Abdee Negara

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Abdee Negara
Born	June 28, 1968
Alias(es)	Abdee
Genre(s)	Rock, Blues
Affiliation(s)	Slank
Label(s)	Slank Records
Notable guitars	Extreme Telecaster, Fender Telecaster
Years active	1990 - Present
Official site	www.slank.com

Abdee Negara (born June 28, 1968, Denggala) is a Indonesian guitarist, back vocalist, songwriter and record producer. He is best known as Slank's guitarist with fellow guitarist, Ridho, and also has played with many national and international guitarist, including Paul Gilbert. Besides working with Slank, his main band, he is also a producer of another Indonesian band, Serieus. Since the beginning of his musical career, Negara mainly presents rock-blues style of playing.

1 Career
2 Equipment
3 Discography
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Career

[edit] Before Slank

In the 1980s, Negara moved from Palu to Jakarta to pursued his dream to become a professional musician. His earlier musical experience was to join a band with Ecky Lamoh, Gideon Tengker and Henky Supit, all are Indonesian guitarists. In 1988, Negara entered ILW, a school of music in Jakarta, to gain his musical formal education, since he had his earlier knowledge just by learning autodidactly. In this stage, he met Ivan, who later became a fellow member in Slank.

[edit] With Slank

Main article: Slank

In 1996, earlier formation of Slank faced a drug addiction problem. Kaka (vocalist) and Bim-Bim (drummer) were addicted severely to drugs. Other ex-members, Pay, Bongky and Indra, were clean from the addiction and hence, they do not like to be in the same band with a drug user (note: five of current Slank members are clean from drugs now). However, Pay, Bongky and Indra, whose later became BIP (rock band) and left the band.

Kaka and Bim-Bim tried to break free from drug addiction, and recruited three new members, Ridho, Ivan and Negara. Initially, the fans were not very satisfied with the appearance of new members as Slank has had six album with the ex-members. Surprisingly, when they released their seventh album, called Tujuh (seven in Indonesian), the popularity increased dramatically and the albums sold broke the record of Slank's other albums. Nowadays, with his audio engineering skill, Negara is in charge of Slank's sound engineering and created many songs with Slank. Since he joined Slank in 1997, they have released seven hit albums in Indonesia and some Southeast Asian countries.

[edit] Producer

Negara is also a producer of another Indonesian rock band, called Seurieus.

[edit] Equipment

Most of the time, Negara uses Fender guitar brand for recording and live performances. Two types of Fender that he commonly uses, Telecaster and Stratocaster. Not so long ago, a guitar company, named Extreme offered him to use their guitar. Then Abdee agreed to use Extreme guitar as his main gear, however, since he loves Telecaster so much, he wanted the same guitar model as Fender Telecaster to this company. [1]