Lin Loves

so if you don’t know already, im not a big music fan. i don’t own an ipod. i don’t actively search for new acts heck i honestly dun even listen to the radio. the only time i check out music is when someone says “hey you gotta listen to this” and when i go to any of The Pinholes gig to support them. but today while i was at Esplanade (just because haikal and i decided from sometime ago that whenever we run out of ideas as to where to go, we’d just head down to esplanade to check out free performances, but i digress really) i decided to get myself a cd. this is again very rare, i think the last cd i bought was n*sync’s, no strings attached. -_- anw i decided to get Yuna. you can check her out here. she’s really a great singer, even the guy over the counter said so, and i was really lucky to get like the last copy in the store. you noe the first time i listened to her i was like hey this girl is fantastic, i love her voice and her music. then i stepped back and wondered if im judging her based on the fact that she dons the hejab. and i know that there is a great great possibilty that i am biased. so i tried being as objective as possible and ……….i think she great.

sometimes i feel that wearing the hejab lowers peoples’ expectations of you. it’s definitely harder for people to see beyond the “tudung girl” image. the first thing people do when they realise that you don the hejab is find areas of criticism that might contradict your image as a woman clad in hejab the next is to try to fit you into a category of “tudung wearers”. sometimes i also feel that people forget the whole thing about diversity when embracing religion and individual experience and unique human histories, but that’s another story altogether. the reason why i felt compelled to listen to Yuna with an objective ear is because i don’t want to think that she’s great just because she looks different. a hejab-ed singer singing indie songs is indeed rare (well at least for me) and it’s easy to think she’s great just because what she’s deviating from her desired image (in a good way).  i want people to know that the hejab is not our ONLY identity. it is a big part of my identity, but there’s really more to me. sometimes people forget the whole part about the functioning brain under that piece of cloth. i can go on and on really but i stop short at being self-indulgent.

image from facebook.