The acclaimed world music label takes over Shoreditch's Village Underground for a rare London party, playing even rarer Middle Eastern and African grooves.
Known for scouring the musical worlds of the Middle East and beyond, releasing and releasing forgotten, discovered, and rediscovered obscurities throughout Africa and Asia, Habibi Funk are possibly the most notable label in the new world music movement, alongside heavyweights Analog Africa and Awesome Tapes.
Based in Berlin, and ran by a faithful group of fanatics, every few months something special is kicked up, either a rerelease of a locally famous record unknown to the world, or a compilation of disconnected works from a notable artist.
Despite the ‘allure’ of discovering unknown music that initially drew a lot of a fans to their label, many of their featured artists are not complete unknowns, but instead very well known only to the parents or grandparents generation of a non-Western country. But, as over time physical recordings get lost, or degraded by the elements, Habibi Funk’s mission is therefore to preserve at risk music. This is the new move in World Music, not to shoddily recreate the ‘sounds of the world’, but to indulge oneself in the true sounds of the world, and preserve it for future generations.
Their parties are as musically diverse as their catalogue. Known for rapidly genre-switching mid-set, from Libyan Reggae to Iraqi Soul, Egyptian disco to Berber fusion, their sets are party-poppers, with staccato bursts of cross-cultural excitement and drawing endlessly from the well of the unexpected. You may not have heard Libyan reggae before, but I’d bet you’d wanna hear it again.