Sky Songs

Alena Murang is a singer and sapé player from Sarawak on the island of Borneo, Malaysia. One of the indigenous Kelabit people, she has been part of the revival of the sapé, the local lute, and is its leading female exponent. Murang is also a campaigner for the endangered music of Sarawak and Sabah and was a part of the Songlines Music Award-winning Small Island Big Song project featuring musicians from South-East Asia and the Pacific.

In her four-piece band, Murang moves between delicate songs with regional instruments drawing on the local mythology, like the sapé and flute dominated ‘Put Burui’ (Burui’s Blowpipe), and folk-rock songs in English like ‘Sunhat Song’ dominated by rock drumming and electric guitar. The former are much more distinctive. The Kelabit language song ‘We Watched the Clouds’ is a persuasive mix of voice and local percussion.

It’s a tricky path to follow, to be both local and global, and talented musicians like Murang have to decide whether to try and make the local traditions popular or tie them up with proven pop and rock formulas. Here it’s a mixture of both.