Sabah Habas Mustapha (Colin Bass) Phone Interview Date likely 1998
This started out to be one of the most nighmarish interviews in my experience, because we went in different directions on the Mustapha myth. It was saved when we started talking about Indonesia, and turned out as great fun.
Szegerely...this is the homeland of all Mustaphas. Or all Mustaphas that I know anyway. You have a large family? Extremely large, and its very difficult to support them all. You've done some music as well to support them? Yes, money is one way to create an ongoing ingoing and outgoing financial situation, as well as being something that one does because one loves it. You've been using the music of your country to...as well as England... No I wouldn't say that. I'd say "the music of the country is also the music of all countries. I will try and explain. I would say that Szegerely is the capital of your imagination, and it was a place where we all grew up together...my family of Mustaphas and myself. At this place, we heard many different things, we heard...our local borders were radio and we used to like to listen to lots of radio stations, and instead of just playing the music that everybody was playing in our particular town, we started to play music from every town. And we tried to learn music from all different countries to try and find out how you play different things, how you play different instruments and that is how the family orchestra 3 Mustaphas 3 began. And we started by trying to get a repertoire together from all over the world. And trying to sing in all different languages and that is how we started the 3 Mustaphas 3. And... Are you familiar with the 3 Mustaphas 3? I have heard of them, yes. But you havent actually heard their work? Oh yeh. So that you will know that on each CD there are songs from different countries, some quite diverse and that's what we tried to do. Then with my own things...because of the 3 Mustaphas 3, we tried to work and do concerts in 1991, but since then I have gotten involved in the music scene in Indonesia., because by accident I became quite a success there, because a song that I wrote became very very popular, and so kept going back to Indonesia...because when you have a success you make friends and contacts and since then I've recorded 2 albums there with Indonesian musicians and that included the one you have called Jalan Kopo. I actually have the other one too, and the first time I listened to it I said, ooo, it's pop music. Yeh, it IS pop music! And then it grew on me... Oh thank you! I can tell you a little bit about that if you like. The first album, Denpasar Moon, Denpasar Moon is in fact the song that became a big success in Indonesia. And I originally made that record for a Japanese firm...a Japanese record company. They really wanted apop record. I said I would like to make a record with some pop musicians in Jakarta, who play the local pop music which is called dangdut, and so yes, I made that record for the Japanese record company, and so I purposely sent it in a pop direction. Because I think that pop music is sort of an international communications language. I may be wrong... It probably is. I have a CD from the Smithsonian called Indonesian Popular music. I know that one. I was listening to your album and about the first 6 songs...or maybe 4 songs...and they really do seem similar in a way. Yes, because the first songs on the Smithsonian Institute are by Rhoma Irama, and they are very big dangdut style and I used some of the same musicians that they sometimes used, in other words I used the session musicians in Jakarta who play on the pop records of jakarta. Like some of the best Tabla players. The main instrument in the Indonesian pop music like dangdut is the tabla. But they call it the gendang.but it's played very much like a tabla drum. It has this swooping sound. So I used one of the best, Madi.He was a very good gendang player. And of course a very distinctive feature is also the bamboo flute, and I used a Mr. Suki on the bamboo flute and he's really a very excellent session musician from Jakarta. They are always busy in the recording studios, these gentlemen. Now if I were to go to Indonesia would I hear this type of music anywhere I go or on the radio? Oh yes, absolutely. If you go to the cities, you will hear it coming from the cassette players. Coming from the cassette shops, and if you go around in Jakarta, if you go to a place called The Big Mango, that's at the mango bazaar, its in the bazaar area of town. Do they speak English there. Sorry? Do they speak English in Indonesia. Some people do. OK. Some people do, not a lot but not a lot. It's quite easy to get a basic grasp of the Indonesian language. It has a much easier grammatic structure because it was devised as a lingua franca for the whole archipelago because there are so many different languages in Indonesia. So it has a very simple basic grammatic structure. Of course there are great poetry in the heart of Indonesia. But it is not difficult to get a grasp of the basics. But I think you'll find that a number of people speak English...students and young people, they like to practice their English. I think if you walk down the streets of Jakarta, you are guaranteed that someone will come up and want to start talking English to you, just to practice. Now in this album, to get a little bit away from Indonesia and back to music, in your album you're mixing in a whole bunch of styles from around the world... Trying to, yes. And one of them that I've actually played a couple of times is "Too Much Luggage." Ha ha, oh yes thank you. Because it sounds like Texas. That's right, you're from Texas. Yeh. And how do people think of it there? I haven't heard any comments. Oh, they probably didnt take any notice. Well, it sounds like Texas, but you have a whole bunch of different people on it. Well, on that one, its pretty sparse, but it does have the Javanese fiddle in it. You know it's like a one string violin. That's why it has that sort of eyeyeyyey. Sound and they play it in a particular style