First published in PDF format in December 2013. Only formatting and little or no editing was done to preserve authenticity. Text are as originally prepared by the contributors. We’re just a part of the Malaysian music community with Utopian dreams. All four of us, does not represent any organisations nor are we an organisation. Irman Hilmi was kind enough to lay out the pages. Ili Farhana helped me to proofread the Bahasa Malaysia submissions, while my ex-colleague at TONE Magazine, Abby DeVries helped out with the English ones. Tell me, who is behind this? Which multinationals? Which corporate organisation? I don’t know where did the fishy part came from, but to set the records clear, there are four people who are directly involved with this initiative.
Having said that, you might see a physical copy of ProjekBuku, if someone is crazy enough to invest in printing it and then give it away for free. There will be monetary transaction if the book is to be printed and then sold, and the moment there’s a monetary transaction best of buddies can become enemies. Many thanks to Fikri and his team at The Wknd for wanting to host the release of the book.
For now the book is available to downloaded for free exclusively at starting from onwards. Where and when can I buy/steal/photocopy this book? The book was supposed to be released back in Dec 2011/Jan 2012 but due to a lot of internal and external issues, mainly procrastination, it saw the light of the day on Dec 31, 2013. If you noticed, I didn’t use the word “Malaysian music industry?” simply because I’m not really interested in “industry” effort. Now, is this a mainstream of underground kind of book? Does it matter? It’s a book that that casually documents Malaysian music from 2 To preserve its authenticity, all the texts are kept as how it was submitted by the contributors with only formatting and little or no editing was done.
So what topics do it covers? Anything and everything that falls under Malaysian music, from forming a band, writing songs, arranging songs, producing songs, recording, marketing, videos, organising shows, getting radio airplay, giving out interviews, merchandising, running a fanzine/e-zine, social media etc.
Just keep in mind that the main purpose of this book is to document the development and progress of the Malaysian music scene, hence experiences are essential. Isn’t that a bit too elitist? Well, I’m not going to stop you from thinking so. Speaking of contributors, what were the criteria for one to be part of this project? To give the book some weight, contributors needs to be actively, directly or indirectly contributing to Malaysian music for the last 3 years. Along the way, I realised that the knowledge/experiences/opinions/stories shared by the contributors can also be a guidelines of sorts to many. And the point is? Essentially the main idea behind #ProjekBuku was to document the development and progress of the Malaysian music scene, from its movers and shakers’ point of views and first-hand experiences. (Almost) Everything That You Need To Know About #ProjekBuku What is it? By nature it’s a book When was it initiated? NovemWhat is it about? It’s a book that compiles writings/experiences/opinions/rants by individual who are directly or indirectly involved with Malaysian music. COLLECTED WRITINGS FROM MALAYSIANS IN MUSIC.