Description

1LP Vinyl – HABIBI022

Libyan Reggae at its peak grooves courtesy of Benghazi-born Ahmed Ben Ali. After working with Ahmed on the 12” hit “Subhana” (Habibi012), Habibi Funk is back with a full-length release focusing on Ahmed’s releases from the mid 2000’s. The tracks on the LP represent a blisteringly deep collection of heavy reggae rhythms and synthesized grooves from a singular creative force, inspired as much from Jamaican sonics as from Libyan folkloric styles, as Ahmed says, “it’s the Libyan style, not some bullshit.”

Our first and major contact with Libyan music began five-or-so years ago, when we were invited to visit an abandoned tape factory in Tunisia. We have talked about this influential visit more at length for the Free Music release (Habibi021), if you’re interested. Anyhow, the place was astonishing. It had a room full of unused – but already printed – inlay cards for tapes and three large rooms spreading over two floors of unsold stock. A rough guess would be more than 100,000 copies already dubbed with music, many of which were produced for the Libyan market. On top of this the owner, Hechmi, also told us of another 200,000 blank tapes held in a separate unit. Much of the music we found there was clearly influenced by Jamaican music, and we soon realized how popular Reggae music had been in Libya since the 1970’s.