Here are 3 MP3s of Malaysian lounge music which I captured on the daily “National Classics” AM radio broadcast in Kuala Lumpur. If anyone has information on Malay lounge music, any names for these songs/artists, please contact me.

SONG 1
SONG 2
SONG 3

Haling Vol. 3 - Song 1 MP3

There are a very limited number of locally produced cassettes available, each released as a “volume” or an artists work. Haeng, Haling, Ester and Ataratu are the most well known throughout Waingapu and the surrounding provinces of East Sumba. In many of the recordings, children and animals can be heard in the background during the performance, and often times, the tape will run out in the middle of a song, so the performermer will continue the song from where he left off on the previous side. These are recorded on home ghetto-blasters, and sold/traded in local street markets in Waingapu, Sumba.

I found this cassette simply labelled “Pa’badong” in a vegetable market in Rantepao, Sulawesi. The origins of the tape is unknown to me. This vocal style has been documented before, but this is interesting because it is a locally produced cassette of their own traditional style. Enjoy.

Pa’Badong Section 4 MP3

Kenyo Gyi has been a favorite of mine for a number of years, and I was able to find this cassette in Mandalay this past year.  I don’t have the song titles translated yet, but in the meantime, enjoy 2 great tracks from the cassette.

KENYO GYI SONG 1 MP3
KENYO GYI SONG 2 MP3

My favorite radio stations in the world are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. All day and night, every station seems to play a never-ending assortment of absolutely mind-blowing songs. The AM program “Classic National” broadcasts all sorts of Malay lounge music, seemingly flamenco-influenced ballads, bit-crushed jingles… There are stations that exclusively play music from India; others from China (including a great late-night Chinese modern-electronic music show, which boasts a parralel lineup of Chinese Notwists, Alva Notos and Album Leafs). There is an independent-music station which proudly shares the prolific Malaysian independent music output in hard-rock, hip-hop and shoegazer music. I will make a blog on Malay lounge music soon, but higher up on the FM frequencies late at night I would occasionally catch some static-y surf music, and wanted to share a few songs. There must be a Malay surf genre, and if anyone has any information on the artists, or other similar music, please contact me!

PERSIAN TIDES

MALAY SURF

SURFING THE ISLAMIC FREQUENCIES

I don’t know much about rap/hip-hop, but one of the primary focusses in my musical search in Burma was to find urban youth-oriented music, how it’s made, distributed, performed, etc… and how something like a Hip-Hop scene might exist in a city like Yangon or Mandalay. The first rapper everyone pointed me to, both inside and outside the country, is J-Me. A member of the “Myanmar Hip-Hop association”, which supports now over a dozen musicians through their distribution of annual compilations, and functioning for all intents and purposes as a collective and record label.

J-ME SONG 2 MP3

Other members of the MHA include Cyclone, K-Ca$h, Kaung Chit Soe, OnTrack, Bigg-Y and others. Many produce their own music, make their own beats and write their own lyrics, and occasionally some of the artists work with big name DJs such as Thxa Soe and DJ Jay for remixes or new releases. In the spirit of copy songs, I thought it would be appropriate to breath a little life into the idea, and pass along the DJ Thxa Soe and MHA Wu-Tang copy

WU INTERNET MIX MP3 (Wu-Tang copy song)

It’s more common for rappers to release single songs than full albums, making compilations the primary marketing device to introduce rappers to the public. This 2005-dated compilation features 2 songs each by 6 rappers.

K-CA$H SONG 1 MP3

I am hoping to throw a compilation together featuring a number of interesting songs from the Yangon underground electronic/hip-hop scene. Please contact me if you are interested in this project.

A few songs that didn’t end up making it onto the album for various reasons, but which I wanted to share.

CHILDREN MALE DUET
SHAKIRA COPY SONG
MALE COUNTRY SONG
BURMA CLASSIC ROCK
COMMERCIAL

These were recorded March-April 2007 in Yangon, Myanmar. Visit the MUSIC section for links to purchase the disc from Sublime Frequencies.

Guatemala is a tough place to find ANY trace of musical history. Latin america is musically unique in many respects, and an upcoming project I’m working on deals with the notion of language, identity and culture in the role of Spanish musics from Cuba and Mexico to Argentina and Chile. In all the months I’ve spent in Guatemala, seeking out musical performances, historical records, and radio broadcasts, I have always struggled to find anyone who knows anything of recorded music during Guatemala’s civil war days. “Music from the 70s and 80s? That doesn’t exist” is the common response. My search continues, and I have amassed a great deal of live and radio material, but my cassette searches have left me with little other than Costa-Rican manufactured cassettes of Mexican and Argentinian icons of Romantic and Bolero music from labels such as “Peerless” and “Embassy”. Here is a cassette I found in Quetzaltenango a couple months ago.

EL CABLE SUBMARINO MP3
TE LA TENGO QUE DAR MP3

you find it sitting on the corner of a table in a small-town vegetable market:

you send it home in a shoe-box.

7 months later, having no idea what to expect, you pop it into a cassette player and hear this:

Papelle MP3

Believe it or not, Myanmar has its own “Myanmar Hip-Hop Association”; it has its own guitar gods, country music icons, trip-hop and trance underground scenes. Don’t let its international image obscure the vibrancy and creativity of its youth. The problem, obviously, is finding out about that stuff in the first place. I will focus on Burmese hip-hop and guitar music at another time, but I wanted to ease into some of those extremes with the one of the biggest bands in Burma — Emperor.

First of all, who listens to all this stuff? What would Burmese kids recommend? Well, hear them for yourself (My friends in Mandalay on what the kids like in Burma)

I found this Emperor cassette (entitled “New Place”) in the same Mae Sot shop I found the hand-drawn Karen cassette below. Emperor formed in the late 80s, led by vocalist Zaw Win Htut, and my sources tell me this album dates back to the early 90s.

“NEW PLACE” MP3
PURPLE HAZE COVER MP3

info and translation from Naw Laung