Music is a universal language blablabla, we’ve heard it all before… Apart from sometimes the saying really does seem to ring true. The proof is in this crazy compilation which zooms in on musical scenes from the Maghreb to the Middle East. Habibi Funk: An Eclectic Selection of Music from the Arab World is the fruit of Jannis Stürtz’s work, the brain behind the label Jakarta Records. With the passion of this DJ and the German record digger, the nuggets came from the Arab world with western musical influences from the ‘70s and ‘80s. Thanks to him, fans of plural groove discover a James Brown from Casablana like a Lebanese Bossa Nova or the forgotten soundtracks to equally forgotten films. Song are strung together from Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Tunisia, Lebanon and elsewhere (originals as well as retakes such as Mirza from Nino Ferrer by the Moroccan Jalil Bennis and his Golden Hands) for which the groovy potential explodes in your ears from the first listen. Exotic and most of all fantastic. © MZ/Qobuz