KOTA KINABALU: Award-winning Sabahan band Estranged and Alena Murang from Sarawak have come together to produce a documentary on Borneo music.
The duo were joined by Dr Nadia Widyawati from the Conservatory of Music, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) as the lead researcher for the project.
Dubbed "Roads To Our Heritage", it aims to further document stories of traditional music instruments and their makers as educational references and archiving for future generations.
The six-part series had Estranged, Alena and Nadia travel some 1,000km on road across Sabah and Sarawak in search of traditional musical instrument makers, learning the art of making the instruments, understanding the intricacies of the music and incorporating it into their songs.
Those instruments include gambus, sompoton and sundatang in Sabah; and sape', jatung utang and selingut in Sarawak.
The documentary also features in-depth interviews with native traditional music craftsmen of Sabah and Sarawak, rediscovering local traditional cultures and roots, as well as showcasing beautiful scenic routes.
Apart from the documentary, the project also covered three music albums which are Alena Murang's Sky Songs (which was launched on March 31 2021), Estranged's Sepenuhnya Vol. 02 and Velvet Aduk's Reality.
The project was funded by the Communications and Multimedia Ministry as part of its Digital Content Fund (DKD) for the music industry.