Sounds off the Map is a blog dedicated to music I have collected in the United States, around Australia and across South East Asia; mainly 45s, LPs become a bit difficult to cart about.
The blog is not about ‘outsider’ music or ‘incredibly strange’ music, pretty much everything included will be mainstream within its own culture. It will be music that I think is just plain good, interesting or maybe even 'funny' to Western ears – look forward to a Cantonese version of Delilah.
Every couple of weeks I’ll post an mp3 of a lost song, provide scans and any additional information I can find out about those involved in the record. I especially like interpretations of western songs – but we won’t be limited to that.
I am not an ethnomusicologist, much of the music I present and like will be commercial and released prior to 1975. So there’ll be no Vietnamese Death Metal (but it does exist), or purely traditional music.
I’m limiting the blog to 45s and the time period when 45s were the way music was transported around the world – a time of no Internet downloads, no music video, no CDs, no mammoth world tours and follow-up DVD, just vinyl.
The 45 was a sort of talisman from another world, very little but the music was attached to it, maybe just a picture sleeve. From the music they heard, people then created their own versions through the lens of their culture and created their own little talismans, some of which have ended up with me.
In listening to this music and hunting it out, what I have learnt is that we can talk about genres, we can classify, we can sort and become experts in our field of ‘like’. However if we keep our ears open, the root function of music - to communicate an emotion and human experience will always grab us if the music is good and we wish to hear it. Genre fades away and there is just music.
Now to our first entry Siti Salmah’s Pura Pura released on the Gunung Tahan label (Gunung Tahan is a mountain in west Malaysia). I found this in box in a market in Kuala Lumpur. The stallholder was very genial older fellow and was able to help out with what was on the 45s, steering me away from the strictly folk ones.
As I worked through the box of 45s a Singaporean man arrived, obviously a friend of the stallholder, they began to reminisce about the records, telling me:
You are getting some memories here with these.
Could this scene be played out with MP3s?
The stall holder was asking 45 Malaysian Ringgit for this particular memory, about $14 Australian dollars, I think I got him pretty quickly down to 20 Ringgit (about $6).The way Siti looks at us with those bright wide eyes and Mona Lisa like smile, I couldn't leave her there.
A strong sixties girl pop song, Pura Pura, sung in Malay, is held up by that solid pillar of a riff from the Kinks – You Really Got Me – played on an urgent organ. The song moves along and a big surprise is a neat little fuzz tone guitar solo.
According to Google translate ‘pura pura’ in Malay means ‘hypocrisy’.
I've found out very little about Siti Salmah. It appears that this song is probably from 1969-70 and is included on an EP with three other good but not exceptional songs. She did release another EP in 1970, which I’d grab if I saw it (but that’s me).
A fellow has put another song up on YouTube,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__s68m-j02g
which includes a number of vintage pictures, but it appears that Siti Salmah is obscure even in Malaysia. Her backing band are The Colours who seemed to be a tight bunch of musos, but no information on them either.
Next time we’ll be bouncing over to Bulgaria, via Saigon, with a cover of Bang Bang.
 |
| Siti Salmah |
No comments:
Post a Comment