The artistic Dung

July 9th, 2008 Posted in Uncategorized

 He must have been crazy, maybe,   there was a method in his madness after all.

Now, everybody in Malaysia knows  the Carburetor Dung, a punk rock outfit out of KL, who suddenly found themselves in the limelight .

Their lead singer  was beaten up for dropping his pants and exposing the back of his boxer shorts while singing  their crowd pleasing number "Jilat" (Lick) at the fuel price hike rally  organised by  the Pakatan Rakyat at the Kelana Jaya stadium Sunday.

The protest was considered a failure as the organisers had hoped for a million demontrators, instead, only a few thousand people had  turned up.

While the event itself was generally incident free, but, the dropping of the pants  grabbed the headlines instead. Full of symbolism don't you think?

It's believed that those who attacked the singer were PAS (Islamic Party of Malaysia) members, obviously these religious types couldn't handle the very Western influenced music played by the group. Instead, they would have preferred a more sedate Middle Eastern influenced nasyid, a kind of Muslim gospel music , I suppose.

Talk about  the clash of civilisations!

I always find PAS a strange political creature, here is an outfit that wants to Arabise Malaysia. Yet, it has many followers amongst the non-Muslims!

Their spiritual leader who is the Chief Minister of Kelantan in the course of time has made some weird political pronouncements.

Women in Kelantan are not allowed to use lipstick and high heels are definitely a no no for them. Currently he was reported as saying that those who want to work as civil servants in the state must pray five times a day.

What if they say they do but they don't? How do you supervise a private matter between you and your maker? Doesn't conscience or faith come into play here?

Sometimes I can't helping thinking that God has been made  redundant by this kind of politicking.

The underground/indie musical scene in Malaysia is very much a Western inspired popular cultural happening with the urban, middle class young and not so young, all in the name of artistic free expressions. High percentage of the songs are sung in English and most of the bands have English names too.

Now, this Dung group have been playing to their own audiences without much problem, in fact the song "Jilat" is an anti establishment song telling how you have to lick or kiss backsides to get anywhere in this world. It's a satirical song about integrity.

Dung don't have mainstream followers, they sing to people who think like them, the anti-establishment crowd, so there is no fear of them being banned from appearing on television  or being banned  from performing live for a certain period like one rock singer recently who took off his shirt while performing .

The question now  if the  supporters of the parties in Pakatan can clash over  poor  stage antics, if tolerance for musical diversity was in short supply, can the parties really get their act together when big, important issues come to contest? While the leadership has some kind of rapport and understanding, but, can the grassroots display the same?

The authorities have said  no action will be taken against the  rock group as no police report  has been made so far over the matter.

To me, just let it be, it is too trivial to make a big thing out of it. If you proceed you'll make heroes out of these Dung guys.

While most people think it was lewd and all that taking our Asian sensibilities into account, but don't you think the singer had made a very profound  satirical statement with regards to our current 'obscene' political goings on?

I must say I admire his artistry!