Penang in the 90s. Independent music had just exploded onto the scene and the air was electric with Nirvana and Metallica.
“Every other kid had an electric guitar and the secondary schools were littered with rock bands. It was the coolest thing to play music and be influenced by the culture of the day. We did not have a lot of shows, but we did have many bands scrambling for shows,” says Kelvyn Yeang, guitar maestro and founder of Indie Penang (IndiePG) Festival, a platform for local songwriters and musicians to showcase their original music outside the usual creativity-limiting mainstream venues.
“Indie music” is a recently popularised term. “Back in the 80s and 90s, ‘underground music’ was the word to use and when we attended a gig, it was called an ‘underground show’. Live music then was very different from what it is today. Bands performing commercial music were few and far between, and we definitely did not have the now two-piece acoustic duo singing cover songs in cafes. In fact, most hotels only had Filipino bands and that was basically the only live music we had back then.
Indie music pretty much means original music that is funded and written by like-minded individuals.
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