Ahmad Faris was still a teenager when he began chasing the music that once defined Malaysia’s cultural heartbeat.
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Growing up in suburban Kuala Lumpur, he would listen in awe as his parents reminisced about the electric performances of local icons like the Alleycats and Sudirman Arshad. Those were the days, they told him, when music wasn’t just heard – it was lived.
Few moments captured that spirit more vividly than Sudirman’s 1986 legendary Chow Kit Road concert, where more than 100,000 people gathered on the streets to sing along to classics such as the aptly named Chow Kit Road and Pertemuan Abadi. It was a moment of shared euphoria, etched into the national memory.
Then, almost without warning, the music dimmed.
“It’s crazy, because something changed,” Ahmad told This Week in Asia at his modest studio on the outskirts of the city. “Somehow, politics came in and that kind of changed things around, kind of made music this whole immoral kind of thing.”
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Now 39, Ahmad is determined to bring that spirit back – not just for Malaysia, but also for Southeast Asia.
