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If you could spend a moment with some remarkable people and discover what their life sounds like, what would you ask?
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Welcome to Are We On Air?
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An audio encounter.
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I m Armand Maffei and each episode will feature one conversation with an inspiring friend of mine who will share with us the soundtrack to their life.
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Marhaba Habibis and welcome to another wonderful episode of Are We On Air?
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This week s guest is a global music aficionado, hailing all the way from Cologne, Germany.
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Who knew?
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Yannis Sturz, aka Habibi Funk.
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Yannis and I got together a good year ago in Berlin at our friend s hotel, the Chateau Royale,
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to go digging.
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Digging into what the music label Habibi Funk is, where it came from, where it is heading and where it finds some of the rarest goodies out there.
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In his terms, what we re-release is largely overlooked special interest music.
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Music that absorbed influences from various areas and became something new.
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They have released Congolese music, Sudanese music, Moroccan and Libyan music and so much more and brought attention to a region, a sound, a culture that was often overlooked or forgotten.
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What I love about this label is that it just shows how quality music is timeless and can reach a new wider audience.
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For instance, how one track pre-habibifunk might have had 500 listens on Spotify and past-habibifunk reached more than 10 million.
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Which, by the way, the money goes straight to the artist.
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The key for the label is to make sure that the how they discover the music doesn t overshadow the actual artist.
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It s not just music, but cultural context, which of course is very much in line of what we re doing here at Are We On Air.
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The full playlist of Habibi Funk is available on our Are We On Air Spotify and Apple channels.
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On that note, yalla Habibis, let s go discover some great music together.
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Welcome to Are We On Air, Janis Sturz aka Habibi Funk.
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Thanks for having me.
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We re here at the beautiful Chateau Royale in Berlin.
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and we re having a little coffee and I m very excited to chat with you because I love your label Habibi Funk.
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I m obsessed.
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Yeah, I mean, I appreciate that.
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When we started it, I don t think we would have anticipated having podcast talks about it, but it turned out to be more of a longevity project than we initially thought it would be.
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But that s great.
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Yeah, I mean,
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You gotta tell me, how did it all start?
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I mean, you re in Berlin.
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Are you from Berlin?
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No, I m actually from Cologne.
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I don t think you ve lived there in a very, very long time.
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I left when I was like 17, something like that.
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But yeah, maybe Groove Attack Records was there.
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I was a compact person.
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Alright, fair enough.
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But Groove Attack is kind of like a founding moment for me getting into music.
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Habibi Funk particularly started
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Because even before Habibi Funk, I was co-running a label called Jakarta Records and one of the artists from that label called Blitz the Ambassador, he used to be a musician, now he s like a scriptwriter and author, but he played a festival in Morocco called Mawazine.
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I joined him on that trip, stayed a couple of days extra.
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And then like, whenever I travel, I m usually not that interested in like the classic touristy bits.
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I just like walking the streets.
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And even back then, I was always interested when I would travel to pick up some records from that place from like the 70s.
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Just the regular like stuff I picked up.
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Yeah.
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I walked like a side street in Casablanca and I came across a shop that clearly was in the business of repairing broken electronics.
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But I looked inside and behind stacks and stacks of broken electronics were stacks and stacks of records.
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And it turned out that the guy used to have a distribution and a record label in the 70s.
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when business died down in the 90s, he kind of switched.
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I asked him about the record, I think he perceived it as really weird, kind of kicked me out of the shop, that was it.
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But then the next day, there was an old gentleman walking along the Medina trying to give tours to tourists.
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He must have been in his late 80s, very, very old Moroccan gentleman.
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And he asked me whether I wanted to have a tour and I was like, no,
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but maybe come along and try to build a friendship with this shop owner with me.
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And that actually helped.
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He explained a bit better than me why I was interested in records.
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And then he let me look through the shop and I picked up like a big stack of records.
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And there was one that had like a guy with wild hair, one tooth missing, but like a bright smile.
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And he credited James Brown on the flip side in the writing credits.
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This was a 7-inch by Fadool, which turned out to be our first release.
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And basically, I think, I mean, I loved the record.
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It has like, it was like an adaptation of Papa Got a Brand New Bag, but with the lyrics flipped into a song where he deals with trying to not drink the next day and musically played in a very, like, without that genre having existed at the time, but a very punk rock aesthetic, you could clearly
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tell it was more about the energy in the room when they record it as opposed to having a perfect sound, a perfectly rehearsed take and any of that.
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I guess because we were already running a record label we knew how it works technically, how
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distribution works, how manufacturing works.
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The idea was born to try to find the guy and re-release his music.
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And then we tried to find him for two years.
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After a year we met another band from Morocco from the same time and they told us that he had passed away.
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in the early 1990s already, but they remembered a guy called Tony Day.
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Tony Day is not his actual name, but Tony Day used to be the background singer for a lot of these bands and the dancer on stage.
