Habibi Funk: The label dedicated to reissuing stereotype-busting sounds from the Arab world

We talk to co-founder Jannis Stürtz about crate-digging in downtown Casablanca, historical sensitivity and why he loves DJing in London

Jannis Stürtz, co-founder of Habibi Funk (Fabian Brenneke)

The 16 tracks that make up the latest Habibi Funk compilation are a heady fusion of sound and fervour. There is some psychedelic disco from Egypt. Other songs are electrified by the carnival energy of Caribbean zouk. There’s even a raucous reworking of Beethoven’s “Für Elise”. And it all sits alongside smatterings of funk, soul and hip-hop. Some of the recordings are jagged and unrefined; others sound luscious enough to have been recorded yesterday.

And the stories behind how this compilation and the Berlin-based label that released it came to be are no less intriguing. For co-founder Jannis Stürtz, the journey started in 2012, with a chance visit to a hardware store-cum-record shop in Casablanca, Morocco, and has since taken him across the Arab nations, picking up rare LPs and dusty cassettes as he goes.

“As much as a lot of regions have been covered by a bunch of reissue labels that do similar work to us, the Arab world was kind of left out until very recently,” Stürtz, who also runs the Jakarta Records label, tells The Independent. “The thing in the beginning that triggered me was the fact that it was music I really, really liked, but I did not know a lot about it – and whoever I played it to usually had the same reaction.

“The quality of the music was really strong and I felt like there was a discrepancy between the availability of the music and the interest it created.”

And so, the idea for Habibi Funk, a reissue label focusing on eclectic, stereotype-busting sounds from the Arab world, was born. In that Casablanca shop six years ago, Stürtz came across a Seventies cover of James Brown’s “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”, sung in Arabic, by an artist called Fadoul. It’s the kind of song that needs to be heard rather than described, but Stürtz does a pretty good job of it: “Arabic funk with a punk attitude.”

The album cover of Habibi Funk’s first Fadoul release, ‘Al Zman Saib‘ (which translates loosely as ‘Hard Times’) (Habibi Funk)

“The Fadoul track was a good starting point,” he remembers. “It’s not very subtle, it’s full-on energy and very straight to the point. If it’s the first record you’re listening to, you get the idea straight away.”

After learning that Fadoul had passed away some years ago, Stürtz started trying to track down his family to license the music. The process took multiple trips to Morocco, drew in a team of musicians and helpers, and, after narrowing the search down to a certain neighbourhood in Casablanca, culminated in “running around with photos of the album cover and showing it to old men in coffee houses”. Eventually, Stürtz found the relatives.

And that’s not even the best of it. A number of labels have, in the past, tried to reissue the music of Ahmed Malek, an Algerian composer who was most active in the 1970s, but were unable to track down his family. For a time, Stürtz was similarly clueless.

“I did a DJ gig in Beirut and a friend of mine came to the show. We were talking about Ahmed Malek and how I’d like to do a reissue. I said I didn’t have a clue how to find the family. She said, ‘I have a friend in Algeria, I’ll just ask her’. I was like, ‘yeah, there are 40 million people in Algeria, what are the odds?’

“Two weeks later she calls me, and it turns out her friend’s family live in the same building as Ahmed Malek’s daughter.” As cosmic alignments go, it’s a pretty good one. Habibi Funk has since reissued two collections of Malek’s work – described by Stürtz as “melancholic and reflective, emotional and touching, but never depressing” – and there are plans for more in the future.

While asking Stürtz about his adventures, I use the word “discovery”, and he is quick to point out – politely but assuredly – how he came to avoid the term.

“One of the things that quite quickly someone pointed out to me, and that I stopped using, was the word ‘discover’, because it’s not music that hasn’t been there before I got to it,” he explains. “Especially when you’re coming from the West, and you’re dealing with cultural goods from the region, I guess ‘discover’ is a historically complicated term.”

This awareness and sensitivity is something that goes beyond a choice of words. “We are not an NGO, we are not a political group – we are first and foremost a record label,” Stürtz says. “But, given the specific content and the context we are working in, it has political components and we are very well aware of it.

“We think that, in the context of post-colonialism, there is a historically complicated form of exchange that has been repeated and repeated, and we want to break out of repeating these mistakes, and these exploitative patterns.” And that’s why all of Habibi Funk’s music is licensed directly from the artists or their families, and with any profits split 50/50.

But it’s not just about the financial exchange, as Stürtz stresses: “It’s also about how we represent these cultural goods. This is why, in our artworks, you won’t find any pyramids or camels, or any of the very stereotypical visual language.” Instead, the album covers are often developed using photos from private family collections, and are invariably fascinating snapshots.

Album cover for the latest Habibi Funk compilation, ‘An Eclectic Selection of Music from the Arab World’ (Habibi Funk)

Each of Habibi Funk’s official releases (there are seven to date) come with extensive booklets, featuring liner notes, photos and interviews, giving all the information on the artists that Stürtz was desperate to find, because telling these stories “is something that is equally as important to us as the music”, he says. And so comes the news that Habibi Funk is to run its very first exhibition, A Spotlight on Arab Grooves, at Dubai’s East Wing gallery this March. It’ll feature vintage prints, handwritten composition sheets, turntables for people to listen to the music on, and more.

In the meantime, Stürtz will be DJing at a few locations around Europe, including a slot at the Jazz Cafe in London, on 9 March. He promises “50 per cent Arabic stuff and then 50 per cent other stuff that I feel fits”.

“It’s always fun to play in the UK – everyone’s drunk very early because they know the curfew’s coming,” he adds. Swing by to see if that’s true, and to experience some of these incredible grooves first-hand.