such a rude and unpleasant shock I quickly blotted the incident from memory.



Thirty-three years later I was reminded of Azizah and her possessive lover Azlan when I saw Huzir Sulaiman's dramatic monologue, Election Day, wherein he played three housemates named Francis, Dedric and Fozi. The narrator is Francis (a freelance copywriter who could be either Indian or Eurasian) and the plot revolves around "the beautiful and enigmatic Natasha" (a rich girl who is neither seen nor heard at any point but for whose affections all three housemates end up vying). Dedric is a Taiwan-educated Tian Chua type human rights activist and Fozi is a fashionably bohemian architect and one-time PAS member in Perak.

At the start of the play Natasha is Fozi's girlfriend and she has just left the house after a spat with him. The action takes place on Election Day, 29 November 1999. As the drama unfolds we discover that Dedric has a crush on Natasha and thinks Fozi isn't worthy of her. Cleverly interweaving acerbic sociopolitical commentary into his narrative, Huzir concludes his one-hour neo-existentialist drama with a chilling revelation: one of the three housemates is actually a Special Branch officer who manages to set up the other two guys for arrest and detention without trial so he can get the girl - and possibly a promotion for services rendered towards the maintenance of the status quo.

Natasha in Election Day represents the ultimate reward: the land itself, a trophy bride to show off to the whole world and in whose fecund and erotic soil the conquering hero can plant his seeds.

Was Huzir Sulaiman cynically implying that the old adage - all's fair in love and war - holds true and that only the completely amoral stand a chance of winning the game?

Anyway, as I began to recall that long-forgotten run-in with Azizah's jealous fiancé Azlan, many complex issues emerged for me to ponder. First of all, why did Azizah invite me to her house? Okay, assuming she found me rather cute and was keen to befriend me, why didn't she warn me about Azlan? Those were the days before cellphones and SMSes, so it would have been a bit harder to plan secret trysts, even if she had passed me her home phone number. Yet Azizah struck me as a free-spirited, fun-loving girl who enjoyed a wide circle of friends and didn't see anything wrong with befriending other guys even if she already had a steady boyfriend or fiancé.

Perhaps Azlan and Azizah had very different views on this subject. I wonder if she eventually married the fellow - and whether she would have been happy being under the thumb of such a control freak who obviously believed it was fine for him to have four wives, but strictly a no-no for a woman to have four husbands.

I made an effort to imagine myself as someone like Azlan, who would shoot first and talk later if he felt his boundaries threatened. A man of action rather than contemplation who probably dismissed people like me as lily-livered bleeding hearts just because we're capable of a measure of empathy - and are therefore more likely to welcome the unexpected rather than barricade ourselves against the unknown.

If I were Azlan and one day found a couple of strange men at the door asking to see my girlfriend, what would my response be? First, I'd ask her if she knew these guys and whether she wanted to see them. If she acknowledged them as friends and was happy to welcome them to the house, I'd probably regard them as my friends too. They'd be served tea and cakes and after a bit of conversation I might find I enjoyed their company and vice versa. Even if they initially had plans to date her, they would probably be glad just to be accepted as family friends.

After all, if I'm fortunate enough to have a really hot girlfriend or spouse, she's bound to be a big hit with almost every guy she meets and they would all wish they could make out with her. And if I didn't attempt to put her on a short leash and respected her sovereignty as a conscious and mature individual, I'd trust her to always be honest with me.

It's absurd to force your partner to vow NEVER to be attracted to any other. However, it's not difficult at all to swear eternal love to somebody - as long as it's not exclusive, since one never knows what inner changes one will undergo over an extended period.

For instance, you may believe you're absolutely besotted with somebody when you're 17 years old, only to realize four or five years down the line - or perhaps even after four or five months - that it was a purely superficial attraction, and that it's time to move on. Even so, one must always be grateful for love and good times shared. It's a very positive thing to continue loving the ones you have mentally and emotionally outgrown or detached from - like your own parents or former teachers, for example.

Do you see what I'm getting at? Azlan is a metaphor for Umno's values of pseudo-nationalism, ultra-ethnocentrism, and erotophobic bi-polarity manifesting as an obsession with sex and power. Azizah symbolizes Malaysia.

As a traditional, patriarchally programmed Malay male, Azlan/Umno believes it is his God-given right to possess and control Azizah/Malaysia. The thought of somebody else - what more a pork-eating Chink? - wanting a share of his prized possession Azizah is enough to trigger a violent knee-jerk reaction.

