Friday June 12, 2009
Starting out
By N. RAMA LOHAN
Twenty years since he broke new ground in the music scene with RAP, producer Roslan Aziz is still making music on his own terms.
MUSIC was in Roslan’s blood from the time he was a wee lad. “My mum tells me I was attracted to the radio since I was born,” he chuckles.
He was born on Oct 23, 1961 at his current place of residence (shared with his parents), Kg Datok Keramat in Kuala Lumpur (or the Bronx, as he fondly refers to it).
Roslan Aziz at the height of his popularity in the early 1990s. He was born into a working class family – where his father worked as a barber and cab driver while his mother attended to domestic affairs – of five siblings, with an older brother, two younger sisters and a younger brother.
Music formed Roslan’s world and he recalls that his first musical instrument as a monumental moment in his life. “My first truly exciting moment in my music career happened when my grandfather bought me a drumset. I was four. I remember looking at him and not being able to find the words to thank him ... it was as if he could read my mind and knew exactly what I wanted.”
After secondary school at MRSM Kuantan, the developing musician furthered his education at UiTM, majoring in Actuarial Science. The draw of music was simply too great and he found himself at arguably one of the hottest studio facilities in the country in the early 1980s, Booty Boys. He insists there couldn’t have been a better place for him to cut his engineering teeth than at the renowned studio at that point.
Everything he learned there put him in good stead when it came to forming RAP. “Grusin Rosen Productions (GRP) at that time inspired me to start something similar. We wanted to develop artistes, so our doors opened in 1988,” and as they say, the rest is history.
Through his ups-and-downs in music and in life, Roslan’s family have remained his pillar of strength. “My older brother Ramlan was very encouraging. And of course, my dear friend Din Kamarudin was very instrumental to the whole RAP story. As well as my mum and my grandfather, though he may not have agreed with me on quite a few things,” he shares.
He is quick to reminisce one particular incident during his upward swing to success. “Only the (renowned Filipino musical family) Solianos would encourage their kids in music back then, so it was definitely asking a lot for more conventional parents to watch their child do something which they doubted could yield success ... but they were with me all the way.
I remember my dad taking off from work to help me sell concert tickets ... and the whole family helped. It was very touching ... and I always knew they were behind me. And I love them for that!”
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