Kuching, 1997. There was a particular rhythm to life in Sarawak’s capital in those days, an unhurried cadence shaped by the river, the morning rituals of its people and the quiet commerce of a city where cultures had long converged.
On the roads, private cars shared the streets with public minibuses, their red-and-yellow or blue exteriors becoming familiar fixtures of the urban landscape. Traffic gathered around the major roundabouts during the morning rush, yet the city retained a certain intimacy, its everyday life moving to a rhythm that seemed a world removed from the relentless velocity of contemporary metropolitan existence.
Along the southern bank of the Rejang River, the Kuching Waterfront offered a picturesque vantage point from which to contemplate the city’s history. Its promenade, officially opened in 1993, had become a cherished gathering place, where landscaped walkways, public spaces and the river’s changing light brought residents and visitors together.
Across the water stood the Astana, built in 1870 as the residence of Charles Brooke and now the official residence of the Governor of Sarawak, alongside Fort Margherita, its historic presence softened by tropical greenery.
Behind the waterfront, the old commercial quarter preserved another dimension of Kuching’s character. Rows of heritage shophouses, many dating to the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, accommodated traditional provision shops, antique dealers, handicraft merchants, bird’s-nest traders and kopitiams whose unassuming façades concealed generations of local memory.
It was in this setting, amid the layered histories and cultural textures of Borneo, that a curious eight-year-old girl named Alena Murang first began to explore the possibilities of music.
At first, the guitar seemed an entirely ordinary childhood fascination. Yet curiosity, as it so often does, had other plans. Before long, Alena encountered the sape’, a traditional plucked lute associated with the Indigenous peoples of Sarawak, particularly the Orang Ulu communities.
Carved from wood and distinguished by its graceful form and resonant voice, the instrument offered something altogether different from the familiar musical vocabulary of the guitar.
That first encounter would alter the course of her life.
The sape’ carries a cultural significance that extends far beyond its physical construction or musical technique. Historically associated with the communities of Borneo’s interior, it has accompanied social gatherings, communal celebrations and, in certain traditions, healing ceremonies.
Its history is also entwined with cultural restrictions and inherited beliefs that shaped who could play it and in what circumstances. For women, in particular, the instrument’s traditional world was not always an open one.
To take up the sape’, therefore, was to enter a conversation with history itself.
Now, nearly three decades after that childhood beginning, she stands before another defining moment.
On Saturday, 31 October 2026, Alena will perform the world premiere of a specially commissioned Concerto for Sape’ and Orchestra, composed by Sabah-born composer Vivian Chua, with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO), under the baton of its Music Director, Junichi Hirokami. Presented as part of Beats of Borneo: Alena Murang with the MPO, the performance places the sape’ at the centre of an ambitious orchestral undertaking, bringing an instrument deeply rooted in Borneo’s Indigenous musical traditions into an entirely new concert-hall context.
It is a prospect that carries both artistic exhilaration and considerable responsibility.
Yet, inside the hushed surroundings of Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS, the atmosphere is altogether different. Beyond the bustle of the city, there is a stillness befitting a place devoted to the attentive art of listening.
Alena enters the conference room carrying her sape’, its beautifully painted wooden body immediately commanding attention. Born to an English-Italian mother and a Sarawakian father of Kelabit descent, she possesses an elegance that feels entirely unforced.
Her poise is accompanied by an open, disarming warmth; a smile that puts those around her at ease. There is nothing ostentatious about her presence, yet an unmistakable sense of purpose accompanies the instrument she carries.
For an artist whose work is so closely bound to the preservation and reinterpretation of cultural heritage, the forthcoming performance is clearly more than another entry in an already distinguished career.
“I’m both nervous and excited to see how we can bring this piece together,” she tells us.
Her candour is revealing. For all the international stages she has graced, the collaboration presents an unusual musical challenge. Alena typically learns the sape’ by ear, absorbing its melodies through listening, repetition and the intimate physical relationship between musician and instrument.
Although she can read musical notation for the saxophone, interpreting a written orchestral score for the sape’ requires a different approach.
There is something quietly compelling about this admission. In a musical world increasingly fascinated by technical virtuosity, digital precision and the instantaneous transmission of information, Alena’s process remains deeply embodied.
Knowledge resides not solely on the printed page but in the ear, the fingers, the memory and the accumulated wisdom of practice.
To bring the sape’ into an orchestral score is consequently not merely a matter of placing one instrument beside another. It requires a sensitive negotiation between different musical traditions, each with its own methods of learning, interpretation and expression.
