The author with Sandra Pragas, showcasing the three-part book and CD trilogy Tranquility by Datuk Peter Pragas
Borneo columnist Joseph Tek Choon Yee sat down for a heartfelt conversation with Sandra Bernadette Pragas, daughter of the late Datuk Peter Pragas – the Father of Sabah Modern Music – during the launch of Tranquility: Piano Impressions, the final chapter of her father’s book-CD trilogy.
Ask any young Sabahan today: “Do you know who composed Kasaakazan do Bambaazon?” That evergreen Kaamatan anthem – echoing across paddy fields and community halls – feels so ancient and natural that one might imagine it drifting down from the hills with the morning mist.
The lyrics were penned by the gifted Datuk Claudius Sundang Alex – but words need wings, and every song needs a melody. This one found its maestro in Datuk Peter Pragas, the renowned composer hailed as the Father of Sabah Music and Father of Sabah Modern Music.
He didn’t just craft tunes; he tuned the heart of a people. He didn’t merely write notes; he wrote identity. Through Kasaakazan do Bambaazon, he gave Sabah not just a harvest song, but an anthem for generations.
The timeless music of the Harvest Festival song Kasaakazan Do Bambaazon, composed by the late Datuk Peter Pragas
Morning Detour that Led to Music
Last Tuesday, I meant to attend Mass at Sacred Heart Cathedral but was, by divine design, detoured to the Carmelite Chapel instead. After Mass, a simple “hello” to a new face became a providential meeting: Sandra Pragas, daughter of the late Datuk Peter Pragas, preparing to launch the final volume of his Tranquility trilogy.
I joked that I’m musically illiterate, yet endlessly fascinated by how music, history, and family shape culture. That brief encounter stirred something deeper – a journey to rediscover the man behind Sabah’s musical heartbeat and his enduring hope that young Sabahans would one day find their own harmony in life.
The Man Who Heard the Grass Sing
Sometimes, destiny arrives disguised as a detour. It was the 1950s, Peter Pragas, a music director working at the Malayan Film Unit, now known as Filem Negara Malaysia (FNM) in Petaling Jaya decided to take a holiday. A simple visit to his sister in Jesselton, now Kota Kinabalu, would alter not only his life but the musical destiny of an entire state.
One morning, he heard them – the local grass-cutters, their machetes rhythmically swaying in the tropical sun, their voices rising in pentatonic cadence. No orchestra. No stage. Just labourers at dawn humming the melody of the land.
Years later, he would recall that morning with the clarity of revelation: “The songs were beautiful, but limited in range … I imagined what it would be like to give them a chorus.”
And so began the story of the man who didn’t just compose music – he gave Sabah its chorus and Sabah Musical Style was born. In that simple thought lay his lifelong vision: to uplift, to unite and to give voice to a land whose melodies had long waited to be heard.
The Pragas Family Portrait Collection: The late Peter and his beloved wife, the late Helen; their late youngest daughter Jeanette; Adrian with Sandra; and late Peter with Sandra (Photo Credit: Pragas Family and Joanna Funk)
From Penang to Jesselton: The Leap of Faith
Born in Penang on 30 October 1926, Peter Pragas learned his first lessons in music from his father, Arputhananathan Maria Pragasam, the organist and choir master of St. Francis Xavier Church. By seven, he was already enchanted by Gregorian chant and soon playing the church organ himself.
At fifteen, he was awarded a Queen’s Scholarship to Cambridge, but the opportunity was denied.
Undeterred, he turned disappointment into improvisation – performing at City Lights and Wembley cabarets, and touring with Bangsawan troupes across northern Malaya.
During the war, he joined the police at seventeen, later became a tapioca farmer, and still played in cabarets to keep melody and spirit alive. After the war, he completed his studies, worked at the RAF base in Changi, and formed a band that frequently played on Radio Singapore.
By his twenties, he was composing and scoring films for the Malayan Film Unit in Petaling Jaya, earning a handsome RM2,000 a month – a small fortune then. Yet the call of Sabah lingered. So when Radio Sabah offered him the role of Music Director for only RM450 a month, friends thought he’d lost his senses.
Peter simply smiled: “I’m chasing the music, not the money.” It was the first of many decisions that would define him – quiet defiance rooted not in rebellion, but in purpose and mission.
The late Peter Pragas and the Sabah Serenaders – a timeless echo from Sabah’s musical yesteryears (Photo Credit: Pragas Family)
The Making of a Musical Identity
Arriving in North Borneo in 1957, Peter Pragas found himself in a cultural crossroads unlike any other.
