By Jocelle Koh
Podcast interview edited by Ilham Jufri (@inflake)

I have admired Malaysian singer-songwriter and cultural activist and advocate Alena Murang for the longest time. Something about her story, this Italian/English/Kelabit artist who grew up as part of the Indigenous Kelabit people and began to advocate for the passing down of its culture through visual arts and music has been endlessly interesting to me since I discovered her work back in 2021. Particularly the polarities between a path ‘someone like her’ should have taken, to advocate for a language and culture whose scale puts it at risk of disappearance and the singular path she has instead carved for herself continuously fascinate me, as Murang continues to drive social and cultural change in a way that is in as much alignment with her Self as it is with her heritage.

Alena’s story lives so immensely and richly at the centre of multiple intersections of feminism, culture and environmentalism. The world’s first female Sape’ player (an instrument native to Sarawak’s Highland dwelling Kelabit people), Alena overcame both gender and cultural norms to master the instrument, which over time she transformed into a conduit to shape the narrative of the Kelabit people.

Growing up with a Kelabit father and English-Italian anthropologist mother while spending time across Sarawak, Kuala Lumpur and England during her formative years, Murang’s worldview has long been shaped by a robust array of formal and informal methods of learning and influence. These influences have allowed her to be a striking advocate not just for Sarawakian culture and the diversity of its various indigenous tribes, but over the years transformed her into a global ambassador for environmental awareness.

The various dichotomies that Alena’s story embodies; from east to west, local to global, individual to collective and the way she has transformed patriarchal structures into tools for cultural advocacy render her a fascinating profile to be in conversation with. Not just because of all the worlds that she embodies, but especially how Murang negotiates and marries these worlds; transforming them into powerful tools that change the narrative and empower her to tell stories which inspire understanding and change.

In a world where we are constantly met with junctures that polarise and threaten our collective wellbeing, Alena’s story gives us hope that even change at the most inconsequential of levels have meaning. This earth month, we hope this extended conversation with Alena about her journey can remind us that we don’t have to be ‘any certain type of way’ to create positive impact within whatever community we choose. As long as we choose to approach with intention and our most present selves in every moment we can, that, in itself is change in motion.

*Parts of the interview below have been edited and shortened for clarity. Listen to the full interview with Alena on Asian Pop Weekly Reads Podcast!

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J – Jocelle

A – Alena

J: Hi Alena! I’ve always been really curious about your story. Your music perfectly marries the intersection of heritage, feminism and sustainability. How would you describe what you do and what drives you?

A: What I do is storytelling through music and sometimes through visual arts. I tell the stories of our community. We are the Kelabit tribe from Borneo. There are about 5000 of us, and our language is listed as endangered. And we are very close to the tribes around us as well. So one of them is the Kenyah tribe…

When I first started out focusing most of my life on the Sape’, what drove me was to keep this instrument alive. Because back then, this instrument was dying out, and I just felt like it was such a beautiful instrument. And at the time, there were a few of us…who were interested in Sape’, and we all kind of focused on different things. Some people focused on education, some people focused on research, some on making Sape’ and how to adapt Sape’ to become more practical. And then some people focused on performance, social media. So there was, like a movement in the 2000-2010s for about 10 years.

And then it was so incredible seeing the Sape’ having life, seeing more and more people learning Sape’…And more people wanting to buy Sape’ and seeing Sape’ more and more in Malaysian media… So yeah, I think that’s what really drove me for about 10 years. And then I saw young girls playing Sape’, which was something that was completely unheard of… And it really, really filled my heart… alongside that, it was also just working to make sure that we were properly represented in the media…by telling our own stories. Because for so long, our stories were being told by people from outside the culture, and because they didn’t have the same lived experiences that we do, there was quite a bit of misrepresentation going on…a big part of what I do is driven by making sure that we are represented well in the media, in ads…primarily being in spaces where me or my cousins can tell our stories from our lived experiences, or sharing our stories with others so that they can understand us better.

J: We always talk about how feminism exists in an intersectional space and holds close ties with sustainability, and you are a perfect embodiment of that as the world’s first female Sape’ performer. Can you tell me a bit about the tradition that lies behind the Sape’?

A: So the folk story goes that how the Sape’ was first made is that there was once a healer whose wife got very, very sick one day, and he could not heal her. And so one day, he fell asleep under a tree, and in a dream he was told that when he woke up, he should carve out a part of this tree, make this instrument and play these songs to his wife. And so when he woke up, he did exactly that, and his wife was healed. So since then, Sape’ has been used for healing in rituals. So it was used for to heal physical ailments, spiritual ailments, emotional ailments. And so there were, there are two types of Sape’.