All very basic, really: without wasting his breath by going into a discussion about the matter, Azlan instinctively knew what Johnny and I were after - his girl! - and since he was a much more mature guy than either of us fifth-formers, he simply turned into a bully-boy to dissuade us from ever approaching Azizah again. Just protecting his own interests, that's all. Nothing personal.



But there's the rub. Azlan saw Azizah as his property - not as a living, thinking, feeling, evolving, autonomous entity. Johnny wanted to punch Azlan in the face but I felt it was prudent to just walk away from an unnecessary fight. It wasn't as if either of us was seriously in love with Azizah. We only wanted to explore the possibilities of befriending this feisty, friendly girl. All very innocuous stuff, really, and it was stupid of Azlan to react so brutishly.

By obeying his own primitive, unthinking, territorial imperatives he had shown himself to be merely a humanoid biped not much more evolved than a gorilla equipped with basic linguistic circuitry. If he had had the good sense to break into a broad grin and quip: "So you guys want to chat with Azizah? Well, I'm her manager and it's going to cost you 50 bucks an hour... each! Actually, I'm engaged to be married to Azizah in three months and if you turn out to be nice fellas, we'll invite you to the wedding."

Well, such an approach might easily have won Azlan two new friends. Instead, he left me with a permanent bad taste about unwarranted jealousy, petty-mindedness and the sheer stupidity of being a habitual control freak. Indeed, I'm convinced that people like Azlan - unless they mature and mellow rapidly enough - won't qualify for admission into the heavenly realms, because we can't have such coarse and loutish souls clogging up the free flow of good feelings in those rarefied frequencies.

Nevertheless, Azlan's violent behavior was undeniably effective. I never attempted again to contact Azizah, though for me she will always represent the beauty, nubility, hospitality and infinite promise my country holds for me - and everyone else who regards her as home. And ever since that time the name Azizah has always held a mysterious appeal for me.

Azizah would be past 60 by now, probably a grandmother several times over. I fervently hope she wised up and dumped that reactionary Umnoish boyfriend of hers and married a Mat Salleh instead. In any case, I wouldn't be at all surprised if one of these days a vibrant, vivacious and extremely attractive young woman named Zamila added me as her Facebook friend, and I later discovered her paternal grandma Azizah was born in Batu Pahat and lived for many years in the Gunung Soga government quarters...

FOR THE SAKE OF SCIENTIFIC ACCURACY ~

 IF NOT POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Halfway through writing this post it occurred to me that the syndrome I've been discussing is certainly not defined by ethnicity or nationality, nor does it entirely apply to the male gender. It so happened that in this early encounter with "the territorial imperative" the antagonist happened to be a Malay male. He could also have been Italian, Mexican, Japanese, Albanian, Filipino, Zimbabwean, Chinese or Portuguese. Possessiveness is a fairly common trait amongst females too.

Ego insecurity and jealousy are hardwired into our reptilian brains - the most basic, most ancient and primitive component of vertebrate cerebrospinal neural circuitry. In most species the territorial imperative serves the long-range objectives of specific genetic programs in a Darwinian selective process.

Stands to reason that under the harsh, hostile conditions of a prolonged Dark Age, the masculine, warlike qualities would become prominent survival features. However, in an Enlightened Age, this truculent, hooliganistic, shoot-first-talk-later behavior swiftly becomes countersurvival.

Brain supersedes brawn and heart overrides gonads as sentient beings evolve. In effect, the Azlan syndrome is really a residual behavior accumulated over thousands of years when physical might improved procreative odds. In an era when metaphysical vision becomes more relevant and significant as modifiers of human evolution, the gorillaman faces abrupt extinction as the godman takes his place as prime progenitive preference.

Just as Umno has yet to integrate the deeper existential implications of its massive losses during the 8 March 2008 election, a large portion of humanity has yet to acquire the more advanced software that will enable us to constantly be aware of the Big Picture - the larger context of our interactions with other aspects of our constantly expanding selves. Those able to swiftly redefine themselves and their own ego boundaries may be classified as "Cultural Creatives" or civilizing agents. 

Now here comes the good news: according to sociologist Paul H. Ray and psychologist Sherry Ruth Anderson, who co-authored The Cultural Creatives: How 50 Million People Are Changing the World  (published in 2000), at least 25% of the world's human population now qualify as civilizing agents. I'd call that a critical mass! 

[Firs published 9 May 2009, reposted 2 October 2013 & 6 October 2021]

We’re off to off the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz!

Who among us has not been amused and delighted by the extraordinary spectacle of Munchkins bursting into song and dance in celebration of the Wicked Witch’s demise?

