250 Sape players will create an MBR record at Citrawarna Keluarga Malaysia 2022

KUCHING: A sape music performance by 250 players on the closing night of Citrawarna Keluarga Malaysia 2022 here this Sunday will set a new record in the Malaysia Book of Records (MBR).

Sape teacher, Elizabeth Bungan, 32, who is also the founder of Culture Meet studio, said that sape, which is the traditional music of the Orang Ulu community, will be played by players from all over Malaysia simultaneously for five minutes on the banks of the Kuching River.

“This is the second attempt to set an MBR record of many players at a time. It involves increasing the number of players to 250 compared to 207 when the record was first set in Miri in 2017,” he said when met by Bernama here today.

He said all the players were from various racial and ethnic backgrounds who shared an interest in sape and wanted to uphold Sarawak’s traditional music.

According to him, during training, players were divided into several small groups with each session limited to 50 people only apart from having to take the COVID-19 screening test.

Elizabeth said that they only held face -to -face training for three days before the performance but was confident that the dream to set the record was achieved with the cooperation of all the players.

“Actually we have started training sessions since last December but only online on a small scale,” he said.

The Sarawak Kelabit-Iban hybrid from Sibu has started his career as a professional sape player since 2016 after performing at the World Rainforest Music Festival (RWMF).

Elizabeth or better known as Eli became known to many when she often uploaded her video of playing sape through social media.

Apart from being invited to perform at official functions, he also played sape with two Sarawak sape icons, Jerry Kamit and Alena Murang at RWMF 2019.

-BERNAMA