Floods: traditional music instruments damaged at UiTM Shah Alam storage

Situated in the Section 17 Campus, Shah Alam, the UiTM's Faculty of Music’s storage rooms were swept by knee-deep flood waters, leaving a trail of destruction and broken instruments. Photo: Faculty of Music, UiTM Shah Alam

A university staff member gently holds up and drains water from a flood-soaked traditional geduk drum (used for wayang kulit shows), another volunteer slowly places a cracked and damp classical guitar on a bench for it to dry, while the rest of the students arrange assorted brass instruments, flight cases and traditional instruments, including gamelan (gong) stands, on large mats in a car park area.

These were some of the rescue scenes coming out of the Faculty of Music, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) Malaysia in Shah Alam in Selangor this week, as lecturers and students began to clean up and slowly dry all kinds of instruments after last weekend's catastrophic flooding.