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And Tony Day now lives in Nuremberg as a security guard.
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And we called Tony and Tony was like, yeah,
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Fedor has been dead for a long time, we used to be good friends, but go to this particular neighborhood of Casablanca, this is where his family used to live 20 years ago.
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So we went to the old coffee places and asked the old gentlemen, playing cards, have you ever seen this guy, and showed them a cover of one of the seven inches.
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Eventually someone remembered where his family used to live,
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His parents had passed away in the meantime, but one of the neighbors used to know, knew where the brother lived, so we kind of cold called the brother s home.
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His brother s daughter opened the door and she was like, yeah, this guy looks like my dad, but I know it s not my dad.
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So she didn t even, she knew she had an uncle who had passed away before she was born, but she didn t even know he was a musician.
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Her dad was, I think, in the mosque, but Fadul s sister, so her aunt, lived next door.
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So they called her.
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They were very surprised for someone to come looking for their brother, especially for their brother s music.
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But they loved the idea, so we eventually licensed the music from them.
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And that was the starting point.
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And then we kind of
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kept on doing research, trying to find other music.
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So Habibi Funk as a record label, what we re always trying to make clear is that what we re doing tries not to represent quote-unquote Arab music of a certain era.
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What we re-release is largely overlooked special interest
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music that would be, if you would say you re searching for equivalent for that music in Germany, it would be probably some, a band like Cannes or whatever.
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It is not like whatever we re-release does not necessarily represent mainstream music, but it represents what was like.
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The obscure, it went into obscurity, like in a dusted bin somewhere behind some electronics in Casablanca.
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Yes.
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And it tends to be the music where influences from different places came together and became something new.
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Often you have the influences of like Afro-American music, soul, funk, jazz.
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But if you look at the Sudanese music we re-released, Congolese music or Ethiopian music are as influential.
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We are working on a lot of music.
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So you re going further south now, actually.
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Not consciously.
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You re following the sound, really?
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Yeah, whatever.
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So currently we re doing a lot of research into Libyan music.
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And for example, one of the most influential genres in Libya for the last 30 years has been reggae.
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Reggae is huge.
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to this day in Libya.
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But yeah, whenever like musicians kind of created a localized translation of an influence from abroad brought it together with something they already knew, there s a high chance that this led to something that might be something that could become a release under Habibi Funk.
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Wow, I love that.
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I love a good dig and how to start.
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But before we even go into Habibi Funk, why don t we start where you started with what s your earliest significant musical memory that shaped you as an artist?
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I mean, I wouldn t call myself an artist.
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I m just a
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I m just, even though I DJ a bit, but even like the type of DJing I do is more the selector type of DJing.
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Which we love, which we love.
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No, there s nothing wrong with it, especially because I don t play electronic music.
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But therefore,
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I think there s DJs who don t produce who rightfully can claim that they are artists because they have mastered DJing on a technical scale that it rightfully has the tech of being an artist.
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I don t DJ like that.
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So I would never call myself an artist.
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Having said that, I still remember when I was like,
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How old was I?
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I have no clue.
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But I used to like on Saturdays, there was on German radio, but I don t even remember which station it was, probably 1 Live.
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And what was it?
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WDR 1 was it before that.
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And they would have the charts.
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So I would always sit next to the radio and tape
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my favorite songs.
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It must have been like seven or eight.
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But I think when, and we briefly mentioned it, realizing we come from the same town, I think like the defining moment, and that s
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And that might not be the earliest musical memory, but the defining musical memory is when I was 15 in Germany, you, when you re in 10th grade, you have to make a school internship, which internship is a misleading term.
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I think it s two weeks.
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You re kind of just being, for two weeks, being a bird for a company that gets nothing from you, but has this 15 year old running around.
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So I did this at Groovetech, which was the local record shop.
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And back then Groovetech was big, they were still a distributor but back then they were also a record label and I think they did like the first Jay Dilla record and all of that.
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I did this school internship there and I guess I was 15 and somehow they liked me so they offered me to stay on to work there once a week on Saturdays.
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So for the last four years of me being to school I had this like the coolest imaginable side job, a student job.
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And back then at Groove Attack everyone was either a DJ, ran a small label, did something music related.
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Before that, I literally had bought my first vinyl record at Groove Attack maybe three weeks before that.
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And I only asked whether I can do my internship there because I was running late for getting something more serious.
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So before that, I was not... I mean, I listened to music, but I was not part of... It wasn t a conscious decision.
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Yeah.
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And I was not... There was no context for me.
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It was just me liking music, how...
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everyone likes music.
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But I think that therefore like being that student employee of Groove Tech kind of was maybe not my earliest memory but is the defining memory because it put me in a room with people who kind of one way or another were doing what I would once I graduated school would be doing
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by starting Jakarta Records, out of which Habibi Funk was birthed.
