Malaysian DJ samples indigenous music to spread land rights message in Sabah, hit by deforestation
Hip hop DJ Atama Katama is giving a voice to the voiceless in his homeland in Borneo, where palm oil and timber firms exploit indigenous tribes’ ancestral land
Atama Katama had spent a decade through the 1990s DJing hip hop at clubs across Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand when a fellow DJ asked him a question that sparked his curiosity about his indigenous roots in the Malaysian state of Sabah.
“Your father is the Bob Marley of Sabah. Have you ever thought of putting all the musical instruments your father taught you into your own music?” Atama recalls his friend asking.
Atama, who was born Andrew Ambrose but goes by the indigenous name given to him 12 years ago, likens his father, the late indigenous singer-songwriter Ambrose Mudi, to Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra. He had grown up among musicians, touring with them from the age of three.
He broke away from DJing and began sampling music by indigenous musicians from Sabah, adding a hip-hop beat and rapping his own lyrics, launching in 2005 an album titled My Tribal Roots.
It was after the album landed him in a stressful copyright court battle with a record company that Atama began digging deeper into his culture in Sabah, his homeland of rainforest and remote beaches on Borneo island.