For Alena, this will be her second collaboration with the MPO, following her appearance at the Sounds of Borneo concert in 2024. Yet the forthcoming engagement marks a significant departure in scale and artistic ambition.
Rather than presenting the sape’ within a broader programme of traditional and contemporary repertoire, the new concerto gives it the leading voice, inviting an entire orchestra to engage with its particular tonal character.
The distinction is crucial.
Such platforms can be invaluable in keeping traditions visible, but they can also inadvertently confine them to a prescribed cultural identity, allowing audiences to admire an instrument as an emblem of heritage without necessarily engaging with its musical possibilities.
Alena is acutely conscious of this tension.
“Looking back 25 years, my father’s generation — and even my own — could never have imagined that the sape’ could appear on the MPO stage to perform a concerto. This is a world first,” she says.
Her excitement is tempered by a larger hope: that the sape’ might one day be appreciated not only as a cultural symbol but also as a musical instrument deserving of serious artistic consideration in its own right.
“It’s usually played at a lot of government functions, such as cultural or tourism events, or where representation is needed. While we’re grateful for this opportunity, I personally hope that one day it can be acknowledged as music by itself, and that is why I’m thrilled for this collaboration with the MPO.”
It is a deceptively simple statement, but one that touches upon a profound question of cultural recognition. What happens when an instrument traditionally associated with a particular community is invited into a concert hall shaped by another musical heritage?
The answer, perhaps, lies in the music itself.
At the heart of the forthcoming performance is Vivian Chua’s newly commissioned Concerto for Sape’ and Orchestra, a work whose world premiere represents a significant moment for the instrument’s contemporary development. Conceived in three movements and entirely instrumental, the composition allows the sape’ to communicate without the support of a vocal narrative.
For Alena, that absence is deliberate. The instrument must be allowed to speak for itself.
“This piece does not feature any vocals because we want the sape’ itself to speak and welcome the audience to this performance,” she explains.
She is equally appreciative of Chua’s musical sensibility, particularly the composer’s selection of orchestral colours.
“I commend Chua’s sensibility in composing the piece — specifically her selection of Western orchestral instruments, such as the oboe and bassoon — which, in my view, complements and highlights the unique character of the sape’.”
The choice is intriguing. The oboe, with its penetrating, reedy timbre, and the bassoon, whose darker register lends warmth and depth to an orchestral texture, offer possibilities for contrast and complementarity. Their presence suggests an encounter shaped not by the simple accumulation of sound, but by the careful consideration of how different tonal identities might coexist.
The sape’, meanwhile, possesses a voice of its own: intimate yet resonant, capable of an almost meditative delicacy as well as a more insistent rhythmic presence. Its sound carries associations that cannot be entirely separated from the landscapes and communities in which its traditions developed.
Yet music need not be understood through cultural familiarity alone. Sometimes, the first point of connection is simply the pleasure of listening.
That is where the concerto’s promise lies. It offers the initiated an opportunity to hear a cherished instrument in a new context, while inviting those encountering it for the first time to approach its sound without preconceived expectations.
Alena’s hope is that listeners will come prepared not merely to recognise an unfamiliar instrument, but to discover what it can express.
Such an undertaking demands a delicate balance. An orchestral arrangement must respect the sape’s individual character without reducing it to an exotic accent within a familiar Western framework. Equally, the instrument must be given sufficient room to retain its own identity, rather than being overwhelmed by the scale and complexity of the orchestra surrounding it.
The artistry lies in the relationship between the two: in the moments of convergence, the spaces of contrast and the silences that allow one musical voice to emerge from another.
For Alena, the answer appears to be found in the act of performance itself.
The international reception of the sape’ has changed considerably over the years, particularly as audiences have become more receptive to musical forms beyond the familiar boundaries of mainstream popular music and Western classical traditions.
Alena has witnessed this transformation first-hand. Her work has introduced the instrument to audiences across continents, allowing its distinctive voice to travel well beyond the communities in which it has historically been heard.
Her performance history includes SXSW in the United States, Colours of Ostrava in the Czech Republic, the Rudolstadt Festival in Germany, OzAsia Festival in Australia and the Rainforest World Music Festival in Malaysia. Her artistic reach has also extended into the world of fashion, including Paris Fashion Week, where music becomes part of a broader conversation about identity, visual culture and creative expression.
