Beyond Words

Spain should be the country with the tourist board tagline we wear so proudly. OK, not so proudly, but with a befuddled expression and lips mouthing a “har?” (Only joking, don’t take my link off your page)

As I was saying, Spain. She doesn’t have words to her national anthem. How bizarre. Imagine if we didn’t have words to ours. How would we know the meaning of what we were singing? Thousands of kids across the country would never know that our national language was Bahasa Melayu.

Or imagine if you didn’t have an anthem at all, and had to make one up on the spot when someone asked what your anthem was: As was the case with the state anthem of Perak, the tune of which later became the melody of the national anthem of Malaysia:

The state anthem was created during a state visit of Sultan Idris of Perak to England in 1888. It was noticed that no anthem existed to greet the Sultan. The Aide-de-camp of the Sultan, Raja Mansur ibni Sultan Abdullah, did not dare to tell that no anthem exists and so instead hummed a song he knew from the Seychelles, a melody originally written by Pierre Jean de Beranger. After he told the Sultan about it, the sultan accepted the song as the anthem. The lyrics were written by Raja Ngah Manur bin Raja Abdullah.

In 1957 the national anthem of Malaysia, Negaraku, was selected to use the same melody.

Imagine if we had to make up the words to the tune of our national anthem…

But just only imagine, because it is an offence to sing unofficial lyrics or any translation to the anthem…

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