CULTURE

The Music Collective: fono KL on Staying Relevant

By Ng Su Ann

CULTURE

The Music Collective: fono KL on Staying Relevant

By Ng Su Ann

Today’s collectives can comprise as few as two creative soulmates and as many as a dozen or more artists, musicians, and multi-hyphenates who create together, eat together, and party together—an act of identity formation, an era of artistic community, collaboration, and growth. The music collective makes its own rules. The music collective marches to the beat of its own drums. Now, more than ever, the music collective is paving new paths to create art that’s more than the sum of its parts. This is fono KL’s story.

On the top floor of The Zhongshan Building in the heart of Kuala Lumpur, fono is an independent non-profit “music-centred” space attracting notable names such as Habibi Funk and Kamaal Williams, alongside Batavia Collective and BAP. within the region. As a space dedicated to community and culture, fono showcases diverse programming spanning genres and disciplines driven by founders Rudy la Faber and Uzair Sawal’s desire to cover the vast spectrum of under-represented sounds, a niche they’ve carved out over the years. “The idea,” says Uzair, “is to challenge what is popular and trending.” Rudy agrees. “From the start, it was always about the music.”

Seven years on, it’s no longer the new, shiny kid on the block—and yet there’s still no place like fono. It takes its inspiration from all corners of the world—Japan’s audiophile listening bars, Jamaica’s sound system culture, the experimental edge of London and New York City’s jazz haunts, and the do-it-yourself ethos of punk rock—but at its core, fono is Malaysian: ever-evolving, fluid, and welcoming. It has played host to everything from disco and joget to left-field electronics, working with some of the best collectives and selectas in the city who shape its programming and make fono what it is. Come on a Friday night and the setting is akin to lounging at a friend’s cosy living room—albeit one powered by vintage 70s speakers—listening to strictly-vinyl funk and soul sets. Come the following night and you’re sweating it out on the dancefloor to DJs slinging dub, jungle, and breakfast techno.

fono counts among its community a wide network of DJs and selectas, artists, musicians, designers, and more. Uzair, who fronts operations, has cultivated a core team made up of a rotating crew of six who pitch in with programming, barkeeping, and so on; most are fono resident DJs. “Aside, we have friends and volunteers who, actually, were guests first. I consider them part of the extended fono family,” he says. The founders, who have known each other for more than a decade as mutuals coming up in the club scene, believe in paying your dues and putting in the hours. “You can throw a party every three months or six months, etcetera, but I don’t think that’s a scene,” Rudy says. “You want to develop a scene, you know, you have to do it consistently and you have to do it for a long time.”

fono struggled to survive the pandemic’s long tail. After over a year of COVID-19 closures, it made a plea on its social media: “We need your help.” As a self-sustaining space—“It’s not like we have a benefactor,” Rudy chuckles—fono had depleted its resources to cover its long-overdue rent and utility bills. “We just straight up said, ‘Look, we need donations or we’re going to have to shut down.’ People stepped up, including guests from overseas who had been here and had visited us once or a few times. It kind of came from everywhere,” he says.

Since then, music has made a halting but hard-won return. “It’s a constant struggle,” Uzair says. “But in a way, it’s also been a blessing. The pandemic has reset people’s musical palates; not being able to go out to loud bars and clubs meant that people were listening to and discovering more new music at home, and then finding out that a place such as fono exists, and making their way here.” A bit of trivia, as Rudy tells GRAZIA Malaysia: fono is a wordplay on phono, the analogue connection. “From the music to the people, we’re all about real, analogue connections.”

The neighbourhood of Kampung Attap may have changed beyond all recognition—nearby is Merdeka 118, the world’s second-tallest building, officially opened in 2024—but fono has stayed true to its roots. “The listening bars in Japan, they’ve been around for like, twenty years, but they’re still the same: they’re small and they don’t change their decor,” Uzair says. “We’re partly inspired by that—to have something timeless.”