Kelana Purba

Across the street from our apartment there is a mall. It is, like many malls here, a hub of activity because it is indoors and therefore protected from rain, heat, and humidity. In addition to the standard clothing stores and shoe stores you find in a mall, it is the home to our grocery store, two food courts, and numerous restaurants. The dry cleaners are also there, and at least 2 bakeries. I think we may have also located a tattoo parlor inside. Anyway, it is very commonplace to also hold events in the mall. This particular mall, the EastPoint mall, has a small stage that is always there. The first floor (on the floor, in the middle) is almost always a different vendor. Sometimes its random stuff, sometimes it's clothes. Last week or so was a holiday (Hari Raya) and so in addition to a clothing vendor, they had a show. This group, Kelana Purba, performed. They sang and motioned doing something called the Tikir Barat. I took a little video of them from the 3rd floor with a camera that has no audio. That's what you see, here:

Now, what you miss is the audio. So I found them on YouTube. The first minute of the video is not really interesting, but after that, listen to the music. You don't need to know what the words are, just watch and listen.



The guy in the front who gets up and sings solo is apparently sort of an MC - he is supposed to have a lot of personality and interact with the audience somewhat. He is supposed to also be funny. We didn't stick around long enough to see the audience interaction part of the show, but the rest of it was really cool. The singing guys hand movements were really cool to watch from up above.

The mall has had a lot of interesting things on that first floor. Expect more posts on it soon. :-)