Dozens of ethnic groups, languages and rhythms intertwined: Kadazan and Dusun, Murut and Bajau, Chinese and Malay, each with their own folk songs, gongs and dance beats.
To the untrained ear, it was a cacophony. To Peter Pragas, it was a goldmine. He took it as his mission to blend these sounds – to shape a distinctly Sabahan identity in music, one that would be both rooted in tradition and open to the world.
In Radio Sabah, Peter Pragas set out to do something few had dared to imagine – to build a sound that truly belonged to Sabah, a Sabah Musical Style. From a modest studio, he began assembling what would become the legendary Sabah Serenaders, a fusion ensemble that married the familiar hum of Western instruments with the soul of indigenous ones.
The bungkau, or jaw harp, twanged in harmony beside the electric guitar; the suling, a bamboo flute, whispered its airy tones over the mellow voice of the saxophone; and the sompoton, the traditional mouth organ of the Kadazan people, danced lightly with the piano. These were not random pairings, but carefully woven dialogues – a meeting of rhythm and resonance, of heritage and modernity.
In doing so, he didn’t merely compose music; he engineered conversations – between cultures, instruments and generations. Every note he arranged became a bridge linking the past to the present, proving that when traditions meet creativity, harmony is not just possible – it is inevitable.
The Father of Sabah Modern Music
Under Peter Pragas’ conducting baton, Radio Sabah became a cradle of creativity. He composed and arranged dozens of songs that gave new life to local melodies, transforming simple folk tunes into modern arrangements that could hold their own on any stage.
One of his more iconic compositions, Kanou Sumazau became the opening theme of the Kadazan service on Radio Sabah for decades – a cheerful call to rhythm that every Sabahan of a certain generation could hum from memory.
He also launched Radio Talentime, a musical scouting initiative that traversed towns and villages to discover young voices. Many of those who emerged from his guidance would go on to define Sabah’s post-independence music scene.
He didn’t just teach people to perform – he taught them to listen. “I loved to teach the guitarists who didn’t read music,” he once said. “I used to play new chords to them on the piano. They had to listen and to learn.”
Peter Pragas received numerous accolades, including a Datukship in 2004, for his contributions to music and community service. Among his many achievements were pioneering music broadcasting in Sabah, introducing talent showcases for young musicians, composing landmark works such as Land Below the Wind (1979) and Sabah Centennial Celebration (1981), mentoring a generation of artists, and founding the Sabah Association of Senior Citizens in 1987 – a reflection of his compassion beyond the stage.
The Humble Maestro
To understand Peter Pragas’s impact, one must understand what Sabah was in the 1950s and ’60s – a young, developing society finding its voice. Oil had not yet replaced agriculture; folk songs filled more airwaves than pop hits.
Peter Pragas gave that voice structure. He taught Sabahans not to discard tradition in pursuit of progress, but to refine it. His arrangements turned Sumazau rhythms into orchestral expressions. His fusions of piano and gong became prototypes of cultural confidence.
Today, when a Kadazan folk melody meets a modern jazz chord progression, or when a Sabah youth band incorporates bamboo flutes into their sound, his fingerprints are there – gentle, guiding, invisible yet unmistakable.
Those who knew him remember a man who led not from the podium, but from the piano bench. He didn’t scold; he coaxed. He didn’t demand attention; he invited collaboration. Friends and colleagues recall him as “a humble soul, always a friend – always willing to listen and to help, sharing the little that he had.”
He believed in the slow art of mastery. “Think of making the music first,” he often said. “The money comes later.” It was a philosophy that shaped both his art and his life – a quiet conviction that sincerity would always outlast success.
Sabah’s Talent: Legacy & Opportunity
If you had asked Peter Pragas what made Sabah’s music special, he would have answered without pause: “The native music of Sabah is so beautiful and Sabah people are very, very musical.” Not could be, but are.
He saw it everywhere: in kampung choirs, village festivals and police bands, in the rhythm of the paddy fields and the bamboo flutes that sang at dusk. The gift was already there; what was missing were the means. Music education in Sabah isn’t available to the general population. Only those with money can learn. To him, the issue was never talent but access – no shortage of melody, only microphones. What Sabah needed, he believed, were not skyscrapers of sound but scaffolds of support: small grants, open studios and a little faith in young dreamers with big voices.
It wasn’t prophecy, it was a roadmap. There was a vision in him that saw beyond the present, a mission that reached toward the future. He aspire to inspire. And decades later, his words still ring true. From church choirs to laptops in bedrooms, from bamboo flutes to Bluetooth speakers, young Sabahans continue to create – proving that talent thrives even when opportunity lags.
