IN today’s brave and new-age world of the digital era, almost every industry and business player anywhere is forced to adapt to new ways of doing things.
This applies no less to the music industry. Dr Kamil Salem, a part-time lecturer on music and business, entrepreneur and veteran musician himself, should know as the owner of a pioneering music recording studio in Kuching.
Dr Kamil has just released a path-breaking new musical single that, true to the digital era, transcends all boundaries, physical and otherwise.
Tawanan Waktu, released on YouTube this month, is the culmination of frenetic work that started several months ago and the fruit of an erstwhile partnership that began back in 1979 between Dr Kamil and another music veteran from the peninsula, Usop Kopratasa.
As Usop tells it, it all started after Dr Kamil made contact with him again after a break of over 30 years and began sending him music compositions and lyrics which Usop used to record the sound at his end before re-sending the recording over to Dr Kamil for the singing voice-over and final production processes.
Pharo Abdul Hakim, another friend of Dr Kamil, provided the lyrics. He said it was a historical tour d’horizon of Sarawak from around 900AD when the entire Nusantara region was under the Sri Vijaya empire to the end of colonial times. The intention is to inspire people today to appreciate the idea of political independence.
The final musical production is a fascinatingly eclectic combination of historical poetry in a modern music context. Usop described it as fusion music, that while retaining elements of poetry, an intriguing Latin beat and a touch of keroncong, has the ultimate objective of elevating poetry to the status of pop music but de-emphasising the role of language and thereby making music truly global.
And global Tawanan Waktu truly is! Its lead guitarist is an Italian and another is Spanish, with further input from an American.
But sadly, Dr Kamil, who is working on a second doctorate in business entrepreneurship, says many are doing this as a hobby to channel their creative energies rather than as a serious business proposition. The ecosystem to promote the local creative industry simply seems woefully inadequate.
For starters, the state (and country as a whole) needs to up its game by upgrading the infrastructure to boost Internet speed – and not just in the major urban centres. There seems to be quite a trend, for example, to popularise music created from such traditional musical instruments as the sape, the finest musicians of which are probably to be found high up in the Bario Highlands, as far as one can get from civilisation!
Government, noted Dr Kamil, “needs to appreciate that a dynamic creative community is the lifeblood of a vibrant country, its culture and economy”. And that has to start from young, right in school. “Make design, creativity and innovation as important in the school curriculum as Mathematics and English, so that 20 years from now, our companies will have as many creative directors as financial directors,” said the 1978 national winner of Juara Bintang RTM.
Too often, we collectively make the mistake of treating creative endeavours as just that or a means towards other wealth-creating ends. Sarawak now promotes countless music festivals on an annual basis, more as events to attract tourists rather than ones to encourage and promote a thriving local creative industry.
Such a paradigm needs to change. Again, in Dr Kamil’s own sage words: “Getting the basics right, such as incorporating more creative learning into the secondary education curriculum, is therefore important but what’s vital is that there is targeted and sustained investment across all creative disciplines.”
The government also organises quite a few trade missions overseas every year. Such missions should also include music entrepreneurs, Dr Kamil believes. Moreover, he says, in Germany, there is a government initiative called “Musik GmbH” which is a platform for funding contemporary music, supporting growth, exports and cultural integration.
Sarawak is currently seeking to leapfrog economically by ramping up investments to more fully digitise the state. But most of the talk is about the potential for more visible trade in goods via e-commerce in a more integrated digital economy, through such avenues as digital free trade zones.
Perhaps a far greater potential trade in invisibles that a much more vibrant and enterprise-driven local creative industry can promote is something the government can and should equally and as energetically encourage and facilitate.
The writer views developments in the nation, the region and the wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak
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