Have we not wondered, at different moments in our life, if we were more like the brainless Scarecrow, the heartless Tin Man, or the Cowardly Lion?

And, just like Dorothy, have we never come to the conclusion, after a surfeit of incredible adventures, that there’s no place like Home?

When MGM released in 1939 the Hollywood version of what had already achieved cult status as a stage musical, L. Frank Baum’s immortal classic The Wizard of Oz  swiftly won the hearts of a worldwide audience.

I don’t remember how old I was the first time I caught the movie in my hometown but it certainly left many vivid images imprinted in my impressionable young mind. So when The Wizard of Oz was restaged between April and May 2012 at KLPAC by Pan Productions – a young and vigorous outfit helmed by the highly talented Nell Ng, Peter Ong and Alizakri Alias – I looked forward greatly to catching it.

Radhi Khalid as the Tin Man, Stephanie Van Driesen as Dorothy Gale, Peter Ong as The Scarecrow,
and special guest star Wolfgang as Toto

I wasn’t disappointed. It was as wonderful a production of a time-tested favorite as any you’re likely to see in any major city. Director-choreographer Nell Ng opted to stick close to the general tone and flavor of the Hollywood version and found herself the perfect Dorothy Gale in Stephanie Van Driesen (who even bears a passing resemblance to the young Judy Garland and, more importantly, is a well-rounded talent in terms of acting, dancing and singing).

Tria Aziz: a magnificently malevolent
Wicked Witch of the West 

Another outstanding casting choice was Tria Aziz as Almira Gultch and the Wicked Witch of the West whose iridescent green makeup and powerful singing voice made her a candidate for the best supporting actress award. But, then, many other key players were equally impressive – particularly Peter Ong (Hunk/Scarecrow), Radhi Khalid (Hickory/Tin Man), and Zalila Lee (Zeke/Cowardly Lion). Special mention must be made of Wolfgang the terrific terrier who took on the challenge of playing Toto.

The multimedia effects by a digital projection outfit called Dam Interactive were, in a word, wizardly. They played a significant role in the success of the production, convincingly conjuring a wide range of atmospheres - from a violent tornado to enchanted forests, spooky castles, and an Emerald Palace fit for a Wonderful Wizard. Musical director Eric Carter Hah deserves a standing ovation for bringing the fairly complex score to life with such effortless ease I initially thought I was hearing a pre-recorded soundtrack. Then I realized there was an 11-piece orchestra hidden backstage.

Seeing The Wizard of Oz as a stage musical for the first time in my life was most definitely a treat. Even more so since many of the talented and charming cast happen to be dear old friends. As a treat for all the senses, Nell Ng’s Wizard  left little to be desired – and, as I told her afterwards, my only complaint was that the air-conditioning in KLPAC was so cold I found myself sitting on my hands between rounds of hearty applause.

Suhaili Michelline as the good Witch of the North

L. Frank Baum in 1911

I decided to do a bit of research on the man who created the Land of Oz - that colorful character named Lyman Frank Baum (15 May 1856 ~ 6 May 1919) and found him to be way too complex to summarize. In his youth he got hold of a simple printing press and became an editor-journalist-publisher. Then he got into poultry breeding and traded in fireworks. At the same time he was infatuated with the theater and squandered a large portion of his wealth investing in unsuccessful plays. He took on a great many roles, using stage names like Louis F. Baum and George Brooks.

In 1880 Baum’s father built him a theater in Richburg, New York, and he wasted no time writing, producing, directing and acting in plays – even composing songs and conducting workshops in stagecraft . Just as he was beginning to reap some acclaim, a fire destroyed his theater, along with his costume collection and the only copies of his playscripts.

Failure and ill fortune continued to dog L. Frank Baum until his 44th birthday – when his collaboration with illustrator W.W. Denslow yielded a best-selling children’s book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Thereafter Baum began churning out a stream of children’s books based on his Oz characters.

Five years later he announced a grand plan to buy an island off the California coast where he would build a gigantic theme park named “The Marvelous Land of Oz – a fairy paradise for children.” Eleven-year-old Dorothy Talbot of San Francisco was to be crowned Queen of Oz and the park was to be administered by a committee of child advisors. Baum himself intended to relocate to the island where he would presumably assume the role of a real-life wizard.