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So yeah, I think that is kind of a defining one.
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And what three tracks would you choose that define Habibi Funk?
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Which were the significant three records for you?
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I think the first and foremost is Fadul s Citradet, because that was the one track that I randomly found in the shop in Casablanca.
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So when it comes to the most defining song being this,
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the second and third position is like, there s a huge gap in between.
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So I mean, this is the one in terms of Habibi Funk becoming a project.
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And then the second one is Zayouna, which has this position because I think when I DJ, it s always a mix in between our own releases, but a lot of our own releases are not DJ material.
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You don t get people to dance to that.
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Because it s too slow, too melancholic, whatever.
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But IUNA became this one song and it has like 10 million streams on Spotify and it was used in this advertisement and it pops up here and there.
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That probably from the music we re-released ourselves.
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became the closest of being a quote unquote hit.
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And I m still using hit as a relative term within a small niche scene.
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But I think the track also shows what we are luckily based on the network and the community we build, we are able to do for a song if things align well.
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I think Iuna was on Spotify for 10 years and gathered 5,000 plays.
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And then we took over and within four years we brought it to 10 million.
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And I think that also explains quite well what we ideally do.
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As a record label, we are an amplifier for music that we think should have more listeners.
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We re trying to build a bridge between this song and this artist.
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and connect the work and the artist with a bigger audience.
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Global audience still sounds too big, but yeah, but yeah, small audiences all over the globe.
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And then I guess the third song would be any song from Ahmed Malek, who was an Algerian filmmaker.
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I love Ahmed Malek.
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Yeah, like his music is beautiful.
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We have like, he was, he sadly already passed away before we did the project.
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But we have like a very close relationship to his daughters.
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We also did an exhibition about his work in Algeria and the Museum of Modern Art there.
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So basically, we came across his music, we wanted to reshoot.
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We did a little bit of digging and realized we had no immediate idea of how to find his family.
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And then I had a DJ gig in Beirut and I spoke to a friend of mine and I told her about the music.
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She knew the artist as well.
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I knew some people in France also had tried to reissue the music, but they also didn t have any luck in locating the family.
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So she was like, yeah, I have this one friend in Algeria.
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Let me ask her.
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Maybe she has an idea.
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And I was like, yeah, do that.
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But I mean, there s like 60 million people in Algeria.
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Don t quote me.
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Might be more, might be less.
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enough people to not make that seem like a realistic opportunity.
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And then like two weeks later, she calls me, Janis, you won t believe it, but my friend s family live in the same building on the same floor as Ahmed Malik s daughter.
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So even though I m not like a religious person, but like when Hinya told me, no, no, my dad made it happen from heaven.
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That was meant to be.
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I was like, yeah.
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can t argue with that.
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I mean the odds of this project working out the way it worked out and then also when her father passed away 10 years ago, her father was already good in keeping sync and then she kind of put it all in this big drawer
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and never opened it again.
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But hence there was this, and that was also the reason why, apart from re-releasing this music, we were also able to do this exhibition that kind of, because all of his music was film soundtracks.
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And actually were used in film.
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Yeah, he was like the go-to guy for post-colonial Algerian cinema in the 70s.
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So a lot of people in Algeria don t know his name, but they know the melodies because a lot of it is very iconic movies.
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But yeah, so there was a lot of like archival material that also allowed us to create this exhibition.
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Like, for example, there s this photo, he represented Algeria a lot.
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So for example, at the world exhibitions at the Algerian pavilion, he used to play with his band.
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So there s this photo of him playing with his band.
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But then there s in the same next to it, which he still kept the original shirt he s wearing in that photo.
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So things like this.
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So,
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Damn, maybe we still make that happen before you leave, but I wanted to bring you some of the physical records.
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Because for us, the work of contextualizing the music is always very crucial.
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And this is why we ve done exhibitions, we ve done short documentaries.
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but also all of the ratios we do always come with like booklets where we write down the story, the biography, try to contextualize the music, and that ends up being a big part of the workload.
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Oftentimes finding the artist and licensing the music is much quicker than trying to find photos, trying to find information, especially for artists that have passed away already.
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Wow, I mean it must be so...
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gratifying and fulfilling to when you have those experience with the families and like even within the culture, within the society of wherever you go and find this and really manage to put a spotlight onto those people and to their culture and sound and bring it to a global audience, which you do, also within the story, within the context.
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I mean, that must be very, that must be a great feeling.
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I mean, business aside, this is just, you re doing important work here.
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I mean, thank you, but I was always a person buying these type of free releases as well.
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And on the one hand, I don t want to make what we do sound more important and more serious than it is.
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We are not an archive for a record label.
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We are a record label that does archival work, but it s only small pinpoints.
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But in the end, it s always this balancing act of also not making this story of how we come to the music or the quote-unquote brand of the record label too big, so it overshadows the original artist.
