The Space Gambus Experiment

A new music CD, launched December 2009, introduces the mesmerising sounds of The Space Gambus Experiment to an expectant audience. This landmark work is the result of a unique collaboration, not only between the two presenting musicians – Mohd Zulkifli Ramli (Gambud/Oud) and Kamal Sabran (electro – acoustic) but also between the traditional and the contemporary in modern Malaysian music.

For this ‘experiment’ Kamal Sabran has engaged the talents of Mohd Zulkifli Ramli, to bring the uniquely symbolic music of the Malay gambus (a lute like instrument), into play, perhaps with the intention of playing point, counterpoint to Kamal’s adventurous sound making.

An observant reader will have noticed the word – Space in the title of this CD, as in The Space Gambus Experiment, and maybe scratched an itchy follicle or two on its significance. To put your inquisitive minds at rest, I am not referring to some post-hippy, pseudo-psychedelia, but in this case – real Space, as in ‘one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind’, the National Space Agency and the planet Jupiter.

Among Kamal’s many projects as an artist and musician, and following his partiality to meld science with art, Kamal had worked as an ‘artist in residence’ at the Malaysian National Space Agency, between 2005 and 2006.

There he developed ‘Sonic Cosmic Music from Outer Space’, which was later performed at the planetarium. It was at the National Space Agency that Kamal began experimenting with radio waves, received through the radio telescope, from the planet Jupiter as it was orbiting over Malaysian skies. Some of that celestial material, along with the more traditional gambus music, graces this present album.

With a world rapidly churning out the latest talking blues gangsta rapper, wannabe TV starlet/singer or bootilicious boy/babe dressed hot to kill, it has become a case of never mind that he/she cannot actually sing but look at that boy/girl go.

It therefore comes as a great relief that artist/designer/musician/academician Kamal Sabran quests on the fringes of ‘noise’ and ‘melody’ to bring us this unexpected gem of a CD – The Space Gambus Experiment. Co-incidentally, Kamal, rapidly becoming a Malaysian renaissance man, has also designed the layout and cover of this visually, as well as musically, exciting CD.


Those of you who have been intently following the contemporary arts scene, or who have been nose-diving into arts listings or even shrewd enough to access on-line Malaysian arts reviewers, recently, will have seen Kamal as part of 15 Malaysia.

15 Malaysia was a project consisting of a series of 15 short films, concerning the realities, and some fantasies, of life in Malaysia. Kamal’s entry – LUMPUR (mud), is about, strangely enough, mud, or rather what it comprises of. This short film explores people’s association with land, ownership, water and earth, leaving the audience pondering these subjects.

‘Lumpur’ saw Kamal as film director, editor, musician and composer, along with the legendary Pete Teo as overall producer.
Music from ‘LUMPUR’ - Ruang Kosong Remix, containing sounds taken from soil and water, add an ‘organic’ element to the soundtrack, and appears on the CD The Space Gambus Experiment.

Out of the canon of Kamal Sabran’s musical enterprises, this CD offers what may be his most accessible compositions, with a more direct focus on instrumental melodies, intertwined with electronic abstract resonance. Certainly, with this innovative CD, Kamal has moved, ever so slightly, away from the more distinctly avant-garde Terry Riley, or, perhaps Max Neuhaus inspired sound experiments he is known for - towards a more rounded sound imagery, infinitely more palatable for the general, lay public, as well as proving stimulating for the discerning music lover.

Senses of Malaysia July 2009

New Malaysian Essays 2

Hopefully coming to a bookshop near you soon - my essay; Colourful Language

Rainbow Warrior

Rainbow Warrior
An exhibition of work by Rafiee Abdul Ghani,
Galerie Chandan, Bukit Damansara 1-26 June 2009

When the Mother Earth is sick and the animals dying there will come a tribe of peoples from all cultures, who believe in deeds, not words, and they will restore the Mother Earth to her former beauty. This Tribe will be called, the Warriors of the rainbow. Ancient Hopi prophesy.


The above text is taken from an ancient North American Hopi Indian belief. Later, the essence and meaning of that text was incorporated into William Willoya and Vinson Brown’s book Warriors of the Rainbow (1962). It is from that book that the environmentalist group - Greenpeace, borrowed the concept to give name to their first fishing vessel - Rainbow Warrior, sunk by agents of the French government in 1985. It is now the title of Rafiee Abdul Ghani’s exhibition at Bukit Damansara.

There is much to connect the increasingly organic work of the artist Rafiee Abdul Ghani to those stalwart concepts held aloft by Greenpeace and other environmentalist groups. They include the re-greening of the planet, saving threatened flora and fauna, a profound love of nature and an intrinsic belief in the preservation of our environment.

Since Rafiee Abdul Ghani’s early works - Ingatan dari Gunung (Memory of Mountains -1985) and Green Park 4 (1993), an insightful care and concern for nature’s milieu has been self evident within the artist’s works.

A thread of quiet concern links Rafiee’s entire image making, from the seeming abstract (Ingatan dari Gunung – 1985), to the expressionistic (Purple Flowers – 1997) and through to the predominantly figurative, with expressionistic abstract overtones (Yellow Wind Coming - 2008).