Alas, the theme park project was abandoned after another theatrical venture, The Woggle-Bug, failed at the box office. Baum even founded a film company in 1914 called The Oz Film Manufacturing Company but lost a lot of money on the venture. One gets the distinct feeling that L. Frank Baum was born just a wee bit too early. It took another visionary entrepreneur, a fellow named Walter Elias Disney – born shortly after The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became a runaway best-seller – to realize all of L. Frank Baum’s fantastic dreams.

Among the interesting details I unearthed about L. Frank Baum, the fact that he had the tendency to look askance at religion caught my attention. Although raised as a Methodist, Baum expressed a great deal of skepticism about orthodox dogmas. At one point he joined the Episcopal Church – but mainly for the purpose of participating in community theatricals.

In 1897 - influenced by Matilda Joslyn Gage, Baum’s feminist mother-in-law - Baum and his wife became Theosophists. The Theosophical Society had been established in 1875 by Henry Steel Olcott (a military investigator, journalist and lawyer) and the famous Russian mystic, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Theosophists hold that “there is no religion higher than truth.”

In the light of this, can any traces of L. Frank Baum’s metaphysical inclinations be found in The Wizard of Oz? Considering that the Wizard presides like a deity - inspiring awe, reverence and not a little fear - over the inhabitants of Oz, isn’t it delightful that it takes a fearless and innocent little girl named Dorothy to gain entry to the Emerald Palace and penetrate the Wizard’s high-tech public relations apparatus, so that the Great Wizard of Oz is ultimately exposed as an eccentric "extraterrestrial" trickster, a master illusionist, a professional thaumaturge - albeit a disarmingly benign one?

It doesn’t require too much of a stretch of the imagination to draw a few parallels with The Matrix movies - wherein the Archons or Fates appear as a funky assortment of complex metaprograms running the holographic pseudo-reality from which Thomas Anderson aka Neo the hacker escapes (after he swallows the Red Pill offered by Morpheous) and fulfills his destiny as “The One.”

Indeed, I would venture the opinion that The Wizard of Oz qualifies as a forerunner of The Matrix. It’s easy enough to replace the Wicked Witch of the West with Agent Smith. Now I’m seriously looking forward to the musical version of The Matrix.

Does this constitute political commentary?

[First posted 6 November 2012]

Rhythm of the Rainforest ~ Sarawak 2005

First published on 1 Oct 2015. Reuploaded July 2024.

The annual Rainforest World Music Festival that has put Sarawak on the world music map since its humble beginnings in August 1998 is now an established event in the international music festival calendar. In 2005 I was commissioned to produce a feature-length documentary capturing the essence and spirit of this joyful, exuberant and intoxicatingly colorful festival. An 80-minute version was released on DVD in 2006. This 45-minute cut intended for local TV never got aired but here it is now on YouTube!

Produced & Directed by Antares
Production Coordinator: Emanar Alaya
Cameras: Aaron Chung, Jon Yap, Tan Yu Ming, Antares
Editing & Effects: Daljit Singh/Daily Rushes
Executive Producers: Sarawak Tourism Board

Released on DVD in July 2006 as a 79-minute feature-length documentary.

The phenomenal Alex Peters (Malaysia's Rock Machine) is still absolutely awesome after all these years!

Alex Lesley Peters was born in Sentul where his father worked with Malayan Railways (“like all dads in Sentul”), but grew up in the Cochrane Road area. By then, his father had moved to the Orang Asli Affairs Department.

At 12, Peters wanted to become a Catholic priest. At 14, after the household had engaged in tense debate, he began a two-year stay at the Gethsemane Friary in Cheras, from where he bused it to the Jalan Cochrane Secondary School in the neighborhood his family lived. During those two years, music filled the Peters home in a big way. Three older brothers, each on a musical journey of his own, shared a made-in-China Kapok brand acoustic guitar with Lion brand steel strings.

Then there was Alex, home only for holidays, the youngest and clamoring for his turn on the guitar because the music was surging inside him.

“There were four young men in the house, each into Santana, Hendrix, Deep Purple, Rolling Stones, Jethro Tull, Iron Butterfly, King Crimson. The strings popped a lot. Then my first public performance came along.”

It was a penalty thing: if you did not play a sport or join a school club, you had to do something for the annual concert. Alex Peters played the guitar, his head hung down, his eyes fixed on the stage floor throughout the performance. His teammate, equally petrified, sang John Denver’s 'Country Road.'

“We barely heard the words of the song. We were so scared. I was seized with fright."

By 17, Peters was seized with rock‘n’roll. Music had taken over his life. Priestly plans were cancelled. Staying at home, he joined his brother Matthew's band Mainstream, doing mostly soft rock at private events.

