From Oral Tradition to Populist Performance: Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor and the Reimagining of the Malay Penglipur Lara in Contemporary Malaysia’s Political Culture

Abstract

This article examines the transformation of Malay oral tradition in contemporary Malaysian politics by reading the persona and rhetoric of Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor, the Chief Minister of Kedah, through the lens of the penglipur lara, or traditional storyteller, moralist, and social critic in Malay literary culture. The study argues that Sanusi embodies a post-traditional form of oral performativity that reanimates the aesthetics of storytelling, humour, and satire as instruments of populist communication. Methodologically, the study adopts a qualitative and interpretive approach grounded in cultural hermeneutics and performance analysis, drawing on transcribed speeches, media reports, and viral digital clips of Sanusi’s public appearances between 2020 and 2024. Through close reading of his idiomatic Kedahan speech, parables, and jocular self-fashioning, the article analyses how these oral performances function as semiotic tools that normalise political power through familiarity and nostalgia, and how their digital circulation intensifies their affective and populist impact. The analysis shows that by appropriating the voice, idiom, and affective intimacy of the penglipur lara, Sanusi performs a culturally embedded populism that resonates deeply with the Malay subaltern imagination, allowing him to bridge political authority and everyday sentimentality. The penglipur lara thus survives as a hybrid cultural form that is recontextualised through digital media and political populism, where folklore aesthetics become modes of persuasion, dissent, and self-legitimation. This article contributes empirically by offering a focused case study of Sanusi as a modern penglipur lara, and theoretically by extending debates on populism, performance, and Malay literary studies beyond Eurocentric models of political style. It advances a decolonisation reading of Malay culture by reasserting the epistemic vitality of oral tradition in interpreting modern political discourse and proposes “literature” not as static textuality, but as an evolving cultural performance that continues to shape collective imagination and political affect in the Malay world. By tracing this convergence between narrative, performance, and populist rhetoric, the article reveals how the penglipur lara persists as both memory and method in the making of Malaysia’s contemporary political culture.

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