Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
Berthold Auerbach, German-Jewish poet and author
With a lot of push and sacrifices not to mention undergoing through the lows and highs, a person might achieve some degree of success in his or her chosen pursuit, career and fields of interest.
Many achieve success beyond their dreams and are amazed that they have come to such a stage. I, for one, am part of this group, though being one of Malaysia’s top Elvis Presley impressionists, there is nothing to shout about – after all I am just a small dot among the big ones.
Actually, I never aimed to go beyond the school’s acts and whatever happened to me pertaining to the arts (including music) later just happened without any party really authoring or planning for it. Perhaps, the Almighty has a plan or plans for anyone of us and see to it that we achieve some degree of success in what we do.
We have a number of popular singers whose offspring try to match their parents’ success or achievement. But most of them could not do so and many failed miserably despite having famous parents. In singing, the glaring example was the late Lisa Marie Presley whose albums were all flops as so are Sean Lennon, Nancy Sinatra and many more.
The same goes to the film industry’s greats such as the small degree of success by the children of P Ramlee, Hussain Abu Hassan, Aziz Jaafar and others in Malaysia. In the US, Henry Fonda’s children Peter and Jane were just incomparable or did not measure to their famous father.
The point here is that parents do play a great influence in their children pursuing a career in the arts but not necessarily ensuring their solid or great success, if any.
Our local Elvis Tribute Artistes’ (ETAs’) backgrounds reveal that most of us come to the stage where we are almost entirely due to our own efforts and talent.
For that matter, my parents were illiterate and without any musical background – mom (indai) only knew how to mark X (to fulfil her democratic obligations) after months of practice using charcoal on an old plank attached to our decaying walls whereas dad (apai) only knew how to write 0 and 1 with whatever device he could lay his hands on – but they were certainly intelligent, especially apai who went on to become lead bard and a renowned Iban customs and oral literature key personnel while mom was a skilful weaver. But there was nothing musical about any of my parents.
My elder brother Edward Jelani, 81, who studied at Seria Trade School in 1958 used to sing one or two verses of the song ‘Please Help Me I am Falling’ (by Hank Locklin) though according to my ignorant four-year-old ears it sounded like ‘Plis hep Miam Polling’ but I got the tune right. That probably became the starting point for my interest in singing and the rest is history.
‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Stars’ was my first song on stage, performed in 1962, aged 8, for the inaugural Nanga Assam Primary School Concert to raise funds. It was the only singing performance during the concert.
Later I knew Edward recorded two Iban songs for RTM in Kuching (RTM in house studio) in 1963 while studying as one of the pioneers of the Kuching Trade School. This became a great influence for my musical involvement.
When entering Form 1 as a 14-year-old in 1968 when three other Form One boys namely Daniel, John Timban (now deceased) and Kenneth Sang (also deceased) mulled about us forming a band I was ecstatic. I took to the drums.
It was in 1969 at age 15 that I first belted an Elvis song ‘It’s Now or Never’ on stage with little success. It was only in 1971 while being in Form 4 that I was more or less unrivalled. They called me ‘Saratok Elvis’ and in 1976 I won Mr Curled Lips title and thereafter was known as Penang Elvis.
Now 47 years later I have performed Elvis in almost every corner of the state of Sarawak alien to other world’s Elvis impressionists. For the record I have also performed in Brunei’s Kuala Belait, Seria, Tutung, BS Begawan and Temburong.
My audience thus far included the 11th Yang di-Pertuan Agong the late Sultan of Selangor Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah Al-Haj (in B.S.B Brunei, 1999), former PM Datuk Seri Najib (Kuching 2014), present PM Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim (Alor Setar 1990), former Sarawak TYT the late Tun Datuk Patinggi Muhammad Salahuddin (2012 and 2013), present TYT Tun Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud (2012) and most state leaders, both past and present.