One is called Sape’ Bali. Bali is spirit. So the spirit Sape’, or Sape’ Kanjet. Kanjet is dance. So that’s the Sape’ for entertaining. The two Sape’s, they have different notes, and they’re different shapes as well. So because in the past, the men were healers, women were not allowed to touch either of the Sape’ actually.

And then in the early 1900s a lot of the tribes in the highlands became Christian, and and therefore most of their musical, artistic kind of cultures were dropped. They were just put aside and forgotten because a lot of them were linked to ritual or, like, past beliefs that had to do with, like, a different spirit world…so that was the 1920s and then my father’s generation basically focused more on education. They didn’t really learn their songs and music… So I guess nobody really questioned the taboo of gender. It was just more more about questioning the taboo of Sape’ itself…My father’s generation, they still had a few Sape’ players. And they would play Sape’ Kanjet, the Sape’ for dancing, which was just purely for entertainment. It didn’t have any ritual links to it…I think my father’s generation has just a handful of Sape’ players, and then come my generation, we wanted to learn what our heritage is.

J: I understand that you were met with questions when you first wanted to play the Sape’. Can you tell me a bit about what drew you to the instrument and how you ended up being able to learn it anyway?

A: So we describe my father’s generation as the survival generation, and my generation were the first to be born outside of the jungle, the revival generation. So being born outside of the jungle and physically away from a Kampung …So I started learning traditional dancing when I was six years old, and that dance goes along to Sape’ music… My cousins and I would every Saturday gather at one of the cousins houses and learn dancing. And to be honest, we all hated it, but we loved being able to spend time with each other. So after a few years, half of us decided that we’re going to go learn Sape’, and the other half would remain dancers. And I think there were a few reasons for that.

Number one being that if we learnt Sape’, then we could adjust the tempo for the dance, and the length of the dance. And secondly, I think our mothers really knew the significance of us going to learn Sape’…at the time me and my girl cousins just thought that learning Sape’ is like going to learn piano or going to learn ballet…

It was back then that was the year 2000 Sape’ was actually a very difficult instrument to handle physically, because the tuning pegs were just wound around a stick and stuck into a hole. And like, if that tuning peg touched anything by accident, it would detune like two or three notes… But back then, I guess they weren’t stuck on very well, they they weren’t adapted to aircon rooms…And so we would be losing our frets. We would have to learn how to carve the frets to very specific heights. Yeah at that age, we had to learn so much about how to care physically for the Sape’, not just learning about the music itself.

J: You have always been a proud Sarawakian and strive to educate about the intricacies of the culture in your music and various projects. For those who aren’t familiar at all with Sarawak and how its native culture is unique/different from wider Malaysian culture, could you share what makes the place and its people particularly unique?

A: I think all Malaysia, like every state in Malaysia, has its very unique makeup of of people, right? And the incredible thing is that I’m still learning so much about cultures. In Malaysia, there’s always a new food to try. There’s always a new group to learn about. There’s always new kinds of musical instruments that I haven’t heard of. In Sarawak, what makes it really unique is that we have over 60 unique groups of people, over 60 different languages, not dialects… And I think that makeup of cultures and so many intermarriages as well makes us a really, really mixed group of people…and I only really appreciated this uniqueness when I left Sarawak. So I left when I was 17, and I moved to England, and I just thought, ‘Gosh, Sarawak is so colourful and beautiful and diverse compared to England’. And that’s when I really realised we had something that’s so special.

If I could pinpoint how Native culture is unique…gosh it’s so hard to pinpoint. I guess visually, you can really see from what we wear, from our beadwork to our outfits, to the long houses, it’s just so unique and so bright and joyful.

And we are still in a place where we know…the stories behind things, for example, the beads that I wear… what they were used for, how they were traded, what they were traded for… how long the trading journeys took, how my grandfather had made Blood Brothers along the way in different villages on those trading journeys… And maybe that’s what makes native culture or native identity in Sarawak very unique, that in this modern world, we still have access to what our heritage represents, and the meanings and stories behind them.

J: Have you always been particularly interested in educating others about Sarawakian culture? What was the turning point that made you start?

