A small man who dreamt big
This is just a quickie ;)
I read an article from Star Two this weekend. About our local legendary artiste Datuk Sudirman Arshad. The man who wrote Tanggal 31. I felt compelled to share this article because it makes me feel like Malaysia used to be brimming with amazing people and talent. I don't know what was it like back in those days but I get the feeling it was even more 1 Malaysia then as compared to now.
If you read Star Two you can spot and image of a concert he did in the 80's at Jalan Chow Kit. 100 000 people came for that concert! People from all walks of life.
Showbiz extraordinaire Datuk Sudirman Haji Arshad’s songs delighted Malaysians of all creeds and colours.
TODAY, few artistes would dare attempt something as audacious as organise a giant concert in one of the major arteries of Kuala Lumpur’s busy thoroughfare. In fact, back in the 1980s, fewer would’ve fathomed staging an event of such magnitude in Chow Kit Road.
But Datuk Sudirman Haji Arshad did, and successfully pulled off an iconic show on April 15, 1986. One of Malaysia’s greatest ever entertainers, the star was never restrained by convention. For a small man, he dared to dream big, and only the sky and his maker’s wishes were his limits.
The story of the nation’s most well-loved lawyer, television host, writer, cartoonist, actor and entrepreneur earns a long-overdue telling in the documentary Sudirman Arshad, a production by the TV channel History, in collaboration with the National Film Development Corporation (Finas).
The hour-long programme brings together some of the diminutive dynamite’s glorious moments – his early days as a Bintang RTM winner in 1976, his first movie Kami in 1982, the landmark Chow Kit concert which saw 100,000 Malaysians of all races and walks of life celebrating the sense of nationalism in his songs and, of course, the magical night in March 1989 when he won the coveted Salem Asian Music Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in London while up against heavyweights of the time like the Las Vegas-based Anita Sarawak of Singapore, Hong Kong’s Leslie Cheung, Taiwan’s Chyi Chin and China’s Cui Jian.
Sudirman Arshad isn’t merely about rolling out the credits for the Temerloh, Pahang-born entertainer. It tells the story of a man who was touched by a higher force, and shared his gift of music and love with every Malaysian, regardless of race, religion or creed, all crystallised through a rare humility in the entertainment industry.
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