Then came the big moves. He told his mother he was going to fail his MCE, that he had decided to be a singer and needed a RM173 loan to invest in a real guitar. She had something of a fit.

“She gave me the money eventually. I was focused. I think she saw that. That was the turning point. I had decided what I wanted to do with my life. There was a definite plan, a clear path.”

A path from which Peters has not veered despite occasional, sometimes long, breaks from singing. From 1978 to 1982, he was part of a group – three separate line-ups of Stratosphere – as bandmates came and went. They played hard rock, soft rock, jazz rock, disco, country & western and reggae.

In 1983, he went solo and slowly purged country & western from his repertoire, turned up the sound and acquired a rock and reggae reputation.

It repelled the older regulars at Bangsar’s Moonraker pub who came in for 'Your Cheating Heart' and couldn’t fathom the pulse of a rocker.

Peters brought in a new generation, set a new trend and attracted a bona fide cult following. One group of diehard loyalists was there every night. They called themselves the Gravediggers – they were young, full of machismo and at an age when men like to give themselves mean-sounding names.

Late in 1984, the voice went away. Alex Peters, diagnosed with voice abuse (gross loss of larynx muscle elasticity) retreated for two years and used that time to learn the workings of new generation sound machines. Then he was back with a vengeance, bringing with him that big sound he is now famous for. He created a serious following at Treffpunkt in Petaling Jaya.

In 1988, he won the first Top of the Pubs contest, sweeping the crowd with a frenzied rendition (which people still talk about) of Herbie Hancock’s 'Rockit.' The contest, now an annual event, made Alex Peters a household name.

[Source: Sunday Style, 1 November 1998]

Sentul Soul-Brother

Alex Peters @ lxpeterz.com

It's virtually impossible to write about Alex Peters - and do the man justice. Simply because his interests span a broad spectrum beyond his public persona as the most popular pub musician Malaysia has ever seen. 

As a musician, his mastery of virtually all musical modalities leaves one breathless with admiration. Ever the perfectionist, he has been known to work 16-hour days just getting his backing tracks right, constantly aiming for that magical blend of polished precision and raw passion.

Somewhat of a recluse and an introvert offstage, Alex Peters possesses a deep, mystical nature that lends him the aura of a scientist monk or medieval alchemist. As long as I've known him, he has walked a taut tightrope between priest and shaman, closet scholar and magus, saint and cynic (he also happens to pay avid attention to geopolitical shenanigans and NWO conspiracies). 

I am astounded by his ability to deconstruct complex compositions and lovingly reconstruct them as minus-two backing tracks, adding his own personal flourishes with impeccable guitarwork and sinewy vocals. When I first witnessed Alex Peters the Rock Machine in action during the late 1980s - that was when he pioneered the art of accompanying himself on guitar with richly orchestrated, consummately produced pre-recorded bass & synth tracks - I realized that this guy had achieved my childhood dream of becoming a musical prodigy with an encyclopedic grasp of all music.

In my adolescent fantasies I would imagine myself as leader of a band so versatile that it could play just about anything on earth - whether the classics, popular hits, ethnic-fusion, avant-garde, progressive jazz or pure funk.  Well, Alex Peters had picked up my childhood dream and run off with it - as essentially the world's most versatile one-man band (although he occasionally enjoyed collaborating with other ace musicians like Allan Perera, Simon Justin Leo and Viji).

Whether he's simulating the DJ scratch effect on Herbie Hancock's 'Rockit' with his guitar on overdrive, or creating his own raga-style Indian-flavored anthem ('Higher') with an Open D tuning that approximates the sound of a sitar & tamboura being played together, Alex's instinct for the crowd-pleasing wow factor has always been unerring. He can even out-Santana Carlos on an electronically reconstituted samba... that's how masterful the man is as a musician.

His pitch-perfect voice (which he almost lost to acute laryngitis in 1984) covers a truly remarkable range which allows him to attempt anything from the tenderest ballads and the most soulful R&B to the toughest roughest metal numbers. To my mind Alex Peters has created a musical signature that's a miraculous blend of Michael Jackson, Prince, Stevie Wonder and Jesus Christ Superstar.

As we approach yet another Merdeka (Independence Day) with mixed and murky feelings about the abysmal state of affairs precipitated by what Wilhelm Reich aptly called the Higs - Hoodlums in government - my thoughts turn to all the things that make me proud of and optimistic about Malaysia, despite the shabby treatment some of our greatest talents have been shown. 

