A MONTH before the commencement of yet another MCO, musician and Jazz crooner Sean Ghazi welcomed The Vibes Culture & Lifestyle team onto the stage at Bobo KL, a live performance venue for an interview tucked in a suburban part of Bangsar.
The space at the time was, of course, without action. And it was not so much because of the renovations that took place, but more that it has yet to recreate its entertainment purposes in full capacity.
The unprecedented downtime that Bobo KL experienced is a shared ordeal that many businesses had to endure as a direct impact of the pandemic.
That said, there was a glimpse of hope it seems.
Before the meet-up, the Malaysian-Singaporean artist was announced as a grant beneficiary of the recovery initiatives backed by the Cultural Economy Development Agency (Cendana) under the Penjana Plan for the Creative Industries in support of the arts and its creatives.
Understanding the motivation behind Sean’s creative endeavours, receiving the grant and what he plans to do with it were some of the key premises of our tete-a-tete that day.
“To be fair, it wasn’t me who received the grant. It is not specifically mine to spend but for my company and the initiatives under it,” asserts the creative director, pointing to members of Baby Grand Productions.
Deborah Michael, who is the executive producer, and Sean’s business partner are the duo that make up the team. They are also joined by Hani Azlan who acts as the band manager for Tarakucha! – a 17-piece musical collective under the company that aspires to produce top-notch, world-class corporate entertainment, which they unapologetically claim.
“It’s a skeleton team, and the three of us kind of do everything,” he says.
The Vibes: Thanks for having us here on the Bobo stage. Can you share with us more about the venue that we are in?
Sean Ghazi: We would love to have you come over when we can do a proper show. Bobo KL was created for performances. We see to the audience, and the performer in the way the set/room is designed. We have limited the distance between the furthest person sitting from the stage and the performer, which sort of creates an intimate atmosphere to optimise the experience.
I am not trying to knock anybody, but a lot of venues add the performance element after they open. For example, the place is built for a café, or a restaurant/bar and the showcase aspect comes as an afterthought where the stage is built on top of the established infrastructure.
From the get-go Bobo KL started as a piano lounge, so everything was built with that in mind where even the walls are treated acoustically. When we helped to curate Bobo KL at the time when it was under a different owner, we did reach out to practitioners and technicians that we work closely with for shows to bring the place up.
TV: Can you share more in detail about how Bobo KL caters to performers as mentioned? Isn’t there any performance venue within the city that offers the same?
SG: I think our artists that come on stage here are the best looked after. There is the obvious stuff like payment and speed of it because sometimes it takes a long time for the artists to get paid. We have a green room, which is an artist’s dressing room.
For an establishment at this – small-scale standalone – size, I think probably we are the only place with such features. In the past, people had to change in a storage room or a car. Sometimes, I have seen some of the artists I have worked with in need of assistance to hold their personal items while they go on and perform.
That sort of thing, people rarely think about, and we here at Bobo KL do. From that to food and drinks, even if you are coming to perform on stage and you are attracting an audience, at least it is right that we feed you. The best part, you do not need to worry about getting billed for it after.
It is just the little details in the treatment.
TV: How has the establishment fare when it comes to building its pool of audience since it opened?
SG: Obviously, the top floor is not a rocking venue, so we have to be mindful of the kind of music that we feature. That said, over the five years we have cultivated a following, and we do get repeat customers for the different types of shows we host.
What I have seen quite significantly is that there is an interest in homegrown acts and more so in the Malaysian songbook. There is nothing like the classics, right? Songs from the genre of P. Ramlee, Saloma etc… I guess when our nation, or the demographics that we know today, was at its beginning (the 1950s-1960s). These are the songs that make up the simplicity (in the lyrics) of that time.
There is always going to be a place for such songs to be in the Malaysian psyche that the audience wants to keep listening to and exploring. That, for some reason, translates well here at Bobo KL. I do not like to use the word ‘nostalgic’, but it is as such. I personally identify with the music of that time.
