It’s the Fourth of July as I write this – dusk – and my neighborhood is reverberating with percussive explosions, strobing in time with colourful light. I’ve never really seen the appeal of fireworks, but my neighbours love ‘em, and I like the way they bring people together. Near where I live, there’s a stretch of eight-lane highway that connects the two halves of Dearborn, Michigan. It’s a couple miles of municipal buildings, a nearly defunct mall, the Ford world headquarters, and the back forty of a well-known living history museum. Every year, the museum does a few days of symphonic fireworks for the paying guests on its grounds, and every year, my neighbours cram their cars along the shoulder of the highway, on the median – anywhere you can jam a car, really – to watch the fireworks for free.
The whole thing is fairly chaotic and kinda magical. From above, it must look like a crazy quilt of hatchbacks and SUVs stitched together with lawn chairs, portable grills, and revelers launching off fireworks of their own from the beds of pickup trucks. Driving through the scrum this year, I could faintly hear however many car stereos re-soundtracking the spectacle simultaneously. I wish I had taken note of the music, but it was likely a syncretic blend of Middle Eastern and major-label pop bleeding into one another. I wish I had taken note of the music, but I didn’t – I was too struck by my own inadvertent re-soundtracking, surprised by how perfectly it framed this communal spectacle. And yeah, at first glance, that soundtrack, a comp entitled Habibi Funk 031: A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes, might seem to lack the requisite gravitas to score a purple summer sky streaked bright with vibrant gunpowder over a twilight landscape of red taillights, but lemme tell you: Michael Mann by way of Libyan preset reggae is a primo vibe.
A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s not trying to be a definitive document of the Libyan underground or whatever. Instead, it plays out like an ideally sequenced mixtape from a friend trying to turn you on to something they love. Something they need to share. In this case, that theoretical friend really, really loves obscure Libyan music. And make no mistake, it’s clear the very real, non-theoretical heads at Habibi Funk love the cuts on this compilation. Eschewing banner artists, they focus on lesser-known acts and local heavy hitters, but loyal followers of the label should recognise a handful of folks like Cheb Bakr. Spanning a couple of decades, from the 80s to the turn of the millennium, the tracks here mostly defy genre. There’s mutated disco, synthpop, and funk (obviously), but it’s all so influenced by North African and Arabic music that it becomes its own thing.
Surprisingly, the jams that hew most closely to anything, hew closest to reggae. Almost half the comp is devoted to charming permutations of Jamaican music. Even more surprisingly, all these tracks work. They have the strange appeal of a photocopy. See, photocopies aren’t mere simulacra. They’re copies, sure. But the humble photocopier fundamentally changes the thing it’s photocopying. Its processes create something that is in some ways ‘worse’ than the original, but it also creates something that has its own aesthetic properties that under the right circumstances can be valued as highly as the original. And that’s exactly what’s happened here. In trying to copy Jamaican music, these artists made something that feels strange and new – and a little wrong – but also deeply familiar. Crucially, they seem to really get the point of reggae, its spirit. Just listen to Fathi Aldiyqz & Sons of Africa Band’s ‘Palestine Is My Homeland’, and you’ll hear it, too.
Elsewhere, ‘Kul Ghrub’ by City Lights Band plays out like it could have influenced The Knife had they heard it, while The Hope Duo’s closer ‘La Tgheeb Anni Wala Youm’ is a bittersweet pop heartbreaker, a real tearjerker that could’ve come out of a John Hughes flick. Similarly, The White Bird Band’s ‘Ya Ummi’ sports a Beverly Hills Cop synth tone that would make Harold Faltermeyer proud. Which could be a double-edged sword. What has me stoked could, for some, sound hopelessly dated. And yeah, some of these numbers might, at times, require a healthy appetite for cheese, but it’s high-quality cheese. Just open your heart, let it gum up your arteries, you won’t be sorry.
As I type now, fireworks are still echoing in the air and A Selection Of Music From Libyan Tapes plays in the background. As it soundtracks fireworks yet again – this time the display outside my window – I can’t help but think of other things it could score. Gatherings, BBQs, what have you. This, most of all, is music for sharing, that needs to be shared. I want to hear it playing from a crappy boombox, outside on a hot, summer evening, cutting through happy chatter. I want to play it for my friends. I want to see their reaction when the Pink Floyd cover comes on.