A: I mean, I haven’t been always interested in educating others about Sarawakian culture. Background, my mum’s an anthropologist. My dad is Kelabit, and so growing up the stories that I heard from them, whether we were hiking in the forest, going to visit friends’ villages, whether it was about the headpiece that I’m wearing…there was always a story behind it… My parents had stories behind them, from my dad’s lived experiences, or from my mum’s research, And it was just something that I absorbed as a child. Also my mum, when I was growing up, she was studying baskets and basket weaving and indigenous dyeing techniques. And so at home, I was learning how to weave with the aunties. I watched them do the traditional dyeing methods, stuff like that, and…as a child, you just absorb all of this, right?

And so after UK I moved to KL and i was working a corporate job and I went for open mic nights with my guitar, doing covers, but sometimes I would bring my Sape’ along and close my open mic set with the Sape’ song, and people would be asking me so much about Sarawak. They’d be asking me like, Oh, what is this instrument? What does that song mean? How are you guys over there? You know, it became a conversation starter, and I just knew the answers. So I guess it was a very organic journey. So that, if you’re asking me about what was the turning point, it really was me moving to KL and playing Sape’, and people just asking me about Sarawak…And it’s not just for KL. Like after that, my first big tour was in the US, and so many people had so many questions about Sape’ and Sarawak and Malaysia…

J: What challenges do you feel Sarawak faces at the moment which makes you particularly interested in championing its cultural heritage and history?

A: Well the first challenge is basically Sarawak’s natural environment..balancing development with looking after our natural environment. I think that’s a tension that has been there for so many years, for so many decades, and one that …has a global lens on it, right? And it’s something that I actually studied for my thesis, and I came to realise that it’s a very complex subject.

And what I aim to do through my music, is to really just encourage people to remember that they love the environment… Because I think when we talk about nature and sustainability, it’s really a behavioural change that is needed. And I really believe that behavioural change can start if there is a deep and genuine love for the environment.

When we talk about cultural heritage, it’s not just like the music, the beads and, you know, the physical kind of things we inherit, but heritage is also the environment, right? We inherit it from those who come before us, and…however we look after it, that’s what the next generation will inherit from us. So I always say that heritage also includes the environment. Sarawak has just really beautiful, amazing jungles and rivers and seaside and ocean, and one of the world’s oldest rainforests, and…it’s right beneath our feet. And I believe that it’s our responsibility, like all of us collectively, to look after it…

The second challenge I feel is that Sarawak and Sarawak heritage is at a very crucial turning point. Our elders that still remember the folklore- essentially the culture keepers- they’re still alive, and we can still have access to that… So one of the biggest challenges is that our cultural heritage exists in oral traditions. So a lot of it’s not written down and we are still at risk of losing it, but we still have the opportunity to become vessels to receive those cultural stories and heritage… I think Sarawak has gone through such rapid modernisation and urban migration in the last decades. And the younger generation is growing up more connected to global culture rather than to our own roots. So yeah, I feel like there is an urgency for my generation and the generation after mine to become keepers and practice our cultural heritage, but its just finding out what’s going to attract people to want to do that.

So that’s why I’m also interested in championing my cultural heritage and my history, or the history of my people, not not to preserve it, because I don’t like the word preserving heritage, but to reimagine it in a way that keeps it alive and relevant and meaningful for future generations. Because I always say that when culture is lived and shared and adapted, it doesn’t disappear, but instead it grows and it thrives.

J: Your have a unique heritage with an English/Italian mother and Kelabit father. Did growing up with mixed cultures influence your perspectives on your work at all?

A: I think it definitely did. I realised that growing up mixed, I was always othered. In my Malaysian school, ( I went to a local school)… I was always seen as white. But then when I moved to UK, I was always seen as Asian…And definitely art and music has been my way of making sense of… my identity and who I am. And you know, the pro in that process, I’ve had to dig into what my cultures are, what it means to be Kelabit, what it means to be Italian or English, what I identify with… there’s a whole personal journey around that, and it’s definitely influenced my practice a lot. I think the experiences that a mixed heritage has given me has also allowed me to see the world from many different perspectives, and given me the opportunity to travel and to mix with a lot of different communities and just being open to a lot of different cultures and different experiences.

J: You also have a degree in environmental sustainability. Was it also an interest in your culture that inspired you to pursue this?

A: Oh no, I have a degree in management. I have a degree in Management, but my thesis was focused on corporate social responsibility, with a greater focus on deforestation. And then I went to work in the corporate line. I went to work in corporate consulting, focusing in environmental sustainability.

J: Looking back, how did this education set you up to be a better advocate for your culture?

