In Milan’s nightclub “The Tunnel”, the sound of Egyptian legend Umm Kulthum’s song Alf Leila
Wleila is reverberating around an atmosphere of excitement. The rotating disco ball is lighting up
faces from the crowd who are dancing and screaming to the rhythm of music. It’s the first show of
the Berlin record label Habibi Funk in Milan. The enthusiasm of the crowd tells a lot about the
condition of contemporary Arab music.
In recent times, there has been a significant increase in worldwide interest in Arab music. Platforms
like TikTok and Instagram have contributed to the exposure of a fresh cohort of Arab talents such
as Saint Levant, Issam Alnajjar, and Wegz to millions of viewers. Events like Beirut Groove
Collective, Laylit, and DJ Nooriyah’s Middle of Nowhere consistently draw large crowds in cities
like London, New York, and other major Western hubs. These developments have spurred the
International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, the global authority on recorded music, to
introduce the first-ever regional MENA (Middle Eastern and Northern Africa) music chart in
November.
Habibi Funk, established officially in 2015 by German producer Jannis Stürtz, stands out among a
select few Western labels contributing to the burgeoning global appeal of Arab music. Stürtz has
also cultivated a significant presence as a DJ, organizing sold-out events and performing at festivals
under the banner of Habibi Funk. These efforts are instrumental in introducing Arabic music to new
and diverse audiences, often marking their first exposure to the genre.
In an interview for The Time Stürtz said his introduction to Arabic music was purely happenstance.
He was employed as a tour manager at Jakarta Records, the Berlin-based label that currently hosts
Habibi Funk, when he traveled with one of their artists to a music festival in Rabat, Morocco, back
in 2012.“I randomly walked the streets of Casablanca and came across this super tiny shop with
broken electronics,” Stürtz said, adding that the repair shop was once a popular record store that
went out of business but retained its music collection. It was here that he picked up a record by funk
artist Fadoul, who credited James Brown on the reverse of the record. “I got home and was very
excited when I heard the song. He’s basically a Moroccan guy who was heavily influenced by
American rock and funk, and created his own take on it,” Stürtz said. This encounter prompted
Stürtz to embark on a quest to discover more Arab musicians. This journey gave rise to Habibi
Funk as it exists today, a venture that has released 26 albums so far.
Stürtz found many of Habibi Funk artists through continuous travels to the region – spending hours
combing through crates of vinyl records, cassette tapes or long forgotten studio reels left in dusty
backrooms, the overloaded storage areas of obscure independent music shops or private collections.
Once found, his international team of friends and colleagues in Casablanca, Cairo, Paris and
Khartoum share their research to uncover as much background context as possible for each release,
including making every effort to contact the original artists, or families of these musicians.
As a European label engaging with non-western artists, they are acutely aware of their
responsibilities to the creators. When they begin working on re-releasing music under the Habibi
Funk label, all tracks are licensed directly from the musicians or, in the case of deceased artists,
from their families. Profits from their releases are evenly split with the artists. Their license
agreements have a finite duration; eventually, all rights revert back to the artist or their families.
This commitment to transparency in licensing policies is crucial in today’s reissue market, where
unethical business dealings are unfortunately common. Also in terms of language and aesthetics, the
label takes great care on how they represent these cultural goods. In their artworks there aren’t any
visual language stereotypes and their communication is every time both in English and Arabic.
Each of Habibi Funk’s official releases come with extensive booklets, featuring liner notes, photos
and interviews, giving all the information on the artists. The label has also used its success to
fundraise for charities that provide humanitarian relief in the region. Habibi Funk raised almost
$20,000 worth of sales in 48 hours to aid victims of the 2020 Beirut port explosion that killed 218
people. All proceeds from a release last month will go toward floods in Libya that claimed
thousands of lives.
Habibi Funk encompasses more than pure funk, often the influences are inspired from Western
popular music such as soul, pop and rock, but it’s more than that. Some of the releases can be
described as Arabic zouk (a genre originating from the Caribbean islands of Martinique and
Guadeloupe), Algerian coladera (a popular musical style from the Cape Verdean islands), Lebanese
AOR or old school hip hop. All of the styles go beyond just taking Western music as a blueprint
and translating it with a local accent. Habibi Funk aims to bridge this gap, making accessible these
obscure and sometimes forgotten musicians to a wider audience, connecting younger generations to
their eclectic musical history. Habibi Funk provides insight to the larger puzzle of how musically
vibrant this very diverse region was and still is. Their choices are a personal curation of what they
love most and not a strict representation of Arabic musical history of the 1970s and 1980s. Their
focus is more on the obscure and forgotten and less on recognized musical stars of the region.
But what makes Habibi Funk unique is that it features Arab artists who proudly show that music has
always been a two-way cultural exchange. Saif Abu Bakr – an artist who collaborated with Habibi
Funk on a re-issue of the album Jazz, Jazz, Jazz, which was recorded in 1980 with the Sudanese
rock and roll band The Scorpions – once played alongside American Soul legend James Brown
during his 1978 performance in Kuwait. “James Brown said, ‘Wow, I just can’t believe it, people in
this part of the world know my songs’,” Abu Bakr recalled for The Time. Abu Bakr, who was an
admirer of The Scorpions before he first played with the band when he was 18 years old, says he
was shaped by Eastern and Western music alike – and that Ethiopian, Somali, and Eritrean music
have inspired him just as much as listening to Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and Wilson Pickett.
“We’re interested in musicians who took something that came from the outside, and tried to
translate it into their local context,” Stürtz said in an interview for The Time. More than anything,
Habibi Funk is a time capsule that gathers the best that music once had to offer, and releases it back
into today’s world.
Gabriel Seroussi is an Italian author and music journalist. After attending a Bachelor’s degree in History at the University of Milan, he started collaborating with magazines such as Billboard, Rolling Stone, Esse Magazine among others. He is the founder and director of oltreoceano, an Italian printed review on African-American culture.