and so I think that makes it into a sort of country and eastern. So of course it is a true story. Is it? Oh absolutely. It's about standing in the rain in the Bandung station waiting to get on the train to Suramaya. And it's an interesting experience. When the train comes in you really have to be quick to get into the train and get your seat. Especially when it's pouring with rain. But of course if you are carrying too much luggage then you have a problem. It's like the tube, huh? Yeh, like the tube! It's like the tube. You've been to London. I've been to London, yeh, To get back to your album, I guess we're still there, which one do you like the best? That's very difficult because they are all different moods. And sometimes when I am in a melancholy mood I like "Sailing Home" myself, but when I like to think about "Bandung," I like the song "Bandung." I wrote that about the town where I recorded the music. I can always see the picture there. Sounds like it's a nice place. Maybe I'll go visit there someday. Bandung is a very nice town. And it's a real cultural center because it's the capital city of the Sunda province in West Java. And in Sunda they have a very old history of music, gamelan music, and they have a beautiful tradition of music there that it is very haunting. Very haunting melodies, very melancholic sound. And I am very attracted to this, that's why I went to Bandung for the second album, too. To try and get that haunting sound of the flute. Kecapi, which is a very large part of the record for me, which is played by...my friend and he's very very good. The Kecapi is sort of the Javanese zither. It's shaped like a boat with strings on top, each string has a little bridge and there are about 21, maybe 25 strings. It's a beautiful instrument and that is the stringed instrument you can hear most of the way through. Now if you go back, say 100 years into the Indonesian music, do you have a lot of western influence then, or just now...or any western influence? Yeh, that's interesting, because obviously in the pop music, there has been western influence. Now among the younger people western music only accounts for about 18% of all cassette sales.But there is a lot of Indonesian music that is a version of western pop. They have their own rap groups...very good rap groups...because they can do it, they have a similar feeling for this. And they have rock groups, the young men with long hair and guitars. But they also have their own traditional music that keeps going, keeps continuous, and this is I would say without western influence. Although I have heard at times a western tune creeping into the traditional repertoire, because they're very adaptable the musicians there. But I think the Indonesian pop, the dangdut, evolved from the popular music of the 40s and the 50s which came really from Malaysia and which in turn was influenced by sort of the Hollywood Latin music. So that started coming in the Indonesian pop in the 40s and 50s after independence. But before that, in the 30s, there were lots of musicians in Jakarta who would play the colonial masters there, the Dutch in the hotels and things and they would be expected to play western songs and western hits. And so amongst musicians in the cities, these influences, they had to learn how to play these things they had to learn how to play jazz, the charleston, the Beguine and things. Pretty scary. Yeh, and that's how amongst musicians, when they learn these things they start to influence the local music, and that's how Indonesian pop evolved, that way...but it's been evolving a long long time. Now I was reading that this particular album...your last album was high up there on the charts in Europe. Yeh, indeed.. Yeh, it was in the...what do they call it now, oh my goodness me, it was in the European world music charts. It was number 3. Wow. It was number 3 for 2 months. Wow. And I was very very surprised. Do you perform that in Europe then? It seems like you would have to carry a band with you. No no that's the problem. I have only done a couple of small scale acoustic performances. I havent been able to actually promote the album as such in a performance because it's very expensive. It's very expensive to get the guys from Indonesia. You play bass? I play bass, right, I also play guitar and keyboards and program the drums on the record. But if we played live I would be playing bass and guitar. I'm not sure actually...but that's something I still look for the opportunity to get some of the guys over from Indonesia and tour. Do you perform with any other Mustaphas now? Well, that's interesting because we actually are in talk with each other. Because we are getting together next April in London. We are organizing a festival and playing at the South Bank of the Royal Festival Hall. And that will be 3 Mustaphas 3 plus special guests still under negotiation. We will try and get some interesting people from different countries. Now if I were to go to England and look for Mustapha type music are there people that are coming up in the music world that are sort of Mustapha like in England that are good right now? That's interesting. There are. The names escape me. I'm not living in England at the moment. My base is in Berlin in Germany. That's probably why you have all those German labels in.. That's right. That's where I'm based in Berlin so you would have to ask my brother Hijaz for example. He's living in London and he's always telling me about groups that he's seen that he's though were interesting in a Mustaphic sort of way. How about in Germany then? Not so much. But there is a very good group from Frankfurt called the Schal Sick Brass Band. I think I've heard of them. They have a CD...2 CDs now...and they are very very good. I have seen them live and had a lot of fun. I laughed a lot and they are very very good. So I can recommend that as an example of people who are putting together different things in one pot. OK, well, any other notes about life or anything. Well, I would say "Focus on what you are doing and put off gratification until later.