Khaled Al Melody, one of the most widely recognized artists of the 1990s in Libya, doing a studio session in Morocco.
"I always love that moment when you identify a musical genre or a certain sound from a certain place that you didn't know anything about," Jannis Stürtz, founder of the Berlin-based indie label Habibi Funk Records, tells OkayAfrica.
"Ya Ummi" by The White Bird Band marked Stürtz' starting point with Libyan reggae. It was one of the songs Stürtz came across at the abandoned TK7 factory in Sousse, Tunisia, many years ago. Owned by Tunisian guitarist and businessman Hechmi Miliani, the factory had closed after the collapse of the cassette tape industry in the early 2000s, but still housed tens of thousands of unsold tapes that Stürtz was fortunate to sift through.
"[Miliani] told me he hadn't been inside of it for ten years," he remembers. "There were skeletons of dead cats in the entrance halls." Out of the thousands of options, Stürtz chose everything Libyan he could find, paving the way for six Libyan releases in the following years.
The label today, July 4, released Habibi Funk 031: A Selection Of Music from Libyan Tapes, a collection of 15 songs dedicated to the cassette tape scene in Libya from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, featuring a range of genres from disco to reggae to pop. On a sunny Friday afternoon, Fatima Sabouni and Stürtz jump on a call with me from different ends of their Berlin office, telling me about Libya's love for reggae and the long-winded road the label took to bring this compilation to life.
Sabouni's official title at Habibi Funk Records is Product Manager, but amongst many other things, she co-wrote and edited a thoughtful and informative booklet of interviews with the artists that make up the Libya Compilation.
"'Ya Ummi' was the first track we licensed in 2019," says Stürtz. "In 90 percent of the cases, we license from the artist as opposed to old record labels. In this case, we had to make 15 deals, 15 people that needed to get paid, 15 people that we had to find before we actually could do any deal, 15 people who needed to get interviewed and their material digitized." It took six years.
The Stars of Africa band.
Courtesy of Habibi Funk Records.
None of the Habibi Funk team members could be on the ground in Libya. Their interlocutor, the man who made this compilation possible, was Yousef Alhoush, son of Najib Alhoush, the band leader of The Free Music. "[Alhoush] maintains this incredible network and found 90 percent of the musicians within 24 hours," says Stürtz.
Bringing this compilation together was a labor of love and patience that required overcoming unique logistical challenges. "The classic scenario would be that Yousef [Alhoush] finds someone who brings the master tape to Tunisia or Cairo, from where we find someone who can bring it to Germany. We get it digitized, and then it travels back the same route or one of the other routes," says Stürtz.
Sometimes Alhoush would go to the airport, hoping that he'd know someone in line for a flight, or that someone in the line would know his father and agree to deliver a master tape. Stürtz would await them at the airport with nothing but a picture. Payments were sent in a similar way.
"If I pay an artist via Western Union, they lose 50 percent of the advance," says Stürtz. "So then you've got to go to another money provider. Sometimes, I would visit a random logistics office in Cairo that has a partner company in Libya and give a random person a stack of money. I don't get a receipt or anything, and I just trust that this person then calls their colleague in Libya, and that colleague in Libya calls the musician we're working with to pay out the money."
Because North African cultures are highly interconnected and built around trust and keeping a good name, these informal ways were successful.
"Reggae became popular in Libya the year after Bob Marley passed away," says Sabouni. "Initially, artists would do covers, but there was a moment where Ibrahim Hesnawi, the father of Libyan reggae, was in the studio and someone told him, 'Why don't you just put a little twist on it and just make it a bit more Libyan.'"
The beat of Libyan shaabi rhythms is quite similar to reggae. Mixed, it became its own syncretic genre. Even today, there are Facebook groups with 60,000 members of different generations, solely dedicated to Libyan reggae. "I think there are a lot of reasons for that, besides the fact that reggae wasn't too far away from the average listener's ear sonically and filled a gap in the industry," says Sabouni.
“A lot of the lyrics tend to be based on old poems. And there's a certain referencing of old folkloric music. It’s rather common in Libyan music from the 80s and 90s.” - Jannis Stürtz.
Nine men in autumn clothing are gathered on a lawn in front of trees, posing for the camera behind white flowers. Some are laughing, others look more serious.
During one of the interviews for the booklet, Libyan artist Ayed Belkhair, whose song "La Tgheeb Anni Wala Youm" closes out the compilation, explained to Sabouni why darker-skinned Libyans felt drawn to the genre.
"He said: 'When you're darker-skinned in Libya, it means that you have more African heritage in your family. And there was something about the African pride that came with listening to reggae that really resonated with people in Libya, specifically those with more African heritage. It gave us a seat at the table," she recalls.
Most of the compilation's musicians were unable to pursue full-time careers as musicians due to economic and political reasons, but they continue to write and play music to this day. "There was a lot of nostalgia from everyone I spoke to for a time that seemed to be very expansive creatively," says Sabouni. "When I asked if they still make music, they'd say 'yes, music never leaves you.'"
Habibi Funk Records' archive is a treasure trove of music many would not otherwise listen to. The label tends to gravitate towards musicians' earlier or overlooked releases, rather than their most successful albums.
"The longer you are part of the music scene and have success, the more you try to create something that will nurture the success," says Stürtz. "You try to adhere to certain sounds that are popular, follow certain songwriting and composition structures, and sometimes that means whatever you're putting out isn't as timeless anymore."
Shahd, one of Libya’s most famous reggae artists, is one of the few women in the scene and remains anonymous for reasons of tradition and respectability.
Courtesy of Habibi Funk Records.
While all tracks on the compilation are timeless, Shahd's "Erhal Keef Alshams Tgheeb" is Sabouni's favorite. "It's such a great song and gets stuck in your head," she says with a smile. "It's really special that we were able to license a song by a woman."
After a chance encounter with Hesnawi, Shahd was encouraged to delve deeper into reggae and, under his mentorship, released her successful debut album Weinak in 2003. Five albums later, when Shahd's music was nationally recognized and played in shops and taxis, she remained anonymous. Sometimes, her friends recommended her own music to her.
Despite the many, albeit different, challenges these musicians faced, they created outstanding art that is worth re-release, as thoughtful and dedicated as Habibi Funk 031: A Selection Of Music from Libyan Tapes. In 15 tracks, it invites listeners into expansive worlds infused with reggae, funk, pop, disco, and, of course, beautiful Libyan Arabic.