It is a concern for nature, our planet, and, like a Rainbow Warrior of legend, Rafiee is intent upon giving a warning regarding man’s footprint on the planet, while also revealing the intense beauty of the world as seen through his eyes.

Over the last few years the artist has been seen searching for a method of developing figurative work, within the context of an expressionistic framework. Man, both as a concept and a reality, has been increasingly portrayed as an integral nexus for the artist’s depictions of nature, recollection and innocence.

Certainly innocence, rather than naiveté, has pervaded Rafiee’s works over the past two decades. With his nuanced painterly sophistication, the artist currently presents the perfect symbol for innocence and love – the purity of the child.

In the artist’s works, presented at Galerie Chandan, we encounter Ali’s Wonderland 1, an obvious play on Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Here we see a young boy (Ali/Rafiee) wading through a life beset with nature, imaginings, flowers, butterflies, planes and bombs. It is an age of communication, but the letters remain sealed, it is an age of beauty and of butterflies as he luxuriates on the beach of time and timelessness, stretching, wondering, and pondering. Sand pulls waters to him as he is weighed by the heaviness of being, kneels and rests his head on sand, the bright sun hot on his young shoulders.

Alternately the twin fascinations of melancholia and listlessness pose the boy, as he kneels, deep in innocent thought, beside reflections of eternal nature, or with grim determination stretches, climbing to pluck jasmine flowers, which, like his future, are just beyond his reach.

The growing awareness of his Jungian symbolic internal world is all that separates the boy from the nature which surrounds him. His moodiness, his insular thought-filled reality ultimately cuts the boy off from the lush, vibrant world around him.

Ever in thought he inhabits the hanging gardens, observes geese, glares at the sun or sits enveloped in the glow of a peach moon. At times, compelled by his inherent cheekiness, the boy rests one foot on a red plastic chair and waves out to sea, growing to become aware of his gesture and its double meaning.

Thoughtful adults sit surrounded by fireflies and butterflies, as if caught in reveries by Odilon Redon (Firefly Beach – 2008), or smile towards the viewer unaware of the solemn child melding into an array of butterflies and Hockneyesque imagery (The Piano Beach – 2009).

In Whales in the Sky (2009) to some extent we are back within the realm of the Ali’s Wonderland 1, only in the foreground leans a stylised young woman, wiping a tear from her eye, she leans as if leaving, or resting from some sorrow which threatened to overwhelm her, but at the moment of painting had not succumbed yet. In the mid-ground drifts painterly paraphernalia of butterflies, flowers, fish and a variety of objects which pull the viewers eye through to the child, standing, gazing to off canvas left (viewers left).

In the background blue whales swim in lighter blue skies, a brown aeroplane is sighted against a white backdrop. The sadness and anxiety of the painting reveals a last gasp, the moment before all is lost, before the youth of the boy is lost forever, and the penultimate moment before the ultimate extinction of the whales, forests and finally us.

Is the boy the Rainbow Warrior, who is finally preparing for battle as he gazes off canvas, is his stance that of the martial arts horse, a position of strength from which he will spring ready to save the day, and the planet. The soft despair of the woman is countered by the bold strength of the boy, hand clasping wrist. We shall never know, for the exhibition poses questions rather than provides answers, it is for us to search within our sensibilities and reconcile ourselves to what the artist Rafiee Abdul Ghani is saying through his work.

Somewhere, at the back of my mind, unbidden, two tunes danced through my consciousness as I viewed these images produced by Rafiee Abdul Ghani. There was, quite obviously you might think - Don’t Kill the Whale, by the aging British progressive rock band Yes, replete with Jon Anderson’s distinctive vocals, and the less obvious Seaside Woman by Paul McCartney’s band Wings. Why Seaside Woman, because, at times, while viewing Rafiee’s images, I could see the deft hand of the Argentine cartoonist and animator Oscar Grillo, and his flamboyantly coloured animations for both Seaside Woman (1980) and the Kia-Ora adverts (1981).

Boldly Going.....................

I was never what you might call a ‘Trekkie’; I just enjoyed watching Star Trek, the TV series, then the Next Generation et al.

I knew someone who was a Trekkie, they used to go to conventions in the UK, dress the part, learn Klingon etcetera. From them I learned what a ‘blooper’ was, which episodes had never been shown on British TV and countless other really quite pointless facts. But that’s in the past.

Taking a leaf out of the new film – Star Trek, I’m going to pretend, just for a moment, that 3 decades have not gone by, and that I am in my late twenties – for it is quite unseemly for a man at my time of life to have such enthusiasm over a popularist film, much less over one which, once again, drags that old 1960s media franchise cliché, Star Trek, out of its now dog-eared and be-cobwebbed box, dusts it off and re-presents it as new.

Watching J.J.Abrams latest Star Trek film I found myself buffeted by emotions, no doubt intended by the film makers, and on a roller coaster of nostalgia and blissful wilful suspension of disbelief. For this film not only welcomes new viewers with the brave new, young, cast, but has so many points of contact for Star Trek nostalgia buffs too.