The way P. Ramlee was left in the lurch and ignored until long after his death (when his monumental talent was seized upon by officialdom, celebrated and canonized as a Malaysian icon)... the cold-blooded manner in which Sudirman was shunned when it became apparent that he was dying of AIDs... the indifference of our cultural bureaucrats to world-class musicians like the late great Paul Ponnudurai, who spent his last years performing in a Singapore pub... well, suddenly reconnecting (thanks to facebook) with a musical supergenius like Alex Peters - who has still so much more to offer - is verily a brilliant sunbeam breaking forth from behind an ominous dark cloud. So glad we made it to this point, my illustrious Sentul Soul-Brother!

[Fisrt posted 30 August 2013, reposted 12 August 2020]

Is this the sultry-voiced 18-year-old folksinger I met so many years ago? (reprise)

Anna Salleh belts it out at No Black Tie (September 2002)

Portrait of a torch singer

Anna used to be in a Sydney-based a cappella group

Jazz is her passion now (photos by Antares)

I was introduced to Anna Salleh in 1983 by her proud father, the larger-than-life bilingual poet, columnist, actor and playwright Salleh Ben Joned (pictured left). Having just bought myself a guitar a couple of years earlier, I was bowled over when Anna picked up hers and played me a couple of her own songs.

You could say I was immediately smitten by her uninhibited spirit, her strong melodious voice, and her Eurasian good looks (her mother Ariel is Australian, married her father while he was doing his Masters in English literature in Tasmania).

Lat's classic portrait of Salleh Ben Joned as a bohemian poet

But, dammit, she had just turned 18. I was only 33 then but it did seem like a huge age gap (how silly of me to even think it!). At the time I was still part of a nuclear family with two lovely daughters aged 14 and 12; and, besides, the thought of having Salleh Ben Joned as a father-in-law lent the whole prospect a somewhat surreal, if not entirely absurd, dimension, much as I love the man. Anna mentioned, as if in telepathic response to an unspoken question, that she was dating a muso named Peter, who was into folk.

Anna and I kept in sporadic contact over the years. Peter and she were part of a commune called Magic Mountain, mostly populated by artists, musicians, organic farmers, assorted oddballs, maverick scientists, and visionaries. Perhaps it was Anna's description of life at Magic Mountain that inspired my establishing the Magick River community nine years later.

My first trip to Australia was in 1991 as a guest of the Department of Foreign Affairs who sponsored a 23-day tour of five cities. I had a fantastic time meeting musicians, filmmakers, theatre activists. mystics and high-tech shamans. During my brief stay in Sydney, Anna dropped in at my tiny hotel and we had a long, leisurely natter. At the time she was part of a professional a cappella group. She was also struggling to obtain her degree in some esoteric branch of biology, while holding down a rather mundane day job, I forget what. And she was still mesmerizingly beautiful. Indeed, I thought Anna had improved with age. Take a look at these videos recorded a few weeks ago at No Black Tie...



Black Orpheus (Luiz Bonfá and Antonio Maria) performed by Anna Salleh (guitar/vocals) and friends (Xiong on guitar; Badar on percussion; Wan Azfarezal on bass) live @ Kuala Lumpur's 'No Black Tie' (12 October 2009).



Semalam di Malaya (Saiful Bahri) performed by Anna Salleh (guitar/vocals) and friends (Xiong on guitar; Badar on percussion; Wan Azfarezal on bass) live @ Kuala Lumpur's, 'No Black Tie' (12 October 2009).



Summer Samba/So Nice (Marcos Valle/Norman Gimbel) performed by Anna Salleh (guitar/vocals) and friends (Xiong on guitar; Badar on percussion; Wan Azfarezal on bass) live @ Kuala Lumpur's, 'No Black Tie' (12 October 2009).

What a smashing diva, don't you think? Anna's back in Sydney at her day job writing and producing features for ABC Science Online - but she says she plans to spend a lot more time in Malaysia exploring her roots. I think that's an absolutely fabulous idea, Anna!

Say, how about one more number from the delectable Anna Salleh, folks? And if you still haven't had enough, check out her YouTube channel.




So Danco Samba (Vinícius de Moraes/Antonio Carlos Jobim) performed by Anna Salleh (guitar/vocals) and friends (Xiong on guitar; Badar (R) and Toninho (L) on percussion; Wan Azfarezal on bass) live @ Kuala Lumpur's, 'No Black Tie' (12 October 2009).

