SUKMAIRAMA/RAPSODI

Almost 20 years ago, in early 90ies, I was just an ordinary officer of Radio Television Brunei. Myself and a group from Television Production Dept were in Singapore to iron out a musical programme under the MoU agreement in broadcasting between the two countries; Singapore and Brunei Darussalam.

We were almost finalising the content of the program but could not agree to a title. So my counterpart from SBC ( former name of MediaCorp TV) Anuar Rashid said. "Let’s relax and have makan.” So we were in a hotel restaurant where we stayed and served with variety of food including ketam. I said to myself, how am I going to crack the thick crab claw. Beside my plate there was an utensil like a pelayar pencabut paku. That must be the tool to open up the thick crab claw. True to my guess, it was the tool ! (seeing how my Singporeans friends used the utensil to crack the crab claw). Dalam hati terasa macam orang ulu banar saya ani. Really a cultural shock.

We were not just cracking the crab claw. We were cracking our heads as well to produce a name for the musical programme. That was to be done that evening kos we were leaving Singapore the next day. We were still blank, when all food already in our stomach. Then somebody voiced out “why don’t we borrow the restaurant’s name as a mark to our meeting ?”. Sukmaindera, that was the proposed name. There was a Malay element in the name. In fact one of the best designs in Malay Brunei weaving was named as Sukmaindera. But my Singapore friend Anuar Rashid said they wanted to maintain the image of city state Singapore. So they could not quite agree to Sukmaindera. “Indera” has something to do with kayangan. "Kayangan tak main," he said. So we took out indera and replaced with irama. Irama is melody and sukma is something from the heart. So Sukmairama is a melody from a heart. That was the original Sukmairama and how we arrived into the title.

In 2005 Sukmairama was changed to Rapsodi. I was already retired from Gov’t service and had to consult my friends in RTB. I was cracking my head again to know the meaning of this (Malay ?) word Rapsodi. Secondly, I wanna know, for curiosity sake, why they changed the name of the programme. I presumed it was something to do with rating. kos at that time (and now) people were talking about rating when mentioning about TV programmes. Maybe nobody open the file and find out the “rationale and agenda” of the original co-production which was to highlight the budaya and seni Melayu. Now, the show is more on contemporary, pop komersil, pop rock, ethnik kreatif and raps presentations.

Rapsodi “live” will be telecast on RTB TV 2 at 8.30 pm from Dewan Raya

As an outsider who was involve in the early stage of the production, I wish u all good luck and good wishes to the new teams.


Rapsodi press conferance on 25 Nov chaired by Haji Malai Hanafiah. Beside him are Othman Hasan, the Brunei Producer and Amirudin Abas Excutive Producer MediaCorp Singapore.


Co production programme means friendship among artists, sharing knowledge among crews, learning new production techniques and of course highlighting the programme agenda through the live show.


Meeting the local media, Hetty Sarlene from Singapore.

Another two artists from Singapore Hyrul Anuar and Maiya Rahman. Near, yet so far. Singapore to Brunei is just about 2 hours flight but not many Singaporeans visit Brunei compare to Bruneians visit Singapore. I'm sure the Singaporean artists learn a lot during their short stay in Brunei.

Brunei young and upcoming artist Siti Noor Maya Murnie Adi....Pre event Rapsodi live was shown/organised at Gaint Hypermarket Rima on 22 November as part of the programme publicity.

Mancho young artist from Singapore, Elfee Ismail.