We had Star Trek, the original NBC series, from 1966 to 1969 and a host of others since, including an animated series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise. Now Star Trek goes, not back to the future, but forward to the past.
The new film gives an account of how the original crew – James T Kirk (Chris Pine), Spock (Zachary Quito), Dr ‘Bones’ Mc Coy (Karl Urban), Uhura (Zoe Saldana), Scotty (Simon Pegg), Sulu (John Cho) and Chekov (Anton Yelchin) all met and served upon USS (Star Ship) Enterprise.

Relationships are explored, especially that between Kirk and Spock, briefly, and the characters are put through a protracted team building exercise called - save earth, which happily they do. It’s the usual sub-genre SCI FI/Western plot, goodies, baddies – this time the Romulans, goodies beat baddies and a suitable crescendo ensues leaving us wanting more.

And I for one did want more. The two hours something just seemed to wiz by on warp speed, leaving me a little reluctant to leave the cinema, just in case it was an interval and not the end of the film.

The film is extraordinarily well done. Gone are the shaky sets, over acting, lurid colours and clichéd monsters, admittedly the film does rely heavily on CGI and computer wizardry but what self respecting modern SCI FI film doesn’t. It all seems to blend very well together to assist the aforementioned willing suspension of disbelief.

Finally someone decided to make a real Star Trek film. Maybe it had to wait until the deaths of both Gene Roddenberry (1991) (Star Trek creator) and his wife Majel B Roddenberry (2008), (Nurse Chapel in the original TV series) and some of the original cast before the franchise could move in a different direction.

A make-over was certainly on the cards for this very popular series of films. In the same vein a TV make-over had worked for Dr Who, and in films - Star Wars, Batman, and Spiderman, it almost worked for The Hulk too.

It is with excitement and a little disappointment that I await the next Star Trek film - excitement to see how the next film is handled by the film makers, and disappointment at having to wait for, at the very least, one more year before that happens.

Expat Magazine May 2009

Languorous Papan

The languorous morning was bright and clear. A constant sun warmed through an idyllic blue sky as I journeyed towards Lumut, in Perak; detouring through Pusing to the patently somnolent town of Papan.

I had been invited to view the display honouring Papan’s most famous daughter Sybil Kathigasu, nurse and resistance warrior against the Second World War Japanese invasion. Its founder, Law Siak Hong, has created a space within Sybil’s old surgery for historical narratives to grow, and memories to linger.

Arriving early, I took a slow drive through the town to witness, for myself, its balmy, soothing atmosphere.

Papan, once a home for Mandailing peoples, was named for the river (Sungei Papan) and from the area’s lumber produce. Gradually it grew into existence during the early 1800s, but was ravaged by fire a century later. Papan, one of the many Kinta Valley tin mining towns, began a slow decline from that fire and a decrease in tin production until today, where it exists as a shell of its former self.

Today the town of Papan lies dormant, awaiting that spark which will cause it to erupt and return to its former splendour. Yet in its dormancy Papan exudes peace, serenity, calm and is, in a way, stately too. The town’s obvious serenity and calmness is reflected throughout Hong’s spatial creation to honour Sybil.

Within the calming blue-washed walls, Hong’s collection is not just a by-product of nostalgic romance but a full-on love affair with artistic spatial creation and its nuances, creating a lulling tranquillity out of an organic collection.

Inside the presenting display room, curiously blue/green metal electric fans nestle with cabinets containing sparkling glassware. Japanese Malayan currency is firmly held by an Art Deco ink stand abutting an enamelled bowl.

Towards the rear of the display, just before the visitor is enticed into the lush garden, an ancient bicycle rests on its stand, awaiting the rider who is, momentarily, indisposed.

Hong’s poignant creation of display space concurrences and alliances refutes traditional pigeon –holed museology, where items are catalogued until their demise, then tagged and bagged and buried.

Instead, Hong’s correlation of objects better resembles contemporary art installations, where visitors are subsumed into the experience - as much part of the overall work, as are the items themselves.

For this innovative collection draws upon a spontaneous creation of narratives, and storied sub-texts, facilitated through visitor interaction using individual perspectives and inspiring object juxtaposition.

Being neither a re-creation of the war-time clinic, nor a static museum of staid objects Hong, instead, has created an organic approach to his display, presenting none of the usual gallery clues as to nomenclature or single dominant, imposing, narrative. Within the space’s ambience, it is for the visitor to interact with the items and together create narratives.

Eventually, Hong’s antique cornucopia spills over into a sublimely tranquil oasis of green whose siren call could be mistaken for that of visiting birds. Where the internal display remains ultimately bounded by the form of the structural walls, outside there are no such boundaries and the visitor’s glance is able to trace the line of objects, through foliage and away to gaze at beckoning hills.

It was with more than a little sadness, that I had to eventually draw myself away from the garden, the building and the town.

With very little encouragement I could have lain behind one of the outside bedroom walls, peering though aged wooden shutters at one of the most restful places I have visited – a dreaming lotus eater.

Sybil Kathigasu’s Clinic, the memorial display, gardens and restfulness maybe accessed through Law Siak Hong, at siakhongstudio@yahoo.com.