MUSICAL WEEKEND

IT'S BEEN A MUSICAL WEEKEND, what with the brilliant Akasha who performed at the G Hotel during Little Penang Street Market's fund raising dinner on Friday, then the very first ever Penang Guitar Festival on Saturday.

This was held in Bayan Baru at PSDC, and started with 4 workshops during the day (finger, classical, jazz and bass), all run by various musicians who are passionate about their chosen instrument, and included Mr Lam who is one of Penang's most well-known classical guitarist.

On the Saturday evening we went along to the concert because both my sons are keen players, and in fact No2 took lessons from Mr Lam for quite a few years. We took along a couple of expat friends to show them that we DO have a bit of coolcha (culture) here in Penang you know ...

The evening was graced by YB Danny Law who took the trouble to come along just for the starting even though it wasn't an official visit.

The first band were from Kedah, called Uglymen, who were singing cantopop; not really something I know how to appreciate. However as the hall was rather small, the music was quite quite loud, and I ended up having to put my fingers over my ears, it was being bashed so much.

The others included William Kok from KL (that's him above), who finger-picks out melodies (elevator muzak, No1 son called it), and Mr Lam again who treated us to two obscure classical guitar pieces designed to show off his incredible prowess with the instrument. Joking aside, they are pretty good.

Well done to the organisers for kicking off this event; hopefully more will come in the future esp if the state government places its considerable weight behind it and gives it more backing. It could have done with a bit more publicity, as there weren't that many people there. However, all money raised went to charity.

We left at the halfway interval because it was over-running a bit and we hadn't had dinner (problem I have with Penang performances - you can't eat before as it's too early; yet if you eat after everywhere else is shut!), so popped into the huge Northam Beach Cafe for some hawker food, which I was rather impressed with. Luckily the rain had stopped, so it was quite packed, and being Merdeka Weekend there were many visitors from outstation, so many stalls were already running out of things including the Char Kuey Teow stall. The Popiah wasn't bad, and neither was the Assam Laksa there.

Ho hum, just another quiet Saturday night in Penang!