In this age of MTV and hip-hop, it’s hard to imagine a group of teenage boys wanting to spend hours doing something uncool: learning to play traditional musical instruments from an old guy. But that is the remarkable scene that greets TAN GIM EAN in a shed in Kelantan. 

THEY are young, shy and tongue-tied. When a horde of visitors converges on their attap shed one Saturday morning in September and starts asking how they feel about learning to play the gendang and gong under a master, they are stumped for words.