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Because in the end, when you
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try to compare the relevance of us versus the artist of the music, our name should be somewhere in the back, somewhere in the fine print.
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Obviously on a personal level, yeah, when you are part, like we ve had artists that told us I would have never thought that I would actually ever get paid for my music, where you meet artists that have normalized the fact
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that they do music without getting an economic compensation for it.
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And us being able to change that for some artists when they re already in their late 70s is obviously something that feels good for everyone involved.
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In the end, our motivation is because we come across music we genuinely like and we want to have more people hear it.
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SPEAKER_00
Therefore, the motivation between
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Jakarta Records, which is the other label, which is like a contemporary label, and Habibi Funk is not really different.
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SPEAKER_00
All of the things you mentioned, the things I mentioned regarding archiving, they are great, but essentially they are byproducts.
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They are byproducts of great music and us feeling more people need to hear this great music.
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In the end, that is the focus.
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And obviously running a record label sometimes is one of these jobs that from the outside to a lot of people looks and must appear more sexy than it actually is, because it s also writing a lot of
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emails and like a lot of dry work but obviously at the same time it s gratifying work in general I guess in comparison to a lot of nine-to-fives.
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Funny because I had the similar situation when I was in Beirut a couple of years ago.
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Of course I went digging.
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And I love how Habibi Funk within the Orient as well became, they know, like people are coming now to our region, music heads to specifically go and find, hopefully finding these dustbin moments, right?
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SPEAKER_01
And they were like eye-rolling when I was like, okay, you re another one.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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SPEAKER_00
True, but then again, you also probably tapped into the exact same microcosm bubble that I m also in.
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SPEAKER_00
I probably know the places you went to.
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SPEAKER_00
When you come from this world of record collecting, quote-unquote dig in, it s a very male-dominated world and it s a world very dominated by secrecy.
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SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I found this one record that nobody knows and all of that.
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SPEAKER_00
I had a Zohra record before you released that.
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SPEAKER_00
I had a seven inch.
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SPEAKER_00
I m sure.
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But what I m always not a fan of is this like competitiveness.
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This competitiveness, this gatekeeping.
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I share everything.
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I think that s the beauty.
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Because we are, in the end, they just curate us.
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SPEAKER_01
We didn t even produce that artwork.
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Or if you DJ, you re just playing someone else s artwork anyway.
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So who am I to say, no, you can t have this because it s only a record of three.
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And that is the same thing for me, for like these record shops.
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SPEAKER_00
I think I have like, I tend to have a good relationship with all of the record shops.
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in Mina because I tend to post about them on social medias quite frequently.
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SPEAKER_01
Does that make it more difficult for you to find stuff now?
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SPEAKER_00
Yes, definitely.
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SPEAKER_00
But it s like these
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these record shops are part of the network that allow record labels like ours to do their work.
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SPEAKER_00
Because this is the places where something interesting might show up.
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SPEAKER_00
This is the place that keeps vinyl culture alive.
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SPEAKER_00
So I think, and when I kind of have to balance my interests in between keeping stuff secret, so I find all of the great records as opposed to trying to help
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SPEAKER_00
To nurture the culture.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and also have more customers so it s economically viable to still run these places.
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SPEAKER_00
I think that me trying to support within our limited means these businesses is always more important than keeping stuff secret because I feel like these record shops are part of the networks just like record labels are.
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SPEAKER_00
Um, and therefore I feel like, yeah, it s very important, like to, to share these addresses, to tell people like you find records in Beirut there, there, and there.
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SPEAKER_01
So on that note, give us maybe the top three or top five of record stores in, in Morocco, in Lebanon for listeners.
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SPEAKER_01
they want to go deep.
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SPEAKER_00
I m getting into trouble if I forget anyone.
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SPEAKER_00
Cairo is a great place.
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SPEAKER_00
There s a small shopping mall in Zemelec near the Um Kulthum statue.
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And in this shopping mall, there s Sherry s and there s like three, there s four record shops for secondhand vinyl in this mall.
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SPEAKER_00
And then around the corner is Retrograde, which is another place that has records.
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SPEAKER_00
So literally the
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SPEAKER_00
four or five key shops for Cairo and probably Egypt are in a vicinity of 200 meters, makes it very convenient.
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SPEAKER_00
And they also, most of them still get new stock frequently.
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SPEAKER_00
So it s always good going there.
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SPEAKER_00
Then in Beirut, Chico is the institution, and Diran who runs the shop, his father used to run a record label called Zida Records together with Yermani, which released a lot of like very iconic
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SPEAKER_00
Absolutely hard to find releases in the late 70s and early 80s.
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SPEAKER_00
And then there is The Weekend Market that has two sellers and then Naji, who s a lovely guy.
