Alena Murang, a promising young musician and visual artiste from Kuching has performed at the recent 19th Rainforest World Music Festival. She is one of the first female to openly perform and teach the sape’, an ethnic instrument from Borneo that used to be taboo for women to even touch, she attributes her decision to pursue the art with the encouragement of her mother and aunts.
She continued on to master the art of sape’ playing under the tutelage of national living legend, Mathew Ngau Jau, and has gone on to perform in over 20 cities over the period of her career, including New York during an eight-week performance and workshop tour across the U.S.A in 2014, as well as in London during the Woven Dreams Exhibition in 2009.
She is the only known sape’ artist in history to sing while playing the instrument, and her performance includes singing traditional songs in Kenyah and Kelabit dialects from the Orang Ulu of Ulu Baram.
Alena is a repeated-artiste on the Rainforest World Music Festival’s stage, and has attended the festival since its inception in 1998.
From student to mentor, Alena has since gone in the footsteps of her mentor and now teaches the sape’ to anyone who would like to learn, be it Orang Ulu who wish to learn their own musical tradition or even foreigners who have been captivated by the instrument.
She hopes that others within the state of Sarawak will follow in her footsteps to preserve their various cultural musical arts, because its ‘priceless and irreplaceable’.
“Sarawakians have so much musical heritage to treasure - Bidayuh chants, old Iban tunes, Penan nose flute to name a few and I just hope that each of us can work on learning these, and share our music on a global platform,” said Alena.
Meet Alena Murang at the Rainforest World Music Festival at stand number -1.28.
article posted by:Barbara Benjamin Atan, Rainforest World Music Festival, Sarawak