By IPS Correspondents
KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 7 1997 (IPS)

Her tunes are heard everywhere, from the farthest kampong or villages to fast-encroaching towns to modern shopping malls in the rapidly growing Malaysian capital.

In the city streets, the music of a 22-year-old singer called Norazlina Amir Sharifudin blares out of mini-buses, giving commuters some respite from traffic jams.

Popularly known as ‘Amelina’, Sharifudin is taking Malaysia by storm with her brand of the infectious Malay pop music known as ‘dangdut’. In the process, she is transforming ‘dangdut’ into what some say could be an international dance music craze.

Her latest album, ‘Dang Dang Dut’, released by Warner Music Malaysia in October, has already sold more than 220,000 copies.

“Dangdut is a big thing here now, ” said Sharon Menezes, production coordinator of Warner Music Malaysia. “We have received comments from several respected entertainment journalists indicating that this music has all the capabilities of becoming the lambada of the East”.

Dangdut puts a novel twist on Indian film music, and has a touch of American swingbeat, Sudanese melodic forms combined with Malay rhythm, says Kean Wong, a magazine editor who is writing a masteral thesis on world music.

Believing in the appeal of dangdut, Amelina’s record firm has invested in the largest stable of dangdut artistes in Malaysia.

Warner Music Malaysia plans to market the music beyond Malaysia’s shores. Amelina’s latest album is already in the market in neighbouring Singapore, and the company hopes to release it soon in Indonesia, the Philippines and Japan.

Dangdut has been popular in Indonesia for sometime, with singers like Rhoma Irama enjoying “absolutely massive popularity” there, adds Wong, editor of ‘Men’s Review’, a popular monthly for Malaysia’s urban middle class.

“In Malaysia, the time has certainly come (for dangdut) to take off,” Wong says, adding that Amelina may in fact also put the music on the world map.

Wong describes dangdut as a “genre of music that incorporates centuries-old polyrythms and cross cultural styles, stretching several Asian latitudes”.

Dangdut songs have a strong Indian (Hindustani) film music influence. The video clip produced by Warner Music for Amelina’s latest hit looks like a reproduction of an Indian film music clip: the sequences, dance styles and colourful dresses could come from a production from Bombay’s ‘Bollywood’. The lyrics, of course, are in Malay.

Amir Muhammad, a columnist for the ‘New Strait Times’ newspaper, agrees that dangdut has a strong Indian flavour. But he added that it is also very much Malay music, popular among the working classes here.

“Its origin is quite Hindustani, but the music has been adopted into Malay culture,” Muhammad said. “By analogy, it’s like the blues in the U.S. a few decades ago. It talks about what pop music doesn’t talk about.”

“Its a form of underground music … the tone (of the lyrics) is pessimistic,” he said, adding that “dangdut (dances) could get rowdy. Crowds can get over-enthusiastic.”

“It is very much the dance music of South-east Asia,” says Wong, “because it draws so much from traditional rhythms, which themselves have derived from traditional popular dance music and has been updated with the use of technology. Which is why it translates so well to urban audiences”.

Though dangdut has much more local flavour than Western pop music, it still has an image problem in Malaysia.

“Part of it is to do with a fair bit of ignorance by the urban middle-class as to what dangdut is,” Wong said. Due to its kampong origins, it is closely identified with the working class and is seen as unsophisticated music, reflecting “a kind of cultural snobbishness” by urban middle classes.

Still, Muhammad believes dangdut music is creeping into the urban middle classes “because the performers are getting younger and prettier”. It is also breaking into the mainstream as top promoters like Warner Music sign on dangdut singers.

“Those who buy it and listen to it need not necessarily go into the dance clubs,” he says. “But they may become fans”.

The music’s popularity among urban folk has led to a string of exclusively dangdut pubs sprouting here – though some deride them as nothing more than glorified brothels.

The dimly-lit night spots usually have live music on weekends and on some weeknights. What bothers dangdut fans, who want the music to have a clean image, is the type of clients these clubs appeal to.

Males enter the clubs for free, but their female companions are charged an entry fee. The reason? The clubs employ young female hostesses to keep male patrons company, for anything over 35 ringgit (15 U.S. dollars) an hour.

They dance, chat and drink with male clients until closing time, after which they are free to “provide any other services”.

As a record company executive put it: “The cosmopolitan city person is not prepared to admit that he or she likes dangdut, though you’d find the very same people in dangdut bars. They can’t resist the dangdut vibe, but would rather not talk about it, choosing to be associated with Western music instead!”

Amelina herself worries about dangdut’s image. “I hope the imagery associated with dangdut does not degrade to the level of sleaze,” she told ‘Men’s Review’ in a recent interview. It is the artists’ responsibility “to see that the music maintains respectable connotations, not otherwise,” she added.

But Wong is confident that dangdut will weather this image problem, being “very populist” music in Malaysia: “The interesting thing now for dangdut is really to see whether it will translate into the broader non-Malay Malaysian community.”

“At this stage, so much pop culture in Malaysia is polarised depending on ethnic background. Thus by default, you have Western pop culture being sort of common language,” he pointed out.

If dangdut replaces Western pop as the dance music of Malaysia’s urban middle class, that could yet be the first step in making this music the ‘lambada of the East’.

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