Habibi Funk 015: An Eclectic Selection of Music from the Arab World, Part 2

As the comprehensive and beautifully produced sleeve notes make clear, this compilation of 13 jaw-droppingly funky tracks from the Middle East and North Africa isn’t meant to be a typical representation of the music of the region but a collection of ‘nichey pearls’ curated by the Berlin-based DJ and record label. Eschewing the big names you’d find on more mainstream collections, Habibi Funk instead serves up a gorgeously eclectic and esoteric mix of rare grooves from overlooked and under-appreciated artists, mainly from those halcyon days of disco, the 1970s.

The glorious cover art images, complete with far-out hairstyles and flares, reproduced in the booklet that comes with this record makes it worth the price of admission alone, but there’s some absolute audio gold here too: groovy Egyptian organ funk, Algerian cinema soundtracks, even a Libyan disco floor-filler from the days when the country looked to Gaddafi as the great young hope, ‘Ya Aen Daly’ by Najib Al Housh, that makes more than a passing nod to the Bee Gees’ classic, ‘Staying Alive’. While ‘Sultan Qaboos Song’ (referring to Oman’s long-serving leader who died last year) by Sal Davis, who was also a radio presenter for the BBC’s Voice of Africa, is quite possibly the grooviest paean to a Middle Eastern autocrat you’ll ever hear. The fashions and politics may have been questionable, but the sounds were out of sight!