[First posted 31 October 2009]

CAN WE BEFRIEND THE ELEMENTS? (reprise)

THOSE EIGHT WORDS struck me like a sledgehammer when I first encountered them while reading a rather ponderous and nebulous work by the well-known astrologer, shamanic oracle and publisher, Barbara Hand Clow, who says her Cherokee grandfather taught her to listen to the elements and attune her psyche to the earth. After his death the young Barbara was subject to the severe traumas of growing up in a dysfunctional American family and experienced recurring contact with what she later identified as Pleiadian entities. At university Barbara majored in Jungian psychology and began delving into astrology and cosmomythology. In 1974 she married Gerald Cudahy Clow and together they established Bear & Company as a highly successful publishing house for cutting-edge, "New Age" authors.

But coming back to those eight words that had so much impact on me. Let's deconstruct and decompress that "Isaiah" quote:

Monotheism is the defining feature of the Abrahamic religions which are at most 4,000 years old (since the patriarch Abraham supposedly lived in the era between 2,000 and 1,500 BCE). Hindus believe the Kali yuga or Age of Darkness began at midnight on 23 January 3,102 BCE. In effect, the advent of the Abrahamic era (dare I say error?) occurred approximately a thousand years into the Age of Darkness when all divine revelations were subject to severe distortion and refraction. Interestingly, scholars of the Mayan calendar report that in 3,113 BCE the Earth began traversing a 5,000-year beam of density emanating from the Galactic Core, during which humans would become more individualized and egocentric. This densification and dimming of human consciousness is supposed to terminate between 28 October 2011 and 21 December 2012.


Most astronomers concur that the Solar System is approximately 4.6 billion years old, as estimated by the radiometric dating of meteorites. The Earth, according to consensus scientific opinion, was probably formed shortly afterwards. Some point at the figure 4.56 billion years as the age of our planet. Paleoanthropologists can't quite agree as to exactly when Homo sapiens may have begun to appear on Earth, but the general time frame ranges between 400,000 to 160,000 years. Let's say Homo faber (tool-using hominids) began multiplying around 250,000 years ago. Though the concept of a single Almighty Creator God has been around for approximately 4,000 years, the word "monotheism" was introduced into the English language by the Neoplatonist philosopher, Henry More, only in 1660 - less than 350 years ago.


What does anthropocentrism mean? It is the belief that humans must be considered at the center of, and above any other aspect of, reality. Monotheistic religions posit that God granted Man "dominion over Nature" - in other words, human considerations take precedence over the rest of the ecosystem. Ultimately, this leads to the dangerous viewpoint that making money is the single most important human activity on earth and that hills exist just so wealthy folks may build luxury apartments from which to gaze upon the urban sprawl below. We have seen the catastrophic results of such egotistical and myopic thinking. Stringent legislation and stricter enforcement won't solve the problem in the long run - but a radical shift in consciousness and perspective most certainly will.


Alchemy (from the Arabic Al-kimia) postulates that the Matter Universe consists of four elements - Fire, Earth, Air, and Water - and that these elements are present on the micro- as well as the macrocosmic levels. Indeed, our physical bodies are a blend of these very elements. Fire represents vitality, spirit, intellect; Earth the mineral compounds that constitute our blood and bones and fleshly tissue; Air the breath that oxygenates and cleanses our lifeblood, separating us from death; and Water (which forms 60-80 per cent of our bodies), symbolizing our emotional tides, influenced by the electromagnetic interaction of the Moon's gravitational field with that of the Earth.


When I relocated from Kuala Lumpur in early 1992 to the verdant hills of Pertak, Ulu Selangor, I soon became acutely aware of the close proximity of all four elements in my ecstatically beautiful riverine environment. Just sitting on a 500-million-year-old granite rock aglitter with embedded quartzite, feeling the hot sun on my skin, the fragrant breeze in my hair, soothed by the neverending riversong of crystalline life-sustaining waters - I felt for the first time in my life completely and absolutely at home.


It's exquisitely therapeutic to find your analytical mind suddenly and spontaneously falling silent while all your senses come alive. You begin to grasp the notion of Zen, of being totally in the here and now. In this serene state of receptivity, your body begins to pick up impressions long forgotten or usually unnoticed in the hurly-burly of urban existence. The rock you're resting on begins to tell you stories in its own distinctive mineral voice. And you begin to perceive the holographic, fractal nature of form itself - wherein the rock you're connected with in turn connects you with the entire spectrum of mineral consciousness.


Gradually, it dawns on you that the compressed experience of spacetime imposed on us by routinely accepted constraints of modern living is no more than an ephemeral veneer of insensitivity, of a societally sanctioned sensory shutdown. Our natural state is to be in constant awe and wonderment at the glorious epiphanies that abound all around us.

