ABSTRACT
This chapter serves as a historical overview of the fostering of communal spirit and networking amongst like-minded practitioners in the early development of the singer–songwriter circuit in the early to mid-2000s who leveraged their subcultural networking and knowledge outside the mainstream Malaysian music industry. Voices From Next Door featured twenty-four artists and included one Singaporean and one Indonesian artist active and based in Kuala Lumpur at the time. The combination of the Asian economic crisis and the sacking of then-Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim in the period of 1997–1998 created a fertile ground for dissent to emerge in the general creative and performing arts scene in Kuala Lumpur:If there’s such a political marker to be “blamed” for the triggering of more vigorous creative endeavours. A semblance of some form of “true mass-mediated protest music for consumption” outside of the underground music subculture is still unlikely.
