A number of milestones marked the way for Zubir Said as he embarked on his career in music. First, and perhaps most simply, he developed a love for the subject as a young teenager.
Then later on, during his brief but fateful appointment as copy typist in a Dutch administrative office, a raging fire started at a two-storey building. The Dutch officer was impressed by Zubir and his friend’s courage and quick thinking efforts at stopping the fire. He suggested that Zubir travel the world to find adventure and rewarded him with 150 guilders, along with a recommendation letter and this advice:
Tomorrow don’t come here [to work]. You go. And when you are doing something, you must do it good. Don’t half-way, half-way. Don’t surrender easily. You must fight for it. If you become a policeman, become a good policeman. And if you become a musician, become a good musician. And then if you become a crook, be a good crook . . . so that the police cannot catch you.[i]
But not everyone was as encouraging. When Zubir left his village to be a travelling musician in a Keroncong band, it was in defiance of his father Datuk Muhamad Said bin Sanang’s wishes and of Islamic principles.[ii] For Zubir, the opportunity to travel was not only a young man’s rebellion against his father. Rather, it presented a chance to escape the political circumstances of his youth. These included a particular personal strife between the conflicting values of his native Minangkebau culture (which is matrilineal), and the patrilineal Islamic values his family abided by. Not to be bounded by locale, ethnicity, or circumstance, the ventures of an itinerant musician would be liberating, and a chance to forge his own identity in a world beyond Bukit Tinggi, West Sumatra:
. . . because I don’t like the customs of the village. I don’t like the custom that the women controlled the men also. So that kind of feeling plus the feelings against the Dutch . . . so I better go to another place, maybe to Java. I don’t think about Singapore [then]. . . . my father also cannot support me very much.[iii]
The opportunity for reconciliation with his father came decades later with an invitation to attend a performance of the Majulah at the official ceremony of Singapore Merdeka in 1959. Zubir’s father attended the concert as a guest of Minister of Culture S. Rajaratnam, having walked from the family home in Joo Chiat Place to the Sultan Mosque in Arab Street, then onward to the Padang near City Hall, some 8km away. He was 101 years old. Needless to say, the event was a triumph for Zubir who had ‘conquered the heart’ of his father, and at the same time achieved renown as a musician and composer.
A year later, when his father was unwell and bedridden in Jakarta, it was the Majulah Singapura (played on a flexidisc souvenir record) that revived him and brought back his health and will to live. He succumbed to his illness a year later at the ripe old age of 103.
Zubir was a cosmopolitan man who demonstrated multiethnic sensibilities in his work ethics. Once he had set his sights on a career as a musician, he never looked back or communicated a sense of displacement during his travels. He assimilated well in various environments, contributing to the ecosystem of the professions he partook in, whether as musician, photographer, composer for film music or patriotic songs,[iv] and in his later years, as music educator imparting his love of music. In all, Zubir remained true to his beliefs. To borrow the words of his former boss, Zubir did not do things ‘half-way, half-way’.
[i] Oral History Interview with Zubir Said (Reel 4). Zubir worked temporarily in the Dutch administrative government office in his late teens. At the time of this incident, he was 18 years old. In a later interview for the papers, the reward was stated as 50 guilders.
[ii] According to Rohana Zubir, the hereditary title of Datuk Rajo Nan Panjang would be passed on to Zubir if he had remained in Bukit Tinggi. However, playing music for enjoyment would be against Islamic principles. Private communication with author on 4 May 2020.
[iii] Oral History Interview with Zubir Said (Reel 3).
[iv] Zubir Said. ‘Music in the Age of Merdeka’. In Norlia Embong & Ibrahim Tahir (Trans.), MAJULAH! The Film Music of Zubir Said. Singapore: National Museum of Singapore, 2012. See also Oral History Interview with Zubir Said (Reel 14).