The 31st release from Habibi Funk—and the sixth to focus on Libyan music—delves into the country’s little-documented cassette era, spanning the 1980s to early 2000s. Rather than presenting a best-of collection of commercial hits, the compilation follows a more personal trajectory: a search for rare recordings deeply rooted in local music scenes.
The tracks come from artists who embraced digital technology in the 1990s to express their musical independence—fusing regional identities with Western influences. The result is stylistically diverse yet consistently authentic. Reggae adopts a distinctly local flavour; House and Funk meet Synth-Disco, Arabic melodies, North African rhythms, and classic Libyan pop.
Many of the songs were salvaged from a now-demolished cassette production and storage facility in Libya, with the help of a former distributor from Tunisia. Others were digitised in 2021 directly from cassette in a Cairo hotel room. The outcome is a raw, energetic and inventive sonic document of cultural self-determination—unpolished and brimming with intent.