Henner Wenkhausen

When indigenous cultures connect with the elements through their shamans, they do so in a spirit of friendly cooperation. The very idea of combating the forces of nature would strike them as foolish and futile. How can one possibly defeat the wind or vanquish the ocean waves? On the other hand, by understanding these majestic forces and respectfully working with them, one is able to harness their might for one's own purposes. Wind and wave and solar power could free us forever from the stranglehold of voracious corporations that trade in toxic fossil fuels. Do we truly believe we can suck dry the oil reserves with impunity? Have we never considered the possibility that these subterranean and suboceanic pockets of petroleum actually serve as hydraulic shock absorbers, preventing the tectonic plates from scraping together with results disastrous to dwellers on the earth's surface?


The element Air embodies the idea of interconnectivity, communication, communion. When we consciously share breath with another, we synchronize our heartbeats and merge our energy fields. We experience a melding on the soul level, a fusion of destinies. Interesting how in our figures of speech, air features prominently as a metaphor. For instance, Malays speak of khabar angin (gossip, rumors) just as Italians call gossipers venticelli (little winds). Those with noble hearts are considered "fragrant" (wangi in Malay) while others with malicious intent are described as "stinkers" (busuk). The nose obviously knows better then the brain!


Where integrity reigns and people are naturally inclined to speaking truthfully, atmospheric pollution is a virtual impossibility. If you live in an asphyxiating hellhole where pedestrians scurry around wearing gasmasks, car windows are constantly closed with the aircon going full blast, while outside the air is almost unbreathable from carbon monoxide fumes - it's a clear sign that lying has become a national pastime.


When 100-million-year-old hardwood forests are clearfelled and set on fire by oil palm companies, you can be sure that a great many untruths are being circulated about the sustainability of monoculture cash crop plantations and the illusory profits to be made from a nearsighted biofuel campaign. Indeed, some of the biggest logging concerns and oil palm corporations have ministers as major shareholders - and that explains why the annually recurring haze just won't go away. How does it feel to choke and gag on your own lies?


Water is the Vital Essence of Life, it's chi or prana in liquid form. Moistness is an indication of fertility, sensual ripeness, warmth of feeling; and dryness suggests sterility, barrenness, humorlessness, sexual apathy. In effect, water is the element that signifies our emotional flux. The tragic situation in Malaysia wherein anxiety about water shortages is used to justify the construction of unnecessary dams even as flash floods recur with debilitating frequency reveals the unhealthy state of the nation's emotional life. Floodwaters are murky, polluted and often accompanied by waterborne diseases. What does this indicate about the kind of emotions we are expressing... or not? Are we being governed through fear rather than love?


Monotheism and the Abrahamic religions are patriarchal by definition, since these belief systems involve worship of a male deity, a Heavenly Father or Lord. A bit of research into the early history of the monotheistic religions associated with Yahweh reveals that there was a systematic excision of pre-existing Goddess emblems by a misogynistic male priesthood.


Why was the Sacred Feminine suppressed? Look at your left and right brains. The left is regarded as the logical, male brain where abstract symbols are linearly processed into alphanumeric codes - in effect, language. The right is usually associated with intuitive functions such as spatial and temporal navigation and the processing of non-verbal sensory data - in short, the "female" brain. Male children are trained to suppress their emotions while females can cry since they are "the weaker sex." Patriarchal societies are largely warlike and male children are required as cannon fodder for military campaigns. We can't be sending sissies to the battlefield, can we?


Progress is measured in physical terms, never metaphysical. Development is infrastructural, rarely cultural. Science and technology are to be encouraged; arts and humanities are best suited to girls... and effeminate boys (would you like to see your only son become a ballet dancer and move around with the arty-farty gay crowd?) Homophobic, testosteronally propelled national aspirations will neither tolerate the ambiguity of poetry nor the nature mystic's recognition of the aliveness of the elements...


But, alas, only the poet, the mystic, and the true lover in each of us can access and befriend the elements, and restore balance and harmony to the land. Legislative measures and political rhetoric demanding a scientific and technological solution is, at best, the band-aid approach to serious environmental injury. How can we avoid wholesale eco-apocalypse - if we're too goddamn arrogant to apologize to Mother Nature for constantly trying to make a quick buck by flogging off her vital organs as commodities in the marketplace? If you were a magnificent old-growth rainforest, would you appreciate being gangbanged and chainsaw-massacred by loudmouthed louts who call you ugly names like "merchantable biomass"?

[First posted 7 November 2009, reposted 28 October 2020]