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SPEAKER_00
I don t know whether his shop is still open at this point, but he also sells on The Weekend Market on Armenia Road.
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SPEAKER_00
In Morocco, there s People s Choice, which is more like in Casablanca, which is more like new records.
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SPEAKER_00
Last time I checked, a lot of the old shops in Casablanca closed because the owners died and nobody took them over.
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SPEAKER_00
this GAM, there was Comptoir Général, I think they re both closed now.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a shop in Agadir, Zeman Records, I think.
3
SPEAKER_00
So more in Casablanca than let s say Tangier or Marrakech.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, because I think Casablanca used to be the center of music business.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this is then, hence Casablanca Records.
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SPEAKER_00
For example, this gum, it was a record shop, but it was the flagship store of a record label.
3
SPEAKER_00
So this is, I think, a lot of times how record shops were also birthed, that there were just the shops that were an extension of a record label at some point.
3
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I mean, basically, if you scroll down the Habibi Funk Instagram, at some point you ll come across someone, older person smiling, but showing a record that usually is like a... I post this list every six months and I try to
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SPEAKER_00
keep the list updated where you can find all of the record shops.
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SPEAKER_00
And if you can t find it, just send me a message and I ll send the link.
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SPEAKER_00
I m happy to be found on Instagram.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
But yeah, like I said, I think it s important that these places like kind of survive.
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SPEAKER_00
Obviously, each country is different.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, of course.
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SPEAKER_00
In a place like Lebanon,
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SPEAKER_00
If you would ask me what are the most impressive collections of... Sometimes you have this problem, I think in West Africa that happens a lot, that so many records left to the second-hand vinyl markets in Europe, the US, Japan.
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SPEAKER_00
I m no pro for West African music, but there s probably a lot of the good stuff that has left the country.
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SPEAKER_00
But if you look for example at a place like Lebanon and if you would ask me what are the three, four, five most impressive collections of Lebanese music, they re all within Lebanon.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like you have a very strong local
3
SPEAKER_00
collector s society.
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SPEAKER_00
The majority of the very in-demand, hard-to-find collector s items records get bought and sold within the Lebanese market.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you re able to tap into that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, for example, the Onia record we released,
3
SPEAKER_00
At this point, I didn t have a copy of it.
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SPEAKER_00
So it was Diran from Chico Records who allowed us to digitize his copy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Again, it s all about a network.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s a community really that you guys also built and tapped into, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes, and I think that there s a lot of things that, and I think I m particularly, because as someone coming from outside, as someone coming from Germany, being able to
3
SPEAKER_00
be part of these small communities is something that feels especially important to me because I was very much welcomed.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I always want to make sure it s like a two-way street.
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SPEAKER_00
It s not only like I m taking something, but I m also always
3
SPEAKER_00
trying to return these favors.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I think, and that is, I guess, also what is kind of particular about the label, that even though at this point the team is much bigger, we have a colleague in Cairo and we have a lot of people working with us on individual projects, we have someone who works with us, for example, on the Libyan projects right now in Libya, because Libya is one of the places I ve
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SPEAKER_00
can t go to.
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SPEAKER_00
But I think as a label that is based in Germany, there is a lot of labels re-releasing music from outside of Europe.
3
SPEAKER_00
Also in terms of Africa.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now all of the analog Africa I love.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think what it often happens that predominantly for the quote-unquote Western market and for one reason or another we managed to release the music in a way that it also resonates with the people in the world where like the music is coming from like you have people like I ve had these conversations often was like I didn t know that in my parents or grandfather parents generation there was this music in my hometown.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that is something that is very important for us.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that is kind of also part why it feels important to be part of these local networks, because they also kind of this way, you make sure your record is also available in Beirut, even though economically, if I if I would look at it strictly economically, trying to make sure that our records are available in Cairo is so much effort because I physically have to bring them there, because if I ship them, they get stuck at customs.
3
SPEAKER_00
Nobody is winning.
3
SPEAKER_00
So
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SPEAKER_00
It s so much effort and elbow grease to, let s say, make sure our releases are available in Cairo.
3
SPEAKER_00
But for me, it s important to make that effort, because to me, it feels important that the Hamid release that was recorded there is also available to be bought there.
3
SPEAKER_01
Because they also have a big audience within the countries themselves, which is the beauty of the whole thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, as you said, they re rediscovering their own roots because they have stuff that
3
SPEAKER_01
fell into obscurity the way it is obscure for us.
3
SPEAKER_01
Same for them, people now of our generation, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like they have to have something to curate.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that that is a good point.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think sometimes people underestimate, like especially when they can t really place the music, and I ve talked about it before, but when they can t really place the music we release within the bigger picture of music from the quote unquote Arab world,
3
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, I think the equivalent is you and I getting into like obscure krautrock bands or like early ambient 80s electronic that we never knew of.
3
SPEAKER_00
But that was done in some obscure studio in Bielefeld.
