This paper examines the evolution of the uṟumi mēḷam, a Tamil folk drumming ensemble developed by Malaysian Tamil youth in the 1980s and subsequently popularized in Singapore. Often known as the naiyāṇṭi mēḷam, a popular Tamil folk music ensemble in Tamil Nadu, South India, the Malaysian Singaporean uṟumi mēḷam has cultivated a distinct sonic and visual identity that challenges reductive readings of diasporic musical practice as derivative or stagnant. Grounded in the theoretical frameworks of citationality and performativity, I propose the concept of soundedness—the ensemble’s unique sonic ontology, shaped by instrumentation, performance technique, and stylistic idioms—as a lens for understanding how diasporic Tamil musicians adapted a musical tradition. Innovations, including replacing the nāgasvaram, a double-reeded aerophone, with a vocalist amplified through a megaphone and simplifying drumming techniques, reflect a democratization of performance—making the ensemble accessible to untrained youth from diverse socioeconomic and musical backgrounds. Charting a trajectory from ritual and festival soundscapes in colonial-era rubber plantations to street processions in postwar urban centers, this paper positions the uṟumi mēḷam as a site of both sonic preservation and radical reinvention. Rather than retreating into nostalgic essentialism, the ensemble embraces modernity—folding in Tamil film music and global popular rhythms to create an inclusive, hybridized ensemble where ritual, entertainment, and identity intersect. Crucially, the uṟumi mēḷam is not merely a reinterpretation of tradition—it is a source ensemble that generates new aesthetic possibilities and redefines what Tamil folk music can be in transnational contexts. By leveraging digital platforms such as Apple Music, Spotify, and YouTube, these ensembles connect with younger audiences, amplifying Tamil diasporic creativity, visibility, and resilience across borders. Ultimately, this paper argues that the uṟumi mēḷam embodies a forward-looking tradition—rooted in history yet attuned to the sonic and cultural futures of the Tamil diaspora.

Shidaiqu (時代曲), literally translated as “songs of the era”, is a genre of popular music that emerged in pre-war Shanghai during the 1920s to 1940s. With waves of migration and the development of media technologies such as radio, broadcasting, gramophone, and sound films, shidaiqu spread to Malaysia, where it was redefined and recontextualized. Today, it has become a central musical practice of the second and third generation Malaysian Chinese born between the 1940s and 1960s from the Chinese oldies clubs in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. These members experienced significant social changes, including World War II, the communist-led insurgency, nationalistic sentiments, and the affirmative action policies implemented by a newly independent Malaysia in 1957. Singing shidaiqu serves as a way for them to, strengthen their collective identity, express their feelings of marginization, and resist assimilation. Through the selection and reinterpretation of specific shidaiqu songs, they construct collective nostalgia, memories, and imagination for an ideal homeland. The process of remembering, forgetting, and creating in singing shidaiqu embodies the fluid of identity and heterogeneous expressions of “Chineseness” among the Malaysian Chinese. This paper explores the factors that influence the selection of shidaiqu by members of oldies clubs in Selangor and Kuala Lumpur. It also examines how their collective identity and emotional expressions are constructed through song content, stylistic elements, and musical practices. This research uses an ethnographic approach, including participant observation and semi-structured interviews, to collect members’ personal memories, emotional connections, and interpretations of song selections.

Scholarship on music and resistance has generally focused on a narrow set of artists and rigid frameworks for evaluating the musical object’s message, function, form, and style. This paper calls for globally inclusive and nuanced examinations of the spectrum of roles musicians assume in resisting systems of oppression, ranging from performative allyship to acts of direct action that risk censorship, criminalization, and violence. Unfortunately, the full spectrum is often inaudible due to popular music scholarship’s overpowering focus on “protest music” and its white, male, American, and British figureheads, who often risk far less than the rest. This paper challenges that imbalance by signal-boosting music activists who operate outside, or on the fringes, of a “profit-driven, politics-averse music industry,” and who engage in creative and activist work symbiotically: activism informs their artistry and vice versa. This paper centers on the artist-activist work of Malaysian folk-rock artist Azmyl Yunor, Indonesian rock musician Gede Robi Supriyanto, and experimental multimedia duo Filastine and Nova. Their diverse tactics include bilingual songwriting to veil critique, repurposing a sailing ship for carbon-conscious global touring, and forging activist partnerships to influence policy. Their goals, from fostering free expression and knowledge exchange to inciting direct policy change on the climate crisis, offer urgent lessons for a world facing compounding existential threats. To move the scholarly conversation forward, this paper contends that sonic resistance is a category of activist strategy—a means of “outvoicing” the oppressor through diverse settings, tactics, and technologies. The megaphone, microphone, electric guitar, and DAW, strategically deployed by the artists featured, are instruments of profound artistic and political transformation aimed at real, tangible change. By centering Southeast Asian activist frequencies, this paper concludes by calling for my fellow American and British scholars to listen more carefully to who renders resistance audible, how, and to what end.