Brian Gomez and his Merdekarya dream
MALAYSIANSKINI | When gig organiser Brian Gomez and his wife Melani Delilkan viewed a building space back in 2012, they immediately knew they wanted it, despite not knowing exactly what they would use it for.
“We didn't know what it was going be. There was no business plan, nothing. But on the same day we viewed it, we put a deposit and said, let us run the place and figure out what we could do with it,” he told Malaysiakini.
That empty lot would eventually become Merdekarya — an epicentre for up-and-coming musicians to freely express themselves, and their art, without the fear of censorship.
Gomez was a budding musician in his 30s when he decided to plug a gap in the Malaysian live music industry.
It was 2012, he had just recorded his rock album Gun Inside My Brain, and was singing at pubs and open mics.
However, because most of his work was largely controversial — touching on politics and social issues — pub owners would limit the types of songs he could play.
“At the same time, I had just launched an album, and we were doing an open mic circuit, playing these songs.
"I met a lot of other independent grassroots musicians, and we — my wife and I — thought that there should be a venue where people could be free to express themselves and play the songs that they wanted to play.
“Initially, we wanted Merdekarya to be (a space) for everyone in the arts. We used to even sell books and host gallery shows. But eventually, I think the natural progression of Merdekarya was that it became the home for grassroots music," Gomez said.
“And so, over the next few years, what we did was to just concentrate on the music side of things. And that's what we do now. We are probably the only bar dedicated to local grassroots music,” he added.
While it is common for live music to consist of covers and sing-alongs, Merdekarya hosts strictly original music every week from Tuesday to Saturday.
“What we aim to do is to make grassroots music sustainable, not just for the venue, but for the performance as well. Because like many arts disciplines, grassroots music is not a sustainable way to make a living.
"Not for the venues, not for the musicians, not for the people who work there. And that is the holy grail for us, to find a business model that would make music written and performed by Malaysians to be sustainable or at least to get to a point where people aren't essentially playing for free or for very little money.”
But like many of his endeavours, Gomez dived in headfirst and committed himself to make it work.
He began his career as a journalist with the New Straits Times back in the 1990s, covering mainly food promotions and events around Kuala Lumpur.
After about three years as a writer, he transitioned into advertising which he immersed himself in for nine years.
“What was interesting about advertising to me was that you learn many disciplines which could eventually be adapted into the arts.
“For example, you learn about audio and video production and of course about writing because I was a copywriter.
"After about nine years of doing that, you search your mind for ideas and then sometimes you shelve things away, you say hey, that will be a good idea for a song, or this will be a good idea for a movie, or there'll be a good story for a book,” he said.
Writing a novel
At the ripe age of 30 and a head brimming with ideas, Gomez saved up enough money to travel and figure out his next move. It was on a beach in Thailand that he thought about writing his first book.
Even without prior novel-writing experience, Brian worked on his novel and about six months later Devil’s Place was ready.
“I just continuously wrote. It was like discovering a talent that you didn't know you had because writing a novel is no small thing. Within six months of quitting my job, the first draft was done. And after that came the rewrites.
“About two years later, I self-published my first novel. I guess you could say that being a stringer for NST and being in advertising actually helped to hone my craft for what I do now.”
Published in 2008, Devil’s Place is a cult Malaysian novel that touches on terrorism, prostitution and politics.
“I think the genesis for the story was I remember reading about 9/11 bombers having meetings in Malaysia and I thought to myself, what if that was happening in a hotel room in KL?
"And in another hotel room, there would be a bachelor party, and how these two events would somehow interconnect. I started writing that based on that thought and it was a lot of fun.
“I do hope to write again, I miss it a lot. I started writing the second book many years ago but with running Merdekarya and trying to keep things afloat and my day job — freelance advertising — I have not been able to complete it," he said.
"I do hope to someday. I would really like to start writing and publish at least a few more books in my lifetime," he added.
The pandemic's impact
Gomez also intends to release another album. But in the last two years, it's been largely a matter of survival as the pandemic was not kind to Merdekarya and the live music scene.
Beleaguered pub owners and musicians were not able to undertake live music events since March 2020.
“The last two years have been very difficult for us because Merdekarya is known as a live music venue and live music was banned for two years, our main income stream was pretty much zero. We weren't really known as an F&B place. So we have to rethink the way we're doing things.”
Gomez said they had to creatively repurpose the bar to generate as much income as possible, including turning the area downstairs into a car park.
Delilkan also worked on different food and drink recipes, including fermenting her own tuak (toddy) to be sold.
