Biography
Originally active in England's pub rock circuit of the 1970s, the bassist later known as Sabah Habas Mustapha first performed alongside African percussionist Gaspar Lawal before shifting into progressive rock with the Steve Hillage Band. He subsequently joined Camel, an association that continues to the present, and this connection helped give rise to the unrecorded Orchestra Jazira at the start of the 1980s, whose participants later established 3 Mustaphas 3. In that pioneering worldbeat group, born Colin Bass, he engaged with musical traditions spanning every continent. After the ensemble disbanded, his interests turned toward Indonesian pop, yielding an Asian hit single while he maintained a livelihood as a radio presenter in his adopted city of Berlin and built a reputation as a leading world music record producer. Early journeys to Indonesia had centered on locating recordings for licensing through the Piranha and Globestyle labels. On one return visit, a Jakarta-based producer urged him to attempt the local dangdut pop style himself. The outcome was 1994's Denpasar Moon, whose title track rose to prominence across Asia and generated more than fifty cover versions, although Mustapha received minimal royalties owing to the character of Asian copyright statutes. His primary earnings derived from production work that encompassed artists from the Klezmatics to Tarika. Three years afterward he traveled to Bandung, the capital of Sunda in West Java, to explore Sundanese traditions with a studio ensemble he named the Jugala All Stars. The resulting album retained Javanese forms yet overlaid the playful sensibility that had defined the Mustaphas, as heard in "Artur Asaki," a tribute to the late British comedian Arthur Askey. In 2000 he issued So La Li, credited to Sabah Habas Mustapha & the Jugala All Stars, a more ensemble-focused and roots-oriented collection whose lyrics drew on traditional Sundanese texts. A European tour for the band was planned for 2001, while Mustapha continued to divide his schedule among his own projects, hosting a German world music radio program, and playing bass for Camel.
Albums