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ARTIST
TITLE
Habibi Funk: A Selection From Libyan Tapes
FORMAT
CD

LABEL
CATALOG #
HAB 031CD HAB 031CD
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
7/11/2025

"Habibi Funk presents its 31st release which happens to be its third Various Artist compilation. The album is dedicated to the cassette tape scene in Libya from the late '80s to early 2000s, from disco to reggae to pop. All songs previously unreleased outside of Libya and not available on any DSP platforms. This compilation isn't a sweeping history of Libyan music -- it's a personal journey into the sounds the label fell in love with while digging through tapes, conversations, and stories across Libya and beyond. Rather than spotlighting the country's most famous musical exports, the compilation brings forward a mix of overlooked gems and local classics of the cassette era: artists whose work thrived despite political limitations, and scarce international exposure. The music featured here blends reggae rhythms, synthy disco grooves, gritty pop, house, and funk, a vibrant collision of genres that reflects Libya's unique sonic landscape from the 1980s to the early 2000s. Many of these recordings were recovered from the TK7 cassette factory in Sousse, Tunisia, a now-demolished site that once played a quiet but vital role in distributing and manufacturing Libyan music. Other tracks were digitized in a Cairo hotel room in 2021, where Habibi Funk transferred nearly 100 tapes over the course of three days, on-site using a high-grade cassette deck brought into Egypt. From that trove emerged artists like Ahmed Ben Ali, Cheb Bakr, and Najib Alhoush & The Free Music. Their sounds sit alongside contributions from this release from the likes of Khaled Al Melody, Fathi Aldiyqz & Sons of Africa Band, City Lights Band, Libya Music Band, and Group Hewaya. What ties all the artists on this comp together is a boundary- pushing approach to genre and style: recorded in small studios, exchanged by hand, and shaped by a cross-pollination of influences, from Benghazi to Tripoli and beyond. All tracks are licensed from their creators and in the case of the artists being deceased from their estates."