Peter Pragas often sought his muse in nature. He would take long drives alone or with his family into the countryside, listening to the rhythm of rain, the rustle of palms, the hush of dusk. For him, music was not born in studios but in the soul of the land – in wind, mountains, harvest and harmony. His legacy remains a timeless reminder: talent must meet opportunity, and investing in music is not a luxury, but an act of cultural faith.
A Life Scored in Major and Minor
Yet behind every major key lies its minor counterpart – the bittersweet harmony that deepens a song’s soul.
Peter Pragas’s life, too, carried both melody and melancholy. His beloved wife, Helen Chung, was his quiet anchor. Together they raised Adrian, Sandra and Jeanette, nurturing a home that pulsed with faith, laughter, discipline and music.
Then came the silence no composer could bear. In 2012, Jeanette passed away; a year later, in 2013, Helen followed. For Peter Pragas, the loss was profound – a silence unlike any other. Yet from that silence, he found a new kind of sound: one of remembrance, grace and faith.
Peter Pragas passed away on 30 June 2014, aged 87 leaving Adrian and Sandra to continue his melody – to ensure that the harmony he built between family, music and Sabah would never fade.
Tranquility: A Legacy Beyond the Score
In 2013, Peter Pragas released what would become his final creative offering – Tranquility, a 17-track album that was less a farewell than a reflection. It wasn’t an album of ambition, but of arrival – a musical memoir breathing in slow, tender waves: nostalgic, wistful, profoundly human.
Before his passing, his daughter Sandra promised she would see his vision through. The Maestro, frail yet lucid, smiled and nodded – a silent benediction. Tranquility is completed this year as the final part of a book-CD trilogy, it became more than an album. It was a love letter across generations – a promise fulfilled by his children, Sandra and Adrian, who carried forward their father’s rhythm of purpose.
By then, Peter Pragas had already done more than anyone to weave together the musical tapestry of Sabah. Long before “multiculturalism” or “muhibbah” became a slogan, he was already composing it, blending communities through melody and proving that unity could be heard, not just seen.
For half a century, his music stitched the heartbeat of the land – from the earthy breath of the sompoton and the twang of the bungkau, to the tender cadence of his piano. Tranquility became not just a tribute, but a continuation – a duet between father and children, completing the melody that began long ago in Jesselton, when a young musician once heard grass-cutters singing and thought, “What if I gave them a chorus?”
That chorus still echoes – not only in the music he left behind, but in the hearts of those who still listen, and still believe that from the simplest tune, harmony can bloom into the Sabah Musical Style.
The Maestro’s Lasting Note
Imagine him one last time: an elderly man at his piano in a quiet corner of Kota Kinabalu, hands trembling, eyes still bright. He plays a few familiar bars – something between prayer and memory – the notes drifting into the evening air. Somewhere, a radio plays Kanou Sumazau; somewhere else, a child hums along. The Maestro smiles, for in every note, Sabah is still singing.
Peter Pragas’s life offers lessons that reach far beyond music. He placed purpose before paycheck, believing sincerity outlasts salary. Culture, to him, was alive – evolving, never frozen – where tradition and modernity could dance the sumazau together. He led not by command but by inspiration, leaving every student and colleague feeling part of a chorus larger than themselves.
When the last track of Tranquility fades, you are left not with silence but serenity – the same calm that marked the man. Sabah will remember him not merely as a composer but as a cultural architect: a builder of bridges through melody, meaning, and unity.
His life remains a quiet parable for anyone who has ever wondered whether art can change a community. His answer was music; his proof, the generations that followed. And in an age obsessed with numbers and noise, there once lived a man who chose melody over money — and in doing so, gave Sabah its musical soul.
He did not chase fame or fortune; he composed meaning.
He gave Sabah not just music, but harmony.
Not just melody, but identity.
Not just songs, but its chorus
– the enduring echo of the Land Below the Wind that still sings because one man had the heart and the humility to listen first.
What’s Next
As our conversation drew to a close, I asked Sandra what comes after Tranquility. She shared her next mission: to pursue with the Veteran Singers & Composers Tribute – a book with audio-visual recordings – and reviving Land Below the Wind with handwritten scores and the original EMI tracks. The biggest challenge, she admitted, is securing the funding to bring these dreams to life.
Still, her resolve was unmistakable. The mission continues – to restore Sabah’s distinctive musical voice and honour the veterans who shaped it. And listening to her, I couldn’t help but feel hopeful that Sabah’s rich musical spirit will keep rising, echoing proudly into the future.
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