Various - Habibi Funk - A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes

Various - Habibi Funk - A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes

Name: Various - Habibi Funk - A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes
Brand: Habibi Funk
SKU: HABIBI031LP
Price: 365.0 HKD
Availability: InStock

Genre: AFRO / BRAZIL / LATIN / REGGAE / DUB / WORLD BOOGIE / FUNK / SOUL / R&B / DISCO ‎ FOLK / COUNTRY / ACOUSTIC

Format: 2LP Edition

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2LP Edition
Release Date: 4/7/2025
Label: Habibi Funk

CD Edition
Release Date: 4/7/2025
Label: Habibi Funk

We're more than happy to announce our 31st release which happens to be our 3rd 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. We also have a box set with a bonus LP available which for now is only available on bandcamp. The full release is dropping on the first friday in July.

This compilation isn’t a sweeping history of Libyan music — it’s a personal journey into the sounds we 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 in spite of 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 digitised in a Cairo hotel room in 2021, where we transferred nearly 100 tapes over the course of three days, on-site using a high-grade cassette deck brought into Egypt with us.

From that trove emerged artists like Ahmed Ben Ali, Cheb Bakr, and Najib Alhoush & The Free Music, who have already featured on our earlier releases. 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.

During this era, Independent artists relied on makeshift home studios or travelled abroad to record in Tunisia and Egypt, gradually building their own infrastructures for creativity. By the 90s and early 2000s, as access to digital equipment increased, a few of the artists began setting up their own studios — a shift that gave rise to a more self-sufficient recording culture across the country. The resulting sounds are anything but homogeneous. They reflect Libya’s geographic and cultural crossroads: North African rhythms meet Arab melodies and deep African roots. Reggae, in particular, took on a local Libyan flavour — not just musically, through the slowed-down cadence of traditional shaabi beats, but socially, as a vehicle for expressing identity and pride.

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.

2LP Edition CD Edition

1. Cheb Bakr - Allom 04:33
2. Group Hewaya - Irja 04:48
3. Shahd - Erhal Keef Alshams Tgheeb 05:35
4. Ahmed Ben Ali - Jara 03:47
5. The White Bird Band - Ya Ummi 04:25
6. Khaled Al Melody - Jani Bigool 04:50
7. Fathi Aldiyqz & Sons of Africa Band - Palestine Is My Homeland 04:57
8. Libya Music Band - Kol Al Mawaeed 03:39
9. Stars of Africa - Baed Al Farha 04:47
10. Khaled Al Reigh - Zannik 03:43
11. Khaled Al Zlitni - Jiti Yam Eloyoun Buhoor 05:13
12. Murad Najah - Hubbi Leeki 05:01
13. City Lights Band - Kul Ghrub 06:06
14. Adil Al Ramli - Mawoud 04:22
15. The Hope Duo - La Tgheeb Anni Wala Youm 04:54