Artistes have muses and when they draw from caring, love, dreams, hopes and fears, the results are powerful.
Equally forceful is when family, children and their childhood are at the heart of many of those nuanced thoughts and feelings.
The latest singles by award winning Malaysian musicians, Gerard Singh and Lyia Meta lend hope that the cobwebs and sorrows in society will be cleared one day.
Gerard’s uplifting Malay single, ‘Waris’ (heir), is about children being our future, our whole world.
Lyia’s metal belter, ‘We Are Lords’, expresses a desire to keep going despite the fires that ‘burn’ around us.
‘Waris’ – Gerard Singh
The song reignites the old adage, ‘Your children live through you’, says Gerard. “It’s about continuity and our legacy – which are about our kids.”
“I believe that we live through our children too. One day, it will be our time to leave and they will be our torchbearers,” he said.
Gerard wrote the song in 2014 after seeing children begging on the streets in some parts of the city at an ungodly hour.
“It made me wonder about the parents of those kids, whether they were homeless, and it made me think about a lot of other stuff,” he said.
There’s no love like a family’s love for one another and ‘Waris’ emphasises the importance of raising children, as well as growing as parents by learning from their children.
The best songs about family and children can be unifying, relatable and moving, and you won’t be able to get the sweet, reflective ‘Waris’, out of your heads and possibly your hearts.
In a promotional video on YouTube, Gerard looks back on his life as a child and the calm he and his younger brother Terence feels in the presence of their parents.
Gerard, who turned 53 on Aug 18, said: “Today, there is a bigger chance of relationship between parent and child losing a sense of closeness because children are exposed to more things than we were, such as the internet and social media.”
He said his late father, a Sikh primary schoolteacher and his mother, a Eurasian, remained major influences in his life besides his wife Cindy and 22-year-old daughter Gillian.
The Hydra band who were a song short for their debut album first recorded ‘Waris’ in 2014.
Last year, Gerard whose single ‘Crazy’ hit No 40 on the Billboard Indicator Charts in 2014, recorded the song, playing all the instruments.
The Klang-born artiste, who began his career at Casablanca Pub in Johor Bahru in 1987 and started playing bass as a kid in church, selected DistroKid to release ‘Waris’ to get it into streaming services.
‘We Are Lords’ – Lyia Meta
Lyia’s lyrical prowess translates to the canvas, innately tying together art and music.
Her acrylic painting series of ‘Lockdown – The World Is Burning’ and the metal power song ‘We Are Lords’ are, according to her, “a product of pain”.
“There is an overwhelming sense of helplessness, anger and an urgency in my lyrics that seeps through to my art.
“Most of my work can be dark but if you look beyond the driving beat, you’ll find a cry for help,” said Lyia, a gifted artist and cook of Pot to Plate fame.
Lyia said the song expresses her desire to keep going despite “the fires that ‘burn’ around us.”
“We are all in pain and it doesn’t help that happiness is fleeting.
“The pandemic brought an avalanche of tumultuous emotions and uncertainties that many grappled with, as jobs were lost, and chaos found a place in our lives,” she said.
To Lyia, fear wasn’t an option and she decided that a song could perhaps help weather the despair with a spirit that is strong, flexible and unflinching in turbulent times.
Lyia said she wrote the song when she least expected to, while walking along an underpass with cars speeding above and motorists honking.
The 2018 World Music Artist of the Year and Global Music Award 2019 winner went metal with ‘We Are Lords’ “because the essence of the song needed the driving force of the genre.”
“Its intense rhythm and ethereal/classical elements were to convey the urgency and nuances of my words and the conviction I felt in the message I was trying to get across.”
Lyia’s record label Bongo Boy Records released the song, co-produced by her husband Zack, on July 14.
To date the number has received airplay over online radio stations in the US, UK and reached No 7 on the Top 15 tracks on BRA Radio Australia in the first week of August.
In 2019, she collaborated with Mike Hall, a film and TV producer from the US, on another metal track, ‘Deserving of Love’ which has been nominated for a Josie Music Award 2020, the largest indie music awards.
Born to a Malaccan Portuguese civil servant and a Sinhalese-Chinese mother, Lyia wrote ‘Without Walls’ in 2018, a song about “finding yourself, seizing the moment and changing your destiny because it is never too late.”
“Although I don’t write about love, laughter or the lighter side of life, my lyrics speak to those who can relate.
“As one listener once told me, ‘you say the things that many choose to bury for fear of laying themselves bare to the world’.