3 Mustaphas 3

Long before anyone coined the phrase world music, 3 Mustaphas 3 were already blending disparate traditions into an exuberant patchwork of sound whose reach later touched performers across many continents. Their self-spun tale claimed the musicians had been smuggled in refrigerators from the enigmatic Balkan village of Szegerely, where they had performed at the Crazy Loquat Club, before reaching England; once there they supposedly performed not only local repertoire but also whatever oddities had turned up on the club’s wildly varied jukebox. That account, however colorful, was entirely fictitious. The actual story began in 1982 when guitarist and musicologist Ben Mandelson, performing as Hijaz Mustapha, joined forces with bassist Colin Bass, known as Sabah Habas Mustapha, and a shifting cast of musicians who all adopted fictitious Mustapha family names; among them was former Damned member Lu Edmonds, who quickly mastered the saz and other regional stringed instruments. The resulting repertoire, captured on disc and delivered onstage, pulled freely from Latin, African, Indian, filmi, country, and Balkan sources—any style encountered became fair game. The group maintained a steady schedule of concerts throughout Britain and Europe and even reached the United States, yet waited until 1987 to issue its first album, Shopping, on Mandelson’s own Globestyle imprint. Paul Simon’s Graceland had by then elevated the commercial visibility of global sounds, creating a larger audience ready for the Mustaphas’ idiosyncratic approach, and their touring calendar grew correspondingly demanding. Even so they found studio time, releasing the acclaimed Heart of Uncle in 1989 and Soup of the Century the following year. They developed a devoted following that encompassed world-music aficionados, hippies, and punks alike, all drawn by the band’s irreverent wit and steadfast refusal to treat any subject, least of all themselves, with solemnity. Beneath the comedy lay a skilled though deliberately unruly musical intelligence and a genuine regard for the traditions they sampled. How long such an enterprise could be sustained remained an open question. In 1991 the retrospective Friends, Fiends & Fronds gathered alternate mixes, singles, and scarce recordings, occupying the interval. Live appearances continued, albeit at a reduced pace. By 1992 still no fresh studio album had appeared, and the collective seemed on the verge of dissolution. A year later, with new material nowhere in sight and performances increasingly infrequent, it appeared that 3 Mustaphas 3 had simply ceased to exist. Sabah Habas Mustapha turned to his own projects, exploring Indonesian dangdut and scoring a major Asian success with the song “Denpasar Moon,” while also taking the bass chair in the veteran prog-rock band Camel. Lu Edmonds joined the Mekons for touring and recording. Mandelson concentrated on production work for Globestyle. Nevertheless the Mustaphas never issued a definitive farewell; they repeatedly stated that a reunion would occur if the financial terms proved adequate, though no satisfactory proposal ever materialized. The nearest approach came when Mandelson and Edmonds both served in Billy Bragg’s backing ensemble the Blokes, beginning in 1998. Although no concerts were announced, Mandelson and Bass did convene in a studio in early 2001 to compile material for a long-delayed live album slated for release that summer.