P.Ramlee and Getaran Jiwa
She was an attractive eligible princess. P.Ramlee was just a musician, a commoner that her snobbish father disapproved. However, he touched the right chord in her heart by composing a lovely song for her. This is a scene from a movie " Antara Dua Darjat" where P.Ramlee played the role of Ghazali, singing "Getaran Jiwa" for Tengku Zaleha. How they met was a typical plot in black and white movies: Tengku Zaleha lived in a banglo, Anggerik Villa. One rainy day, her car was stuck in the mud. Ghazali and his friends helped to push the car out of the mud. She invited him and his friends to perform at her birthday party. From that point onwards, she spent a lot of time going out with these musicians. This incurred the displeasure of her father, Tengku Karim. You see, "Antara Dua Darjat" means "Between Two Classes": the royal family as represented by Tengku Zaleha and Tengku Karim whereas the common people was represented by Ghazali. Tengku Karim forbade his daughter from mixing around with the musicians. He has no objection though to her request for private piano lessons, unbeknownst to him, the piano teacher was Ghazali. I am amused by this dialogue between Ghazali and Zaleha when he asked her what would father think of their relationship, she simply replied: " Berkecai urat sarafnya." She certainly knew dad well. Tengku Karim's nerves shattered into a million pieces when he found out that the two were courting. He hired henchmen to wallop Ghazali, took her to Singapore and spread lies that she died. A few years later, Ghazali was surprised to see a woman who looked like his 'deceased' love in Anggerik Villa. When she played "Getaran Jiwa" on the piano, the two lovers found each other again. However they had a bigger obstacle this time, as Tengku Karim had forced Tengku Zaleha to marry another aristocrat, Tengku Mukri.
________________________________________________________________ Who, is PRamlee? There is good news for residents in Malay-speaking countries who pose this question: you are definitely YOUNG or the Malaysian newspapers do not have a chance to bore you. Here are briefly some of PRamlee's accomplishments:
However, when P.Ramlee died of a heart attack in 1973 at the age of 44, he was said to be as poor as he was at birth back in 1929. ( May I remind you that was during the Great Depression ) From what I can gather there are many factors. First, he was hit by the 'Elvis Curve'. When rock and roll became popular, he could not keep up with the trend as a slow ballad singer. Second, Shaw brothers moved their business from Singapore to Merdeka Studio in Kuala Lumpur meant a change from adequate studio facilities to budget conscious production. Consequently the quality of his films suffered. Third, television made its public debut which resulted in a fall in cinema audiences. While nowadays many lament that Malaysia has not seen another star as P.Ramlee, they forgot ( or, unwilling to mention ) that things were very different during Ramlee's time. One small example: the ladies in Ramlee's movies wore figure hugging dresses and sarcasms abound against many social issues. We don't even need to speculate stories about Ramlee's personal life to see that he had more freedom to express himself, he worked in an environment conducive to the creation of extraordinary people like himself. On the contrary, just look at the KRU brothers who are equally capable of writing their own songs: they were criticised for singing in tandem with Ramlee in a remix of Getaran Jiwa... _________________________________________________________________
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