Peter Hassan Brown raced up the stairway to heaven yesterday, 14 November 2022. The higher ups decided that it'll be best he went upstairs now before the climate change crisis got worse, as it is after all the same week where all leaders (and Malaysia's Shaq Koyok) convene at COP27 in Egypt. I saw condolences on Facebook on the walls of friends and acquaintances from the Malaysian music scene. Peter touched many lives with his soft and genteel approach to saving the planet through song and poetry.
A protest song Losing Nature about a public jungle in the city of Kuala Lumpur, coveted by a property developer who wants to fence it up and sell it for others who can afford to live in luxury.
Ecopocalypse is from the EP 'Losing Nature' is about disappearing forests, seas rising, global warming and planet Earth dying.
Visit www.lemang.com for more.
Peter Hassan Brown
singer songwriter, author, bapak open mic
May your music and vigour,
your lyrics and their message continue its outreach.
A musician, author and gig organiser, I would occasionally bump into Peter and his beloved Markiza at gigs around the Klang Valley like at Paul's Place in Damansara Utama before it moved, music events at No Black Tie, plays at the Actor's Studio or KL Performing Arts Centre, and one time it was up in Penang for the George Town Literary Festival, or at a Readings event organised by Sharon Bakar or that one time at KL Eco Film Festival where they sang their tunes about saving the planet before anyone even knew what almond milk was, or that time Markiza and Peter sang about Polar Bears and melting ice caps at a youth festival I put together on that beautiful brown wooden stage outdoors in Publika KL. Sometimes Mar would wear her polar bear hat and Peter would strum his guitar with that little bounce as if he were tickled at the bottom of his soles with a metronome keeping time.
This is so apt about open mics where everybody plays for free because we're playing our own songs. A really nice recording and video that sums up how open mic events unfurl. https://youtu.be/hvrSeiK3VBY
Feeling Warm and Blue
I felt a certain comfort being near this lovely warm couple. Did you know Peter's first album was titled, Warm? I bought a copy of it, and his other album, Blues.
For over a decade, I buried myself in the Malaysian music scene as a gig organiser, and only thrice as a performer (bass, played badly but with confidence). I found myself coming out of the hole I had dived into and was a much better person. Sometimes we just need to do and do and do something we love when it feels so right until we realise, hang on, I'm still here but it's now for the wrong reasons that I'm staying and that's when woken you are, you stop.
Poverty is a Mindset
I reckon Peter felt he had to share his words, his sentiments and feelings about this kind of therapy, of wanting to belong so much that that longing becomes something we belong to, and sometime in the 1980s, as a younger Peter, he penned all of those feelings into a 24-year-old in his book, "A Different Kind of Poverty". I researched this phrase and found a thesis titled, "A Different Kind of Poverty: Folk Rock and Therapeutic Counterculture" by Lily Taylor who was studying her Bachelor of Arts at the Wesleyan University in Connecticut, USA. Peter, an Englishman, was a blues and rock musician, author, poet as well. I still recall his performance of a poem titled, "Fritter Away" at that house in Bangsar's Readings. Loved it so much, almost as much as, the William Henry Davies' Leisure (What is this life if full of care).
Last year in December, while we were still in the Covid-19 woods, I received a copy of Peter G. Brown's independently published novel, "A Different Kind of Poverty". It was really sweet of Markiza and Peter to have packed it up and sent it via DHL to me while I'm on outpost duty as a carer in Australia. I received it in 2-weeks and started reading it with abandon and let the author transport me into his metaverse; a world where a young man in his mid-twenties awkwardly traversing through life, questioning if he was good enough, his depressive, doubting and insecure persona reminded me of two people I know, and getting into the head of a man was quite novel. The book reminded me of Kafka's Metamorphosis. Peter's ability to describe it to such a fine detail made me wonder about how men feel. Perhaps they are much more sensitive creatures under all of that bravado than I had originally imagined. And the concept that poverty is a mindset, not the hole in your pocket. One could be poor in fitness, fame, stature, acceptance, or something you pursue and covet all your life, that without it, you'd feel a certain lacking. A different kind of poverty mindset is FOMO, really.
And I understand that like him, I too started organising gigs because I wanted to build my own sense of belonging. I attended an open mic event but felt it weren't for me. I was terribly intimidated! So I created my own with my friends. And I think Peter understood me because of that trajectory. He was an early pioneer of organising open mic events at the Commonwealth Club in Damansara Heights. We were like 'family', you know. We'd bump into one another at events, and I'd enjoy the familiarity of seeing Markiza and Peter there.
Better World
with Markiza and Peter Hassan Brown it is
I want to make a statement
I want to make it strong
I want to tell everybody
That war is wrong
Why can't us humans live in peace with each other
Doesn't matter what colour or creed
We're all sisters and brothers
I want to live in a Better World,
I want to live in a Better World,
I want to live in a Better World,
Huh huh
Seems a factor in this world
There's more than love to share
So I want to say emphatically
It just ain't fair
When some people live in a mansion
And own three or four BMWs
While others they go hungry
And don't even own a pair of shoes
I want to live in a Better World
I want to live in a Better World
I want to live in a Better World
Huh huh
I want to make a little boy
To the people up there in power
That life on Earth is being destroyed
Cos it gets so frustrating that there's nothing you can do
You want to tell them the truth
But you can't get the message through
I want to live in a Better World
I want to live in a Better World
I want to live in a Better World
Huh huh
You must do better things
It's driving me insane
Every time I pick up the paper
I read about it again and again
I want to see how important it is
For us to open our hearts
Just listen to the other fella
It's a place to start
I'm not saying I'm any better
????
But if we could be intelligent
Then we could be civilised
Then we could live in a Better World
Then we could live in a Better World
Yeah, we could live in a Better World
Yes, we could live in a Better World
Oh, we could live in a Better World
Better World,
Better World,
Better World.
And that, is Markiza and Peter summed up in song.
Passion road
Take a walk further back to that time when Markiza and Peter Hassan Brown were known as Passion. They made music like this "A Little Bit of your Love" and through the music video, their youthful infatuation with life and love would stretch across oceans to reach your ears, triggering a sensor in your brain to make your eyes well. Above all, Passion reminds us to save a little bit of love.
Soft Touch by Markiza and Peter Hassan Brown at a DoPPelganger Open Mic Gig and SwapMeet in Palette Palate Bukit Bintang - 26 Dec 2010. Source: Flickr.com/photos/thegogroup
That's the back of Peter Hassan Brown on the top left, putting things away after his performance.
Doppelganger Open Mic organiser Jasmine (left) and Markiza (right)
Doppelgangerkl Open Mic Award 2012
Markisa + Peter Brown
Category: Lifetime Achievement
for your invaluable contribution to the Malaysian music scene
Markiza and Peter Hassan Brown with Wong Lip Kee perform at DoPPel Kafe in Central Market Annexe (at the site of the old Liquid Bar KL) for Doppelganger Open Mic KL's 10th Year Anniversary.
Have a listen to more of Soft Touch
Visit www.lemang.com for more information about the band, Soft Touch.
Come to think of it, I'd really love to plant a tree for Peter Hassan Brown. Watch this space!
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