A: Actually, it was really a deep love for the environment that made me want to focus on corporate social responsibility and also environmental sustainability, because I grew up with parents who loved the jungle. They would teach us the names of birds, of rocks, of trees, of leaves of insects…the names in the local indigenous languages, and also the scientific names, I just really feel so at peace when I’m hiking or in the jungle… The rainforest just makes me feel so in awe of nature and creation. It’s just an incredible feeling. Yeah, so it’s really my parents that made me fall in love with that. And I think part of falling in love with Sape’ and our music is that it is intertwined with nature, really. Our music is not separate from nature at all…

Well, if we’re talking about the degree in Management, even back then, when I was doing my degree, I knew I was more of a creative person. I loved music and I loved art, but because I wasn’t “trained” in it…I always felt I wasn’t good enough to pursue it… Of course, much later on, I realised…today I have…over 25 years of education in Sape’, right? …But back to the question having a degree in management and working in the field as well, I think really gave me the discipline and the skills, like especially project management skills I need to be an independent artist, because it’s so essential.

J: You seem to have naturally gravitated towards music as a medium for your advocacy and efforts. Has music always been the language that has tied all of your efforts and interests together?

A: Actually, I’m being quiet because I’m trying to think, Is it music or is it art? But I’m actually not going to choose between the two. And something that I’ve been reflecting on is how in Kelabit, and in many indigenous languages in Borneo and I think in the world, there is no word for music and there’s no word for art and there’s no word for nature. They are not separated. They’re not seen as something that’s distinct… And I haven’t come to a conclusion of why that is… But what I do know is that all the Sape’ players of the past that I’ve heard of, and all the Sape’ players of the generation above me, they are all artists as well. They all paint, they all carve…in equal measure… but definitely for me, both music and the visual arts together have made my life really full, and they’ve both given me a life that’s way beyond my dreams. So, yeah, I’m just really grateful for that…

J: You’ve mentioned before that you feel most comfortable performing together with your Sape’. What does this instrument mean to you, especially as you’ve performed with it and brought it to so many stages across the world?

A: As much as like I’m most comfortable singing and being on stage while playing Sape’, what’s funny is that most people will only recognise me if I’m holding Sape’… So I really think me and the Sape’ go hand in hand sometimes…I really have a deep love for this instrument, and as I’ve said before, it’s given me a life beyond what I could have ever dreamed of…And I’m really grateful for that.

I think through this instrument, I’ve really seen and experienced the power of what music can do…Like, I’ve had audiences come to me before, like audiences in the US, in Europe, in Taiwan, and they’ve come to me and said, ‘Oh, that song of yours made me feel like I was sitting in the big jungle alone even though I’ve never been to one’; people like tearing up in live performances.

I had a message years ago that said, ‘thank you for you. Thank you for your Sape’ music. I was really angry at the state of the world, and I listened to Sape’ music, and it calmed me down’. So I really think – not think, I really know that Sape’ still has healing properties to it, but not in the ritualistic sense. You know, it’s just really the power of music.

J: You’ve had such a unique journey in the fluid intermingling of your art, heritage and the positive change it brings to the world. What do you think your inner child would think of what you do today?

A: Sape’ has given me an incredible life, and I think my inner child would be so proud of me. I think my inner child would be so proud of me, because it is something that she really, really wanted to do, but had no clue how to do it… Had absolutely zero clue how to do it, like no one around me is in the music industry. No one around my inner child is in the music industry. And, yeah, I think, I think she’s so proud of me.

J: You’ve spent years educating a variety of audiences and stakeholders about sustainability and heritage from your unique perspective. This earth month, what is the biggest advice you could give to anyone who wants to see positive change, but doesn’t know where to start?

A: My advice to anyone who wants to see positive change but doesn’t know where to start is to just make small changes. Sometimes making a change can feel so overwhelming, but just know that the little change in habits that you have can make a change. So for example, I used to get so overwhelmed watching environmental documentaries, and I used to get so upset at the state of the world… because I just felt so powerless.

This was in my early 20s, and then I think I gave myself more grace and just did what I can. So for example, just putting my aircon a few degrees higher, for example, or changing my coffee cup… by bringing my own Tumbler for takeaway coffees, for example. But you know, not kicking myself if I forget it once, just make those small changes that you can every day and to be conscious that you are doing your bit to change… I think the other thing is also knowing that what you do can make a change. Even not just making a change to the planet or to the environment, but also it can inspire someone else…I think as long as you’re doing something that’s good, just keep doing it. And the other reminder that I want to give is if you care for the environment, then the environment will care for us as well.

Follow Alena on Instagram to learn more about the Sape’, the Kelabit people and listen to her healing tunes on Spotify or wherever you get your music!