NEGARA KU!

Awang Goneng said...

Our Negaraku is a much maligned but a much loved song. Soekarno (who couldn't spell and kept changing the spelling of his name. And then added Ahmad to it when people kept asking if he had another) mocked it by singing Terang Bulan during Konfrontasi, but thank God we had Tunku Abdul Rahman as PM then, a man who kept his sense of humour by the drumload. And there are others around still - some old enough to know better, some young enough as to be punks - who are so chauvinistic and anti-anything Malaysian that they forget that it is only a song, for chrissake!

Well, Negaraku, I shall always sing it with gusto and not a little melancholy weighing on the mind. It has a long past, a troubled mid-life and, dare I say, a glorious presence. Try listening to Negaraku when you are standing in foreign climes, and the wind is blowing a little and the sun is shining, and you're pining desperately for mee rebus (rebus sic stantibus as they say, but that's another thing). It beats watching a soppy Bollywood film. To many it is the dost-dost-na-raha moment in Sangam. Boo-hoo-weep-sniff!

It started in the Seychelles, they say. When Abdullah and his band of men were exiled there they absorbed not only the sounds of the sea in the conch, but also everything in the surrounds. Fast forward to a royal visit to Britain by the Sultan of Perak (early 20th century it must have been) and his hanger on was asked if the Sultan had a state anthem to be played on his arrival. "No," said the man. "But hang on, I know this tune from the Seychelles." So he whistled one, and it was the first, slightly-out-of-tune rendition of Negaraku. So the Brits, overstuffed with their Yorkshire puds and hung-over from their bout of Somerset cider drinking, said to them, "What ho, this'll do for a song." And it became the Perak state anthem. And the rest, as they say, is Name That Tune.

Negaraku, on the best of evidence, was a French folk tune. It must've been sung by the Seychellois on their return from the sea, and it was sung by Perakians longing for that their second home. Detractors, and they are legion, say "Boo hoo, you call that a national song?" And let's all, with gusto, say "Yes!" Negaraku, with its history, is a page from our past. It speaks of longing, exile, return, everything is within.

But what about this purloining form the French and all that? So what, let's all say. Egypt's got Wagner for their national song, and it doesn't make them less Egyptian; and God Save the Queen is said to have been plagiarised by Handel from a French tune and so on ad infinitum. Let's settle this once and for all then: It's the singer, not the song.

POSTSCRIPT: And did Soekarno have another name? No. Ahmad was one that he made up on the spur of the moment.

And another: I once narrated this story to a Perakian named Raja Badiozzaman who was then customs attache at the Malaysian High Commission in London. After listening to my story politely for about five minutes, he cleared his throat and said, "Yes, and the man who whistled that tune was my grandad."

JANUARY 4, 2011 12:37 PM ( fROM bLOG ANAK SI hAMID )