Habibi Funk 031: A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes [Habibi Funk Records]

Format: 2x12". Includes an extensive 32-page booklet (the longest we've ever produced), featuring interviews and stories from all the artists on the compilation.

We are more than happy to announce our 31st release, which also happens to be our third various artists compilation. The album is dedicated to the cassette scene in Libya from the late 80s to the early 2000s, ranging from disco to reggae to pop. We also have a box set with an additional LP, available for now only on Bandcamp. The full release will be out on the first Friday of July.

This compilation does not aim to be an exhaustive history of Libyan music, but rather a personal journey through the sounds we fell in love with while exploring cassettes, conversations, and stories across Libya and beyond. Rather than focusing on the country’s most well-known artists, the compilation highlights a mix of overlooked gems and local classics from the cassette era – artists whose work thrived despite political limitations and little international exposure.

The music included here combines reggae rhythms, synthetic disco grooves, raw pop, house, and funk – a vibrant collision of genres that reflects Libya’s unique soundscape between the 80s and early 2000s. Many of these recordings were recovered from the TK7 cassette factory in Sousse, Tunisia, a now-demolished site that once played an understated yet vital role in the distribution and manufacture of Libyan music. Other tracks were digitized in a hotel room in Cairo in 2021, where we transferred nearly 100 cassettes in three days, using a high-quality cassette player we carried with us to Egypt on-site.

From that treasure trove emerged artists like Ahmed Ben Ali, Cheb Bakr, and Najib Alhoush & The Free Music, who had already appeared on previous releases. Their sounds now sit alongside contributions from 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 traveled abroad to record in Tunisia and Egypt, slowly building their own creative infrastructures. By the 90s and early 2000s, as access to digital equipment increased, some artists began setting up their own studios, a shift that led to a more self-sufficient recording culture throughout the country. The result is a range of sounds that are anything but homogenous. They reflect Libya’s geographical and cultural crossroads: North African rhythms meeting Arabic melodies and deep African roots. Reggae, in particular, adopted a distinctly Libyan flavor, not only musically—through the slower tempo influenced by traditional Shaabi beats—but also socially, as a vehicle for expressing identity and pride.

What unites all the artists in this compilation is a boundary-breaking attitude to genre and style – recorded in small studios, exchanged hand-to-hand, and shaped by the cross-pollination of influences from Benghazi to Tripoli and beyond.