Zee Avi

There is a Malaysian singer that I really like. Her name is Zee Avi. The two songs she does that I love the most are "First of the Gang to Die" - an excellent Morrissey cover - and "Kantoi" - a song that blends Malay and English (Manglish). Malaysian is so close to Indonesian that I can understand the language, but if I were to speak it, people would know that I live in Indonesia, not Malaysia. There are some grammatical differences, and there are also a few words that have slightly different meanings. For example, budak in Indonesian means slave, but in Malay it means child.

But back to Zee Avi. "Kantoi" just came up on my iTunes (which I have playing on shuffle for the majority of the day), and I thought to myself, "I should blog about this". There aren't many songs that blend two languages into almost every line of the lyrics, much less one that blends two languages that I can understand! So this song makes me happy. Also, it tells a story, and I like songs that tell stories. Admittedly, this song doesn't tell the most edifying story in the world, but it's meant to be a silly song.

You can watch her sing the song live here:

And the lyrics are these:
Semalam I call you, you tak answer                   You kata you keluar pergi dinnerYou kata you keluar dengan kawan youBut when I called Tommy he said it wasn't true
So I drove my car pergi DamansaraTommy kata maybe you tengok bolaTapi bila i sampai you, you tak adaLagilah I jadi gila
So I called and called sampai you answerYou kata sorry sayang tadi tak dengarMy phone was on silent I was at the gymTapi latar belakang suara perempuan lain
Sudahlah sayangI don't believe youI've always known that your words were never trueWhy am I with you, I pun tak tauNo wonderlah my friends pun tak suka you
So I guess that's the end of our storyAkhir kata she accepted his apologyTapi last last kita dapat tahuShe was cheating too
With her ex-boyfriend's best friend
Tommy