La Bomba are extremely excited to announce the return of Jannis Sturtz - the man behind the incredible Habibi Funk label. Jannis has played a couple of times in Bristol - his last show at Cosies in 2018 was officially the biggest roadblock ever there - and, following delays from COVID, we've managed to bring him back!

Support as ever from John Stapleton and Boom Operator playing original vinyl from Ghana to Colombia

Habibi Funk is a label and platform for funky/soulful and/or psych influenced music from the Arab world of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
Jannis of Jakarta Records got to travel a lot in north Africa in the last years thru touring with Blitz The Ambassador and a studio session with Oddisee and Olof Dreijer of The Knife for the “Sawtuha” project in Tunisia. While being there he did some record digging and found some incredible music from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Since then he went to Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt searching for records. It's incredible to see how the music of these days seem to be the opposite of the very stereotypical idea of the “the Arab world” mainstream media portrays way too often.
Some of the music has zero info on the net, was never sold on ebay and has not been “rediscovered” by a wider audience yet, while others are somewhat classics in the field of “Arabic groove“.
Playing original and incredibly rare vinyl, Jannis’ DJ sets are a unique blend of funky sounds from Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and the European Arabic diaspora.

“As much as a lot of regions have been covered by a bunch of reissue labels that do similar work to us, the Arab world was kind of left out until very recently,” Stürtz, who also runs the Jakarta Records label, tells The Independent. “The thing in the beginning that triggered me was the fact that it was music I really, really liked, but I did not know a lot about it – and whoever I played it to usually had the same reaction."

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