Last weekend we saw a culture clash. In Malaysia, indie punk rock scene doesn’t mix well in our socio-political movement. A protest against the recent petrol price rise was held at Kelana Jaya Stadium leads to a unwelcome event.
The highly choreographed buttocks antics of Carburetor Dung’s singer while performing the song “Mari Nyanyi Menjilat“, normally would be a crowd pleaser, but not to the crowds at the Kelana Jaya’s protest.
Crowd reaction to Carburetor Dung’s performance.
The crowd watching the band, majority of them are strong supporters of the opposition parties and its hero Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim, they got the wrong impression from the act and was provoked into thinking it was a sexual innuendo referring to their leaders alleged homosexuality. If the crowd had listen to the explanation from the band beforehand and where they are coming from with their songs, it has nothing to do with the current issue of Dato’ Seri Anwar Ibrahim and his sodomy allegation.
It is a performance, and some performance are meant to provoke. Sadly the idea that arts can sometime be provocative does not mix well with the majority subset of our society. Which is why censorship in mainstream media is reverent in keeping order in the society we live in.
However, I was wondering what an anti-establishment punk bands are doing in a event driven with political agenda. Then again one of the strong activist organizing the protest event, and most probably the person responsible in bringing bands like Carburetor Dung and Dum Dum Tak to the protest rally, is Hishamuddin Rais.
An activist cum film director, one of the movies he had directed was, “Dari Jemapoh ke Manchester” which featured the band Carburetor Dung, with its soundtracks also features tracks form bands like Koffin Kanser, Republic Of Brickfields and many more.
Even-though he might not be new to the underground / indie / punk / where-ever-you-call it scene, but bringing such bands to perform in a mostly conservative crowd was a bad idea to begin with.
The indie scene should stay indie. Stay away from events of political nature. Events organize in to promote political agenda. The people can protest on their own, not with political parties.
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