Maulidur Rasul Marathon

Phew! The recent Maulidur Rasul had been very hectic for all us in the Madani team. With three events to be covered scattered around Klang Valley it's a record number of events in one day for us. Our day started in the at midnight. We just finished of surveying the condition at SMK Sri Aman and have some discussion with the organizers. Then we had a late dinner at 'German' stall at Petaling Jaya. The makcik still remembered us even though our last visit was almost a year ago and she still give us discount. Thanks a lot makcik.

Back in Keramat, we still can't hit the beds. Several things need to be sorted out, such as designating drivers, songs, and other small stuffs. As the teacher requested a Raihan song I looked up for the lyrics online and gave to the singers to practice. Meanwhile Farid the Co-Manager readies to pick up Aie at Puduraya. Next I prepare the minus one and minus two CDs. I load up minus twos from Madani and minus ones from Nowseeheart. Added some Saujana minus ones for good measure as well. I got to sleep earlier than the others (as usual) and set the alarm.

Around 6.15am we woke up after around 4 hours of sleep. Aie had arrived although his bus was late one hour and only arrive at 4am. He managed to get some sleep aboard the bus so he's not that groggy and pretty much alert. As we had two events that requested nasyid performance at 8.50am we had to split the team to two teams. Each team have three singers, one technician, and a manager cum photographer. For SMK Pandan Indah we send Kamal, Haziq, Adil, Acap jr. and Farid. Zaki, Acap, Aie, and I went to SMK Sri Aman. Juz is already in PJ so he just walk over to the school.

At PJ, our PA system provider is already busy setting up the equipments. The father and son team recently helped us a lot and we are very happy with them as well.



The event started later than scheduled and delayed for about 20 minutes. Meanwhile at Pandan Indah their event went on time so by the time we started the performance at PJ the other team had already packed up and headed towards PJ.

After a string of selawat songs the event is passed to the speaker and we headed to the canteen for our break. Just as we are about to dig in the breakfast provided the other team propped up at the door. My, we must been real late or those guys had been driving real fast. (I suspect the latter though).

The breakfast served is Nasi Lemak - nice but not really suitable for singers. No complaints from my boys though and they walloped it clean.

The organizers requested several songs such as Doa Perpisahan from Brothers and Keluarga Bahagia from Saujana. We almost had to perform Mawi's Seroja when it turned out the speaker wants to play a cassette and unfortunately our PA system provider didn't bring any cassette player. Fortunately, we do bring a cassette player (although we almost forgotten about it) so that saved us.



For the next round of performance Madani sang out Guruku, Buatmu Ibu, and Light of Love from our own collection. Keluarga Bahagia from Saujana, Hijrah and Damai from Nowseeheart. Plus Doa Perpisahan from Brothers. For the first time ever we performed with live piano music for Buatmu Ibu. Zaki played the piano and the rest sing it out. That proved to be well-loved by the audiences and Zaki particularly got special attention at that time.

With so many songs, it already like a Madani concert at SMK Sri Aman! Those singers doesn't mind the numbers though - with a good setup and complete members their 'feel' is at the max. Add that with a receptive audience (male singers at girls school - go figure) they almost didn't want to stop singing!

But of course, such a performance is particularly taxing on the stamina so all of us went kaput once we got back at Keramat. Having a good rest is vital, another performance is coming up at night.



Our night at UiTM is pretty much normal - just performing two songs at the beginning of the Forum Perdana. But we do have a fair share of snags - inadequate microphone which is thankfully resolved when the UiTM do have extra and our techies took over the control panel at Dewan Sri Budiman. And quite embarrassingly, we left a pair of baju melayu behind so Kamal had to be the odd one out wearing shirt and blazers.

We wrapped up our day with dinner at section 2, Shah Alam. Bleary eyed and exhausted it didn't dampen our spirit. It been quite a while since all six singers is available and we are looking forward for great things to come.

Perlis, watch for us this Friday! :)