last night, i met up with geof, and we headed over to KL to meet matt ngau, my sape teacher from sarawak. i needed my sape tuned, apparently no one in semenanjung can do it, and this is the last time he’d be in town this year. so by hook, because geof’s too nice of a guy to commit any crook, we endured bukit bintang’s friday night madness.
i don’t remember who came up with the idea in the very first place, but all of a sudden, we decided to do a little experimental busking, of yes, right there on the streets on KL. maybe it was matt. while making his way to meet us, he mentioned that he came across some japanese buskers with some simple traditional music and people were giving them money. and we had a sape with us, and i brought along my portable pick-up and jack. and quite frankly, it had been a notoriously eventful week for me, that i was quite willing to play hobo for a night.
it was half past midnight when we settled on a lonely bench in the middle of town. he tuned the sape and played a tune. i played a coupla tunes. we were not exactly getting a crowd tho. i think it’s because by now, most people were more interested in getting sloshed instead of cheering on street buskers. we did get a slight audience tho. no money.
we moved on to find a different location. found the borneon community at jalan kia peng. that’s where things started happening very quickly. from the street, we were spotted. matt was, of course, with his orang ulu hairdo and tattoos. the thumping house music was brought to an abrupt halt, matt was centerstage, and when he started to play the sape, everyone on the dance floor broke into najats – well, their versions of the dance, which is, to the still sober, incredibly fascinating.
the crowd demanded a second number and matt pulled the microphone to belt a traditional number from his longhouse back in the ulu. the crowd went insane and the najat dancers were mopping the floor with their acrobatic twists. a hearty applause later, we were escorted to a corner of the club. the house band takes over and we were treated to a free flow of drinks. so much for street busking, we landed a gold mine – no money, but with jugs making their way to our table one after another, how can money be a greater reward?
matt’s instant fans came streaming over and he discovered that there were some people there that night who grew up in the same longhouse he was from! matt would later confess to geof and i that if their families back in sarawak ever found out of these things they did in KL, they’d never be able to take it. but for that one night, in hearing matt’s music and learning that rare family bond, their homesickness was momentarily remedied, and that was something quite precious in my opinion.
i crawled into be this morning at about 4am. all day today, i had that itch of taking my sape out to a nearby park, sit under a tree and see who comes.