3
SPEAKER_00
Which happened.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we might also learn about it through a Japanese ratio.
3
SPEAKER_01
But on a more personal level, so I m Persian-German, my parents are from Iran, and that s something else, and I had a conversation with my parents about this as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
In the Arab-speaking countries, there s so much to discover within, let s say, the sound genres of, like, funk, R&B, disco, of that period, because that s a period that speaks to me.
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SPEAKER_01
in the Turkish world as well.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you had this whole, there s all these re-releases, all like the Zeldas and so forth.
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SPEAKER_01
Ersan that came through, which I discovered through a record store in the early 2000s in Williamsburg, in Brooklyn, for instance, exactly to that point.
3
SPEAKER_01
Someone who dig deep and found it and they did this re-release.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I m just curious, because there is, of course, great Persian music and Persian pop music also from that period and Gughus and so forth.
3
SPEAKER_01
But why is there...
3
SPEAKER_01
Such a big difference when I hear all the great stuff you find in the Arab speaking country.
3
SPEAKER_01
Why is there such a disconnect in a way to Iran?
3
SPEAKER_01
I know obviously politics plays a role but this is still during the Shah days which when Iran was very open to the West and there was a lot of influences.
3
SPEAKER_01
So personal curiosity.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, you re probably more qualified to talk about the Iranian aspect of things.
3
SPEAKER_00
Have you been to Iran?
3
SPEAKER_00
Have you been digging or looking into Russia?
3
SPEAKER_00
No, not really.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I mean, yeah, the Islamic revolution is probably, I mean, that was... But it was 79.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I mean, most of the stuff you find is free.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, a lot of the stuff like
3
SPEAKER_00
We really was recorded like late 70s, early 80s.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think Islamic revolution, political turmoil, then all of the, the majority of the musicians went to LA, but they probably needed a few years to adapt.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then the whole like disco funk thing was over.
3
SPEAKER_00
But that is me talking and just applying like general dates and musical genres at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wouldn t even say that the influence of soul, funk, disco and all of these genres we were probably both like in the MENA region has been bigger.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think these genres were a global influence at the time.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would assume there was no
3
SPEAKER_00
place or no country on the world that doesn t have a band in the 70s that was heavily influenced by James Brown.
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s probably not a country in the world that doesn t have a band that wasn t influenced by Bob Marley.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like I think
3
SPEAKER_00
In some countries, it was on the shoulders of a handful of bands that then like moved into obscurity or moved towards a new sound and it never became a thing and caught on.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then I think you have like the Libyan example where reggae is still a big thing to this day.
3
SPEAKER_00
It started with Bob Marley and as opposed to fizzling out, how it might have happened in the late 70s, early 80s in other countries, it became its own genre.
3
SPEAKER_00
The same way how
3
SPEAKER_00
Probably disco became more dominant in certain scenes, cities, countries, as opposed to others.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I wouldn t say that the influence of Afro-American music in the Arab-speaking world has been particularly bigger than, let s say, in West Africa.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it definitely has left its mark.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think this is the, for me, has always been the takeaway that no matter where you look, you can see that this influence of particularly Afro-American music and cultural production has been global.
3
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Obviously huge in West Africa of that period as incredible.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
But like I said, especially when you look at Habibi Funk, you can also see that it s a very
4
SPEAKER_00
defining influence and I guess the label was having funk in it kind of gives that away.
4
SPEAKER_00
But like I said, when you listen to the, we ve done three releases of Sudanese jazz and Sudanese jazz is a genre that the musicians came up with themselves, which explains why it doesn t sound like jazz music, how jazz is
4
SPEAKER_00
perceived outside of Sudan, but for the Sudanese musicians of that scene, you can see how they also utilized influences coming from Congolese music, coming from Ethiopian music, the same way of
4
SPEAKER_00
how they had the influences of Afro-American music.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I think Habibi Funk is basically, we re not trying to write the history of the influence of soul, funk, jazz, disco in the Arab world.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a bit wider than that, even though I would also agree that it has been a very central influence to the musicians whose music we ve re-released.
4
SPEAKER_02
Which Sudanese track shall we play?
4
SPEAKER_00
Kamal Kehla, Muslims and Christians.
4
SPEAKER_00
Kamal Kehla is one of the Sudanese musicians we ve re-released and he was kind of the first ones to
4
SPEAKER_00
made it fashionable for the singer to all out dance on stage, which was something that he took from the James Brown influence again, but was something that was not common in the live performance in Sudan.
4
SPEAKER_00
He mostly would sing in Arabic, but whenever his subjects would become a bit more political, he would switch into English.
4
SPEAKER_00
So yeah, Muslims and Christians is kind of a call for different religions in Sudan to get along.
4
SPEAKER_00
And like the idea of unity within Sudan was always something that was very close to his heart.