These appearances are significant not simply because of the stages themselves, but because of the encounters they facilitate. Each audience arrives with its own expectations, references and listening habits. Each performance offers the possibility of changing them, if only slightly.
Yet international exposure does not automatically resolve the question of how traditional music is valued at home.
An instrument can be celebrated abroad and still be regarded primarily through the lens of tourism or cultural representation. It can be admired for its appearance, associated with a picturesque landscape and presented as a marker of regional identity, while its musical complexity receives comparatively little attention.
Alena’s ambition is to move beyond that limitation.
The sape’ should not have to relinquish its heritage to be taken seriously as music. Nor should its artistic possibilities be restricted by the circumstances in which audiences have traditionally encountered it.
The instrument’s cultural significance and its capacity for musical innovation need not compete with one another; indeed, each can deepen the other.
This is where the concerto assumes its wider importance. Its significance extends beyond the novelty of placing an Indigenous instrument before a symphony orchestra.
It asks listeners to reconsider the boundaries through which music is classified, valued and understood.
What, after all, makes a musical tradition worthy of the concert hall? Is it the age of its repertoire, the complexity of its notation, the institutional prestige surrounding its performance, or the depth of knowledge and feeling carried by the music itself?
These are not questions with easy answers. Yet the presence of the sape’ on the MPO stage makes them difficult to ignore.
Alena’s achievement is not that she has brought an unfamiliar instrument into a supposedly superior musical environment. Rather, she has helped create the conditions for a meaningful encounter between traditions, one in which Borneo’s musical heritage can be heard with the attention, seriousness and imaginative openness it deserves.
That distinction matters.
At 37, Alena Murang has developed an artistic practice that moves fluidly between music, visual expression, cultural advocacy and contemporary collaboration. She is a musician, vocalist and painter, as well as the founder of Kanid Studio, where her musical ideas are developed and recorded.
Her work is informed by a strong sense of cultural continuity, but it is not confined to the past. She has explored contemporary musical collaborations, including War Cry, a fusion-pop project with Sabahan singers Marsha Milan Londoh and Velvet Aduk. She has also composed music for a Hollywood production, extending her creative vocabulary into another field of storytelling.
These experiences suggest an artist who understands heritage not as a fixed inheritance to be preserved behind glass, but as a living body of knowledge that can respond to the world around it.
Her practice also extends to the physical instrument itself. Alena owns eight sape’, each part of a personal relationship with the craft, sound and traditions of the instrument. During a masterclass with members of the media, she offered insights into its construction, playing techniques and cultural associations, explaining how its musical logic differs from that of a conventional guitar.
The sape’ is often associated with pentatonic musical traditions, although its tuning, number of strings and playing conventions vary across instruments and communities. Its distinctive construction shapes both the way it is played and the musical possibilities available to the performer. To understand it, one must look beyond superficial comparisons with more familiar stringed instruments and appreciate the musical thinking that informs its design.
Alena also spoke about the beliefs and taboos that have historically surrounded the sape’. Such traditions deserve to be approached with sensitivity, not dismissed as quaint curiosities or romanticised as evidence of some impenetrable mysticism.
They form part of the cultural environment in which the instrument has acquired meaning, revealing the relationship between music, community and inherited knowledge.
For an artist whose childhood fascination has become a lifelong vocation, these connections are not incidental. They are fundamental to the way she understands her work.
Her international recognition has likewise extended beyond the concert stage. Her music video Warrior Spirit (2021) received recognition at the New York International Film Awards, including awards for Best Music Video and Best Ethnographic Film, while her visual work has also been recognised at the Buenos Aires Music Video Festival.
Her participation in UNESCO youth and intangible cultural heritage initiatives further reflects her engagement with the preservation and transmission of cultural knowledge.
Taken together, these accomplishments reveal a creative practice that resists easy categorisation. Alena is neither simply a traditional musician working within an inherited repertoire nor a contemporary performer borrowing from the past.
She occupies a more interesting space between the two, where musical memory becomes a resource for new expression.
It is a position that requires conviction. To carry a tradition into unfamiliar environments is to accept the responsibility of representing something larger than oneself, while remaining open to the possibilities that arise from new encounters.
The challenge is not to make the sape’ sound like something else. It is to create circumstances in which audiences can hear what has always made it distinctive.
The evening’s programme is particularly intriguing for the company it keeps. Alongside Chua’s world-premiere concerto, the MPO will perform Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550 — two celebrated works that offer strikingly different perspectives on musical expression.
Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin is an elegant suite whose seemingly light-footed dances conceal a more poignant history. Composed during the First World War, the work pays tribute to friends Ravel had lost, while its title evokes the French Baroque tradition of the musical tombeau, a composition written in remembrance of a person or as a musical memorial.
The reference to François Couperin, the celebrated French Baroque composer and harpsichordist, establishes a connection with an earlier musical inheritance, yet Ravel’s language remains unmistakably his own: lucid, refined and delicately coloured.
There is something especially affecting about the work’s relationship between grace and grief. Its poise never entirely suppresses the sadness beneath its surface, while its exquisite craftsmanship suggests that remembrance need not be expressed through grand gestures to carry profound emotional weight.
Mozart’s Symphony No. 40, by contrast, opens with an immediately recognisable sense of unease. Written in 1788, during the final years of his life, the symphony is among his most enduring orchestral achievements.
Its restless momentum, minor-key intensity and finely balanced contrasts have long captivated listeners, revealing a composer capable of holding elegance and emotional turbulence within the same musical architecture.
Although the symphony belongs to the Classical period, its expressive urgency has often been heard as anticipating qualities associated with later Romantic music. Its emotional power derives not from unrestrained excess, but from the tension between formal discipline and a music that seems perpetually on the verge of breaking free.
Placed around Chua’s new concerto, these works create an unexpectedly illuminating frame for the sape’. Ravel offers a meditation on musical inheritance and remembrance; Mozart brings an intensity that refuses to remain still; Chua’s composition introduces an encounter between Borneo’s traditional musical language and the symphonic orchestra.
Together, they invite a larger reflection on how music carries history forward — not as a static relic, but as something capable of renewed interpretation.
And it is here that the evening’s true emotional centre emerges.
Imagine, for a moment, the lights dimming inside Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS. The audience settles into its seats. The orchestra takes its place, and the final murmurs of conversation recede into silence.
Then, the music begins.
As the first notes emerge, the significance of the occasion will reside not simply in the sound itself, but in everything that has brought it there: generations of inherited knowledge, the hands that carved and played the instrument, the communities that sustained its traditions, and the contemporary artist determined to carry its voice into the future.
The orchestra will not erase those histories. Nor will the concert hall diminish the landscapes from which they arose.
Instead, the encounter offers a moment in which two musical worlds can meet, each bringing its own character, discipline and expressive possibilities to a shared performance.
One should resist the temptation to prescribe what every listener will feel. Music is too personal for that, and the most memorable performances often surprise us precisely because they exceed our expectations.
Yet the possibility of discovery is undeniable. For listeners familiar with the sape’, the concerto offers the rare opportunity to experience its voice within a new orchestral setting.
For devotees of classical music, it presents a chance to encounter a musical tradition whose depth cannot be measured by familiarity alone. And for those who simply love music that opens doors to unfamiliar worlds, the evening promises a meeting of sound, history and imagination that deserves to be experienced in person.
Beyond the concert itself, there is something worth celebrating in the artistic conviction that has brought this collaboration into being. Alena’s work reminds us that cultural heritage is not merely something to be inherited; it is something to be practised, questioned, shared and carried forward.
The sape’ has travelled from the traditions of Borneo’s Indigenous communities to international festivals, contemporary collaborations and now the centre of a specially commissioned orchestral concerto.
That journey is not a departure from its origins, but an affirmation of its continuing relevance.
For Alena, the moment is both personal and collective. It honours the instrument that captivated her as a child while opening a new possibility for the generations who may follow. A young musician discovering the sape’ today might look upon this performance and imagine a future that once seemed beyond reach. An audience encountering it for the first time might leave with a new understanding of the richness of Sarawak’s musical heritage.
And perhaps that is the most enduring promise of the evening: not simply that an instrument will be heard in a prestigious concert hall, but that its presence will encourage people to listen differently.
To listen beyond familiar categories. Beyond the boundaries of geography. Beyond the assumptions that sometimes determine which traditions are granted the authority of the concert stage.
Some performances entertain. Others demonstrate technical brilliance. A rare few leave us contemplating the possibilities of music itself.
This is an evening to hear the sape’ not merely as an emblem of Borneo, but as a living musical voice — one with a past to honour, a present to command and a future still unfolding.
The question is no longer whether the sape’ belongs on the orchestral stage. It is what we might discover when we finally give it the space to speak.
For tickets and more details, visit www.mpo.com.my today!
*Photos courtesy of Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS.
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