Folk and indie pop musician Straw Lim 林水草 wanted to convey the essence of Malaysia on her latest album. It explains why she includes five languages on Pulang—English, Malay, Mandarin, Bajau, and Hinghua. In addition, the 10 songs on the album offer a breathtaking array of traditional and electronic instruments commonly played in Malaysia.
“It’s really like a love letter to Malaysia,” Straw tells the Toronto Spark over Zoom. “It’s celebrating our culture and also addressing our struggles.”
Pulang means “return home” in Malay, so it makes sense that she ends her album with the multilingual “Home”. It’s a dreamy, upbeat, and emotional call for people to come together in their home of Malaysia and extinguish any differences burning between them. The Short + Sweet Festival Malaysia honoured “Home” with a Best Overall Production and Creative Excellence Award.
Straw traces the origins of the album to a 2019 visit to the Chimei Museum in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan.
“I saw the Malay drum and I realized that is our representation,” she recalls. “So subconsciously, I felt like I wanted to start the album with the drums.”
Straw performed songs from Pulang at the Jade Music Fest in Asia, which took place in Taipei’s Huashan 1914 Creative Park from April 24 to 26.
Straw recorded with diverse artists
Loud drumming is commonly heard in processions and at graduation and wedding ceremonies in Malaysia. The album’s second song, “Colourbration”, captures this spirit magnificently.
Described as a celebration of colours on a land of diversity, “Colourbration” opens with Melina William plucking a guzheng, producing a melancholic Chinese sound. Then, Straw starts strumming on a sudatang—a traditional two-stringed boat lute from Malaysia’s Sabah state on Northern Borneo. Next, in an instant, band members fire up the percussion, merging the rhythms of the Malay rebana, jidur, and sunda along with the Indian tabla.
Straw describes “Colourbration” as a welcoming song. It makes her think of what her grandparents might have encountered when they arrived in Malaysia from China.
“There is one phrase in Malay, a saying called Di mana bumi dipijak, di situ langit dijunjung,” Straw says. “It’s like where your foot sets on the ground, you just respect the sky.”
Straw is proud that through her album, she was able to draw together a diverse group of renowned artists. She says that her producer and arranger, William, is a mixed-race Sarawakian with Indigenous and Chinese ancestry. Recording, mixing, and mastering engineer Rozhan Razman worked in America for many years, where he obtained a green card before returning to Malaysia. According to Straw, another musician involved in the album, Dylan Lee, was one of the top cellists in Germany before returning to Malaysia.
Meanwhile, Hisharudy Mahmud plays Southeast Asian percussion instruments, including the jidur, rebana, and sunda. Prakash Kandasamy is a master of the tabla, which is a pair of drums commonly used in Indian music. M.K. Ridzuan plays seruling, Alena Murang is on sape, Q Sound provides trombone, and Sekolah Alternatif Semporna supplies group vocals.
“We were quite intentional to involve different people with different backgrounds,” Straw says. “The traditional instrumentalists are professional.”
Watch a live performance of “Colourbration”.
Malaysian brain drain
Malaysia has struggled with the exodus of so many talented people to other countries, so it’s refreshing that the album includes musicians who’ve returned. Yet this brain drain still leaves Straw feeling sad because so many of her friends and relatives are living abroad. She addresses this in the song “Hourglass”.
Moreover, the Kuala Lumpur-raised musician feels that she was on a similar trajectory when she went backpacking through nearly 50 countries before choosing to remain in her homeland. Those journeys inspired her debut album, Excursion (漫游), which was released in 2019.
Rather than continue living in Kuala Lumpur in West Malaysia, however, she chose to settle six years ago in the East Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu on northern Borneo. This island is home to Indigenous people who speak Bajau. Hence, she included this language in a song about marginalized communities called “Air”. It includes the voices of children from the city.
There are distinct differences between West Malaysia, also known as Peninsular Malaysia, and the two states in East Malaysia. Peninsular Malaysia is far more densely populated and is majority Malay Muslim.
Approximately 600 kilometres across the South China Sea, the states of Sabah and Sarawak have larger Indigenous populations and a greater proportion of Christians. Cities such as Kuching, Sibu, and Miri in Sarawak and the Sabah capital of Kota Kinabalu also have sizeable numbers of people with Chinese ancestry.
“It feels more harmonious, but they have their own struggle as well,” Straw acknowledges.
Listen to “Home” from Straw’s Pulang album.
Straw breaks out of her own bubble
Straw’s paternal grandfather speaks Hinghua, a dialect of Putian people from China’s Fujian province. This explains the Hinghua lyrics in the song “Bubble” on Pulang.
According to Straw, this composition speaks to how some people remain in their own ethnic communities. She notes that many who’ve dealt with trauma, including Chinese residents of Malaysia, often stay in their own circles because they feel safer that way.
“We just want to survive,” Straw says. “I had to struggle with this as well.”
“Bubble” encourages people to pop out of their silos for a while because that’s how they can learn from others.
“As long as you are connected with the locals wherever you are—and you respect them, you want to learn from them, and you eat their food—you just kind of feel that sense of belonging,” Straw emphasizes.
The Society of We Are Canadians Too and Huashan 1914 Creative Park co-presented Straw at the Jade Music Fest in Asia. The free event took place in Taipei from April 24 to 26. For more information, visit the festival website. The Toronto Spark is on Bluesky @torontospark.bsky.social.
