Photography by Chan Kit Yeng.
The players of Penang’s golden age of music get due recognition.
It may be hard to believe, but once upon a time, Malaysia had women with silky, permed hair and short skirts shaking to the rhythms of Western rock ‘n’ roll. For this reason, the existence of popular music in the country has often been dismissed by those concerned with “moral decadence” as an inconvenient “mistake of times past”. Thankfully, with the launch of coffee-table book Just for the Love of It, the team at Strategic Information Research Development Centre (SIRD)/Gerakbudaya has come up with a volume that documents that age in all of its pictorial glory, acknowledging the glamorous past of a nation plagued by increasing religious conservatism.
This appealing volume was written and assembled by Paul Augustin, better known as the curator of the Penang Jazz Festival, and James Lochhead, an English long-term resident of Penang. With the sponsorship of Think City, Just for the Love of It was produced with, according to the duo, “the important collaboration of hundreds of people.”
