KUCHING: Multi-talented Sarawakian musician Alena Murang and famous Sabah group Bamboo Woods will perform live at the Rainforest World Music Festival (RWMF).
Making her return to the RWMF stage following the release of her second album “Sky Songs” in 2021, Alena will be joined by Sara Heng on guzheng, Simmy on keyboard and tin whistle, Joshua Maran on drums and guitar, Herman Ramanado on bass guitar, and styled by Saerah Ridzuan.
Alena drew inspiration from the past and present of her Kelabit heritage that can be heard and felt through her singing performance in the Kenyah and Kelabit languages, dancing the ngarang hornbill dance, and strumming the sape, making her the first female to professionally perform and teach the sape.
Alena said that people sometimes asked her what was the importance of preserving the music of her culture and she had begun to realise that, over the years, she was not preserving it but adapting and evolving.
“I’m not playing it like my uncle did or like my grandfather did as it just keeps evolving and I think that is how cultures can stay alive, which is by adapting and evolving.”
Meanwhile, Sabah’s Bamboo Music, made up of a group of musicians who play 100 per cent bamboo and wood instruments, are making a change in music style, arrangement and presentation.
Formed in 2015 and led by Shamsul Sabli, the group’s innovation in bamboo music has won them an accolade of recognition, including ‘Best Performance of the Year’ by the Sabah Ombak Association in 2016, Best Musical Award in bamboo music and Most Creative Talent in Borneo Talent Award in 2017, and most recently they were the welcoming performers for Sabah’s first border opening in two years after the pandemic for flights from Singapore.
One of the band members, Lawrence Usup, was a first-place winner in the Malaysia Traditional Instrumental Competition for Solo category in State Level and was a third runner-up in the National Level.
As a group, Bamboo Wood’s main focus is to inspire the world with Sabah’s bamboo music and to attract the younger generation to appreciate traditional music with their unique spin on their self-composed tracks such as ‘Pason Id Koposion’ and ‘Love Malaysia’.