TV: We see that there are some renovations underway. Why the need for it, especially during the pandemic there looms a certain uncertainty when it comes to operations?
SG: It is just a little bit of a spruce-up, some wear and tear that needs to be seen to. We are just taking advantage of the fact that we need to be closed now. There is also a change in management, and of course, to mark that we are already five years old.
TV: How has the business handled itself in this new norm?
SG: The company has other projects, not just Bobo KL. We also manage the big band Tarakucha!. And there were challenges in the Baby Grand perspective as well as the establishment (Bobo KL) that we just recently fully took over. On the latter, it was very difficult because everything was closed, and the ‘stop’ and ‘start’ over the last year did not make things any easier.
One good thing out of it was that we managed to upgrade certain systems in the way we operate. We digitised some of our processes by working with entities like CloudTix to follow the government’s requirement. And accommodate the times when we could operate when the conditions were a bit more relaxed but still adhering to the SOPs.
When people were allowed to go out, I remember seeing that there was a hunger from our audience, and it was easy for us to sell out. Even if we had to limit the capacity, our regulars were biting to get a ticket not just to see their favourite acts but more so to support the artists. It is heart-warming to see.
Going back to your question, so the company received the arts resilience fund, and I am not going to lie, it was difficult to apply for. You would probably need a year for me to walk you through it. The application was online and there was a lot of writing up (history, demographic, the people that we are employing, and budgeting, among them) that needed to be done.
But to put it simply, desperation was the key motivation behind our perseverance – there was no revenue coming in and a lot of our projects got held back. This also means that there are a lot of people, who are depending on us for their source of income, being affected, either through Bobo KL or Tarakucha!
*Get to know more about the big band Tarakucha! in the video below…
TV: Has there not been any assistance outside of Cendana?
SG: We have had a lot of private sponsorships in kind, as well as from JKKN and other agencies in the past to conduct specific shows. But during the pandemic specifically – not really. Cendana was the only sort of outlet that we were able to successfully turn to.
I am aware that there are other grants, but we focused our efforts according to the mandates that were disclosed through the Penjana initiative. It was indeed a huge eye-opener for me of the Excel chart of all recipients during the press conference event held for this. It is a massive responsibility for Cendana to go through the applications and manage the funds according to the objective – hats off to them.
TV: What is the plan now that the company has received the RM100,000 grant?
SG: We have not received the full amount just yet. It gets distributed in tranches and it's every so often that before you get the next tranche, you are going to be considered for what you said you were going to do, and if you have not done so, why? It is a whole performance and accounting report that we must go through.
For the grant, which Baby Grand Productions received to sustain its operations, there were three main initiatives that we are working towards – the first, of course, being Bobo KL, Tarakucha! and Bobo Studio.
If only we can put the pandemic aside, what is next for Bobo KL is to keep on operating. Over the last five years, we have seen about 30,000 people coming in to enjoy the performances within these walls. The KL Live music scene does not have many such venues that we find it's important to support them, including freelance musicians. Therefore, we see Bobo KL as an important fixture that needs to continue and grow. It is on top of a small shop lot right now, but who is to say it can’t be a theatre in the future?
The funding is a year’s plan. And so we are supposed to roll out our initiatives within the timeframe of November 2020 to 2021. Negotiations are still taking place with regards to the long-term planning in balancing between being a beneficiary and the setting of the pandemic. The big issue now is mobilising with the whole restrictions at play.
TV: Having said that, financial sustenance does not guarantee the end goal given the present times then?
SG: In this case, money is not the – ultimate – solution because we are fighting a silent enemy and Covid is dictating how we move forward. However, it still begs the question of survivability.
I am still hopeful, everyone in the industry is optimistic at best with the whole ‘herd immunity’. But right now, things are still grey, and expectations are not clear cut.
Down the line, I believe there is going to be some sort of a big renaissance of stuff happening when we get there.
*Find out more about the initiatives under Baby Grand Productions, Penjana Plan for the Creative Industries, and other talking points in the video interview with Sean Ghazi below…
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