Meditasi was midway through the second song of a planned 10-song set at the Teruntum Rock Festival in Kuantan, Pahang, Malaysia, on Saturday, July 18, 2026, when the drumming stopped. Frontman Bakaruddin Daud turned toward the riser and saw Raja Azreen Raja Talib — the drummer he had known for decades — slumped over his kit. The 56-year-old Malaysian musician never regained consciousness.
Bakaruddin, who goes by Burn, told the Malaysian daily Kosmo that he called his bandmate’s name and patted him and got nothing back, and that the drummer’s body was already cold. “I rushed towards him, but I could feel that [he] was gone,” Burn told the Malaysian newspaper Berita Harian, speaking in Malay.
Out front, the crowd understood quickly that something had gone wrong, and Burn said fans were alarmed as the scene unfolded. He said he was truly shocked and deeply saddened to lose a musician he had known for most of his adult life.
Rushed to the Hospital After the Collapse
Staff at the nearby Tengku Ampuan Afzan Hospital gave Raja Azreen respiratory assistance after he was brought in. He did not respond and was pronounced dead. His brother, Raja Azman Raja Taib, told Berita Harian that the death came just before 11 p.m. local time on July 18, with heart complications as the cause. Azman also said his brother had taken part in a cycling competition immediately before travelling to Kuantan, and that he understood he had won it.
The breathing support changed nothing, Azman said; the drummer never came around after collapsing. His heart had already given the family reason to worry. Azman said Raja Azreen was hospitalized in June 2026 with heart problems, and it was not a short stay.
Two Hospital Stays and a Diabetes Diagnosis
There were two admissions in all, his brother said, the first running two to three weeks before Raja Azreen was readmitted. Both Azman and Burn said the drummer had recently been diagnosed with diabetes.
His health rebounded enough, though, for him to pick up the pursuits he loved most away from music. Raja Azreen was passionate about sports, and once he was back on his feet he kept entering competitions. “It is possible that extreme fatigue took a toll on his heart,” Azman said.
Nothing in the drummer’s demeanor beforehand pointed to a man in distress, his bandmate said. Burn described him as visibly happy to be back among friends at the festival, with no sign of illness or low spirits in the hours before Meditasi took the stage. Minutes later he was gone, midway through the second song of a set the band had played versions of for years.
Raja Azreen had planned the Teruntum show down to the wardrobe, asking his bandmates to dress head to toe in black and reminding them the performance should continue “no matter what,” according to comments reported August 24, 2026. The band had rehearsed for three days beforehand. The one thing Burn noticed was that his bandmate looked “very thin” — the reason, he said, that Raja Azreen chose a shirt over a T-shirt — and that he had been carefully managing his diet and avoiding sugar since the diabetes diagnosis.
Four Decades in Malaysian Rock
The band Raja Azreen anchored traces its roots to the mid-1980s, when it formed in Raub, Pahang. He was not a founding member, joining Meditasi around 1990, after the group had recorded its self-titled first album. He never married and cared for his elderly mother, Raja Amnah Raja Othman; he had once run a bicycle shop, and he lived with his mother in Ulu Yam, Selangor.
Meditasi’s breakthrough came at the turn of the 1990s, the peak of rock kapak, when Malay-language bands dominated cassette racks across the country and the biggest of them filled Kuala Lumpur’s Stadium Negara. Driving guitar rock and power ballads defined the era for a generation of listeners, and they built the group’s following. The band went quiet for years before reuniting in 2015, and as of Friday, August 28, it drew more than 47,000 monthly listeners on Spotify — an audience that mixes fans who remember the 1990s with younger ones discovering the catalog through streaming.
That reunion put Raja Azreen back behind the drums alongside Burn and guitarist Rosli Ahmad, and back on a festival circuit where Malaysian rock veterans still command loyal, loud crowds. Teruntum Rock Festival was one more stop on it.
Burn Handled the Funeral Arrangements
Decades of friendship tied the frontman to his drummer, and Burn said the death hit him hard. According to Azman, it was Burn who took care of all of the funeral arrangements — a task that fell to the bandmate standing onstage with him when he collapsed.
Burn told Berita Harian Online how quickly the minutes after the collapse moved. “We carried [him] backstage and within a few minutes the ambulance arrived. Alhamdulillah, everything was made easier,” he said in comments reported August 24, 2026.
Asked what comes next for Meditasi, Burn told Kosmo the band had not yet discussed it but would carry on. To Berita Harian he put it this way: “We will continue the group’s struggle. Because as [he] said, the show must go on. We are no longer chasing money, we just want to find friends and fill our free time.”
For now, the tributes from Malaysian rock fans have dwelled less on the shock of how he died than on how he lived — a musician who spent his final day competing in a BMX event, then headed straight to a festival to play the songs that made his band’s name.