“I think that eventually, many people actually loved that and people kept coming back for the food and beverage side of things. So much so that over the last two years, most of our customers didn’t even know that there was a live music bar upstairs.
"Sometimes we gave them (the customers) tours (of the upstairs) like some kind of museum relic explaining that this is actually what we do.”
The pandemic forced live events to go virtual which was encouraging but not the same experience.
However, Gomez remained confident that live music will always prevail.
“Live music is live music. It is the person standing on stage and connecting with an audience that is sitting in front of them. I don't think that can be recaptured on (social media like) Tik Tok or Instagram or a live stream.
"I understand that not everyone thinks like that and that's fine. But we're a live music venue and that's the kind of magic that you can catch in a live performance, a kind of connection between music, musicians and audience.
“What keeps us going on those really good nights is when an artist starts singing and there's pin-drop silence in the bar because everyone has heard this person's voice for the first time," he said.
"We've had those nights and that kind of magic and I don't think you can capture that via the internet. So we stayed away from that," he added.
The government announced in September last year that live events were allowed to be held, however, Brian said it has not returned to normal.
"You still have the standard operating procedure that you have to adhere to. And a lot of that means much of the magic of live music still hasn't returned, in terms of the crowds that you will usually get singing along. You can't really have a socially distanced live music gig.
"But I think it symbolises that things, hopefully, will be returning to normal. So, it's not normal right now by any measure for live music bars, but there is hope that it's getting there."
Gomez said towards the end of last year, they received dozens of calls daily asking if live gigs have resumed.
“You can see that people really want to come back and go out for live music again.
"There is still a significant amount of people who are cautious about going out especially to an enclosed and soundproof area. But as I said, the signs are there that it will return to what it once was, and we're hopeful that it will," he added.
No revenue for original recordings
Over the years, the music industry has seen major evolutions in technology, from LPs to cassettes to CDs and now to online streaming, but the current situation is very damaging to upcoming artists, Gomez said.
“It is difficult to see recorded music being a legitimate source of income anymore, with Spotify (generating) almost no revenue if your numbers aren't massive.
"People don't buy CDs anymore, no one even has a CD player.
“A lot of times when musicians put up limited edition CDs it's mostly for their old fans, friends, family and just people who will buy it to support the musician but as a legitimate source of income, I think that it does not do much."
Gomez viewed finding a sustainable business model for venues and musicians as important because live music is potentially the one thing where musicians can make a decent income from.
However, he was not even sure that such a business model exists where the grassroots music industry can have live music be sustainable, especially in Malaysia where there's no culture of going out and discovering new music but expecting old favourites instead.
“The incentive, I think, for people to record music is because it's for the art's sake. Someone doesn't write or record a song thinking about the sales or its marketing, they write it because it's in them and they need to get it out,” he said.
Politics
Gomez is the son of late hockey coach Douglas Gomez, who was reportedly assaulted by then Johor ruler Sultan Iskandar Sultan Ismail in a nationally publicised incident in 1992.
This followed the Malaysian Hockey Federation banning Tunku Abdul Majid for five years after assaulting the goalkeeper of the Perak hockey team which defeated the Johor team he was playing for.
Tunku Abdul Majid's father, Sultan Iskandar, was enraged and the state Education Department instructed school hockey teams in the state to boycott national tournaments.
This had upset Douglas, who criticised the Education Department and called for the resignation of key office bearers in the Johor Hockey Association, allegedly incurring the wrath of the late ruler.
Following this, a special parliamentary session was held in December 1992 which saw the passing of a resolution to curb the powers of the rulers if necessary.
Thirty years on, Brian remembers it as a bizarre time for his family.
"I can't go into too much detail as most of what happened hasn't been written and has never been said. Perhaps someday I might write about that but I'm not sure.
“I think the impact that it had on my life is mainly visible in the work that I do artistically, with my novels and my songs.
"The most significant thing that happened during that time in my life was how regular people came out in support of my father," he said.
"People like taxi drivers would give him a free ride home you know, and I think those experiences have the most profound impact on what I tend to write about," he added.
Passionate about politics and social justice, Brian is not one to back away from speaking his mind, but he does not think he could participate in the traditional route of politics.
“There is much to say about our country, and the world in general, that has been brought to light in the past two years.
“I think as artists, it's our duty to see these things and that's really my (calling), though. That's where I see myself, as mainly a writer — sometimes of songs, sometimes of books, sometimes of tweets.
“I see myself as a writer and an observer of what's going on and I try to write about those things and bring those things to light. Not directly involved in politics as I don't think that's something that even remotely interests me," he said.
"And I guess that's where I see my place in the world."
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