The Muezzin and the Rock Singer

Received an SMS from my wandering son yesterday. It said, "I'll be singing at the Hard Rock next month! This is the greatest thing that ever happened to me since I took up singing." Hard Rock Cafe! I read the message with mixed feelings.

Reza is my only son, and big brother to my three daughters. He chose not to further his studies after secondary school and went to work instead. I have always taught him to be respectful of others and he's well liked wherever he goes. But he's always drawn to singing. He has this knack of finding a band without a singer and suddenly he's singing again for some unknown band somewhere. When he was still staying with us, he was always fighting for the mike with the village elderly muezzin. Hearing him on the loudspeakers of the village mosque reciting the Azan had a strange effect over us. His Grandma would stop everything she was doing just to absorb every word of his rendition of the Call for Prayer.

His career choice never received my approval knowing how superficial and unstable the local entertainment industry is. It's a make-believe world of assumed glamour and questionable moral and social practices. I have tried to steer him away from it by talking some sense and even fixing him up with a job at a friend's land reclamation project in Penang. I remember him coming back after a couple of months on the job to tell me that he found a band whose singer was leaving for a better offer. "It should be OK, Abah. The band boys are about your age!"

So he went back to Penang, renamed the band "Youngblood" started playing a few gigs until they were invited to play at a hotel in Langkawi. He was excited by the offer but half the band couldn't go due to family commitments. That ended his stint in Penang, too. My friend was selling the project out to another party and Reza didn't want to be stuck with a band that couldn't play out-of-town gigs, so he quit and returned to KL again where the happening was according to him. And things did happen for him as he was playing gigs in KL, Sabah and Sarawak using the stage name "Razor" as the leader of a band called "K-mist-3".

I have never encouraged him as I'm still the conservative Muslim father and I'm still convinced that there has to be a better way to find fame or earn a living. I never cease to remind him of my stand on his career choice, but I have never abandoned him for making a decision on his life. I was always there for him whenever he needed a father and I still am.

So when that SMS came in, I knew what he wanted from his father.
I replied, "Congratulations!"
Within seconds, his reply came in, "Thanks, Abah."
End of conversation. No further discussion on the subject was necessary.