I wanted to write about this a few weeks back when I first saw the post on BoingBoing.net about DJ Carlito and his obsession on Malaysia’s ’60s Pop Yeh Yeh music, but other things came up haven’t had the time. I’m pretty sure you’ve heard about this already since Popin, KLue, Junk and many more had already spread the word. Well we’ll spread the word even more.
I want to have a website like Boingboing one day. Boingboing is one of my favorite website. So I was extremely surprised to see an embedded YouTube video of P.Ramlee singing ‘Bunyi Guitar’ in one of Boingboing’s post – ‘Help Xeni’s brother get to Malaysia to research and archive psychedelic ’60s pop‘.
Apparently Xeni Jardin’s brother, DJ Carlito is obsessed with Malaysia’s ’60s Pop Yeh Yeh music. He launched a Kickstarter project looking for people to contribute to his Pop Yeh Yeh project.
He is working on tracking down the original recording artists in Malaysia to learn more about their lives, their work, and to see if it’s possible to archive and reissue some of their music. DJ Carl is also looking at making a compilation CD with hits by dozens of vintage Malaysia Pop Yeh Yeh artists of the ’60s and ’70s.
Pop Yeh Yeh is the period of time when Malaysia’s music scene was heavily influenced by the British Rock n Roll, especially The Beatles. It also influenced the fashion during that time, just look at the album covers.
The younger Malaysian generation had always thought of Pop Yeh Yeh as the music their grandparents listens to, and doesn’t really care much about it. Give them their Punk, Hardcore, Ska, Hip-Hop and they’ll be happy.
DJ Carl on the other hand thinks that Pop Yeh Yeh is the bomb. Looking at the video, clearly his is very passionate about Malaysia ’60s Pop Yeh Yeh, and he know his stuff.
It looks like there is already enough fund to kickstart the project. What you can do is to help DJ Carl locate the original artist if you know any. You can contact him on the Kickstarter project page. We would love to help out, but than again, DJ Carl probably has more knowledge of Malaysia’s Pop Yeh Yeh scene then we at Jiboneus Webzine does.
Good luck DJ Carl, looking forward to see the compilation CD.
