Skip to content →

3 Mustaphas 3

Ah, the 3 Mustaphas 3, a veritable gang of related musicians trained in the unforgiving and terrible mire of the Crazy Loquat Club in the Balkan town of Szegerely. They might never have been discovered if not for their canny and dubious Uncle Patrel Mustapha, who had them illegally transported inside refrigerators to London in the summer of 1982…

None of which was remotely true, of course, but it was a good story. The Mustaphas — I don’t think there were ever less than six of them, and sometimes they appeared to be an army of probable mental patients — were in fact a bunch of musicians with a Britsh core in love with what was not yet called "world music." These were people who could go from klezmer to five different African styles to Cajun to Mexican songs sung in Hindi in the space of… three or four minutes, frankly, which could occasionally make them a challenging listen. The three albums I know of were berserk world tours of music.

This medley from the album HEART OF UNCLE is pretty much as slow and sober as the Mustaphas ever got, but I think it’s also one of the loveliest things they ever did.


Published in aeropiratika