4
SPEAKER_00
Sadly, he passed away two years ago.
4
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, and his music is also, you also hear this very clear influence of Ethiopian jazz.
4
SPEAKER_00
Which is huge in itself.
4
SPEAKER_00
Which is huge in itself, but there s this like little episode when we visited Chakhabil, who s another Sudanese musician whose work we reissued.
4
SPEAKER_00
He still had four vinyl records.
4
SPEAKER_00
Two were his own.
4
SPEAKER_00
And two were Seven Inches by Mulatu Astatke that were signed to him because they sometimes perform together, which I guess gives you like his tiny record collection gives you a good idea of the connection between Ethiopian music and Sudanese music.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, beautiful.
4
SPEAKER_03
We are the one man show.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, maybe we should then start digging together and create an Iranian compilation.
4
SPEAKER_00
Funny enough, I had a conversation with this one company in L.A., an Iranian company started by an Iranian who came to L.A.
4
SPEAKER_00
after the revolution and they produced most of the music in L.A., but they also bought the old catalog.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they literally own 90 percent.
4
SPEAKER_00
of the Iranian recorded music.
4
SPEAKER_00
And they kind of, we had like a very early stages conversation about maybe doing some project together.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I d love to be part of the conversation.
4
SPEAKER_00
He s in LA, so you should meet him.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, to go back to a couple of tracks, what s your go to falling in love or heartbreak song?
4
SPEAKER_00
I think we had this conversation before we started, like all of these, like when you do interviews, there s a lot of these questions of songs, especially when you do interviews for radio, I guess, because it s the perfect introduction to songs.
4
SPEAKER_00
Whenever it comes to these things of tying into like a particular emotion,
4
SPEAKER_00
I never have an answer to this.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think first thing that comes to your mind.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like you ll be in front of your record shelf and just pull the record out.
4
SPEAKER_00
The problem I think is when you deal with music so much, and I think that s what I told you before, that you rarely have songs that stick for any of these things.
4
SPEAKER_00
You kind of do the deep dive into this particular sound, this particular artist,
4
SPEAKER_00
And then for a month you only listen to this artist and then you don t listen to this artist again for like five years.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I get the question and I m trying to come up with like, I mean, I saw this question before.
4
SPEAKER_00
I guess I listen to too few love songs.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, you did mention a lot of the tracks on Habibi Funk are not just like party, they re actually more melancholic to a certain extent, and I agree, which is beautiful.
4
SPEAKER_02
Maybe not in a party environment, but in this environment it would work.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and this is, I think, a second... I listen to a lot of music not caring or listening or even understanding lyrics.
4
SPEAKER_00
I also listen to a lot of Brazilian music, a lot of Ethiopian music.
4
SPEAKER_00
Even when I was like, the music I was largely socialized in is like hip hop.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think when I started listening to hip hop a lot when I was like 15 or 16, I didn t understand a lot of the lyrics because my English wasn t that good and then it was slang.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then sometimes I listen to these songs again now when my English is somewhat okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
I was like, that s
4
SPEAKER_00
fucking horrible lyrics.
4
SPEAKER_02
Do you translate the lyrics?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I mean, for the stuff we re-release.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I mean, sometimes it feels like you realize it s a very, very plain and simple songwriting.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s nothing too deep about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then sometimes you re like, oh, it s actually OK that I never really, that I got to liking the song
4
SPEAKER_00
without the lyrics, but then like if you have Onia, they re like one of the last albums we released, which is all based on poetry.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like the band was like all leftist Lebanese.
4
SPEAKER_00
So they made an album heavily influenced by Brazilian music.
4
SPEAKER_00
They listened to a lot of like Antonio Carlos Rubin and like a lot of Brazilian bossa jazz.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then they made an album
4
SPEAKER_00
being influenced by this music, but also from their political perspective, they chose Palestinian poets and took their poetry, like Mahmoud Darwish, and obviously there the lyrical content is very crucial and meaningful, and even though you can get it translated, but it s just like it goes over your head.
4
SPEAKER_00
But at the same time, I think oftentimes when music does a good job, you kind of already
4
SPEAKER_00
pick up on a certain emotion without understanding the lyrics.
4
SPEAKER_00
Or once you understand the lyrics, it only like re-emphasizes what you already had as a takeaway from the song emotionally, because it is already in their music.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a visceral experience, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think this, for this album, that s a good example for that.
4
SPEAKER_01
He wakes him up in the sleeping streets Prisoners of the city
4
SPEAKER_00
I think the very powerful love songs, I always liked Terry Kelly s What Color is Love album, I think.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think I bought it, that was Groovetech Times, that was probably one of the first
4
SPEAKER_00
records before Groove Tech.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think the first record I bought was Mos Def and Talib Kweli.
