The Wedding Song

That’s Why (You Go Away) by Michael Learns To Rock

I am starting to think that the real purpose of having music played at weddings, ranging from a live band to just the bride or groom’s brother hooking up his MP3 player to the family hi-fi set, rather than to entertain people, is to scare them away. The music – often of very dubious taste – is played so loud with the speakers at full blast that not only your ears hurt but your blood pressure rises. Forget about having any meaningful conversation with anyone other than the person sitting right next to you. So, for quite some time (about two minutes) I wondered why people bother paying for such “entertainment”.

Then it hit me: the loud and annoying music is really a form of crowd control.

The typical Malay wedding reception is held at the family residence under tents erected in the yard or along the street. Since there aren’t enough tents available, due to both budgetary and space constraints, guests are generally expected to vacate their table after having their meal so that other guests may have theirs. Common courtesy as well as sense dictates that one should not stay too long at a table as if having a teh tarik session with long lost friends, even though teh tarik has indeed become commonly served at weddings too. However, more often than not some people simply don’t get it, hence the loud and annoying music, just to make sure that nobody gets too comfortable.

How’s that sound?

One other annoying feature of music played at weddings is more of a faux pas, I think, though one which nobody seems to care much. A wedding is supposed to be a happy occasion celebrating the union of the newlyweds. It is no surprise that ballads get played a lot at weddings since love songs are usually of that form. Nobody wants to hear beat thumping house or European techno music played at a wedding. However, it surprises me that nobody cares much about the actual theme of the songs played. A lot of ballads especially the hit tangkap leleh Malay love songs really have such depressing themes as failed relationships, heartbreak, infidelity etc. – hardly the kind of positive and optimistic vibes we would really want to have at such happy occasions as weddings, don’t you think?