4
SPEAKER_00
Then two weeks later, I started working there.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then I think I went through this phase of a lot of hip hop people trying to understand the music that was sampled in order to create a hip hop beat.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I became more open to soul, funk, jazz.
4
SPEAKER_00
And Terry Kelly s album was one of the first deep,
4
SPEAKER_00
samples that you discovered.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I don t even think that one has a lot of samples in it, but somehow my colleagues were always playing it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I followed their recommendation.
4
SPEAKER_00
And even though I don t really associate it with a particular heartbreak, but I think it deals with like
4
SPEAKER_00
love and pain and all like related to that.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I think it goes very deep into these emotions.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I think that that is probably a good song to pick, even though, again, an album I haven t listened to in a long time.
4
SPEAKER_00
But I think whenever I revisit it, I still really, really like it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think it s whatever qualifies as a timeless classic.
5
SPEAKER_00
Also a lot of the slower stuff of Stevie Wonder.
5
SPEAKER_00
I love Stevie Wonder.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Stevie Wonder is one of these artists, I think sometimes you have artists where you re like, I like their slow songs, I like their upbeat songs.
5
SPEAKER_00
But Stevie Wonder, I think, is one of these complete artists where whatever he did, maybe I don t need happy birthday to you, but 95% of what he did, even from the late 60s to the late 80s, he has very few misses.
5
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
5
SPEAKER_01
Well, to wrap up our little chat, for the Netflix documentary about Habibi Funk, what song is going to be played in the end credits?
5
SPEAKER_00
Funny enough, I had a, and I m sorry if the person is listening, but I had this experience of being part of a documentary that was not dealing with Habibi Funk, it was more dealing with the subject matter where we were a side note.
5
SPEAKER_00
kind of realized that the whole thing of like moving around was like, because there s a lot of filmmakers that reach out, want to do this story.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ve learned that I m not that comfortable with, I m comfortable with one-on-one interviews, that s fine.
5
SPEAKER_00
But with this, the whole idea of cameras moving you around while you visit artists, while you go to a record shop, kind of takes the natural out of the interaction.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I m not entirely sure whether this Habibi Funk documentary will come to light.
5
SPEAKER_00
Around the same time I also had a local Egyptian team do a small documentary thing and they only recorded it on cell phones without artificial lights.
5
SPEAKER_01
Which by the way, Sahel Sounds, I love.
5
SPEAKER_01
They have this compilation of exactly that, the cell phones.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because that s the way people record and trade music within the African content to a certain extent.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Music from a WhatsApp, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Music from African cell phones.
5
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, but speaking about the documentary, so maybe that s the only thing that works for me when it
5
SPEAKER_00
But having said that, I m not entirely sure whether this is... It s probably more a hypothetical soundtrack because that documentary might not come to life.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think the Ahmed Malik songs obviously would work great just because they are meant to complement a visual.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I think they just do so incredibly great in doing so.
5
SPEAKER_00
Then we re working on a project by a Lebanese musician called Cosmic Analog Ensemble, but he has like 25 artist names he produces under.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s called Sherif, he works for the UN and he plays like 20 instruments and he has 90 albums.
5
SPEAKER_00
He does instrumental music very much influenced by people like Ahmed Malek, by the Italian... So contemporary, really?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s like our age.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he s going to be the first contemporary, still active musician to release on RBB Funk next year.
5
SPEAKER_00
Also very much influenced by Italian soundtracks of the 70s, like French soundtracks of the 60s.
5
SPEAKER_00
You hear all of this in his sound, but then you hear Ziad Rabbani in there as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I guess one of his songs just, again, works great as soundtrack music.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s still working on that album.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I can give you for the purpose of this.
5
SPEAKER_00
I ll send you some.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then Issam Haji Ali s stuff is just very beautiful and it s also very scenic, both with his band, the Oni album, but also his solo album, one of my favorite albums.
5
SPEAKER_06
foreign foreign
5
SPEAKER_00
And that also was, by the way, was one of these full personal full circle moments.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, as I said, like the Blackstar album was the first album I bought.
5
SPEAKER_00
And like Mos Def, who s half of Blackstar, he s a huge fan of Issam s album.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he did this live stream like a few months ago where he s just dancing to Issam s album.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that was also like a personal full circle moment.
5
SPEAKER_00
This being the first guy I personally bought a record from.
5
SPEAKER_01
Florianus aka Habibi Funk, thank you for being on air with us, it was a real pleasure.
5
SPEAKER_01
Thanks for having me.
5
SPEAKER_02
Thank you for tuning in this week.
5
SPEAKER_02
If you want to listen to the full playlist, visit areweonair.com or our Spotify channel.
5
SPEAKER_02
You can also find us on Instagram and on YouTube at areweonair.
5
SPEAKER_02
And a big thank you to my wonderful team at Studio Neu.
5
SPEAKER_02
I m Armand Lafey and I ll speak to you soon.
5
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