Habibi Funk is happy to announce it’s 30th release and the first one this year:

„Hawalat“ is the second proper album by Lebanese multi instrumentalist, composer and producer Charif Megarbane.

If Hawalat sounds like a world tour that’s because it essentially is. “As much as Marzipan is a picture of Lebanon from the inside, Hawalat kind of picks up from where Marzipan finished but more looking to the outside, the diaspora, to the notion of exile.” Megarbane says he is interested in the connections between the global and the domestic, the mundane and the cosmic, and wanted to create space for non-linear progression.

Hawalat is based on the idea of hawala, informal money transfers that you can make to certain countries impacted by a lack of currency or unstable political and economic contexts. His use of the term on this album is not a financial one, Megarbane explains, but a nod to notions of creative exchange between “places, persons, generations.” It is the first time Megarbane called on other musicians in this way to inform his sound, including a collaboration with Sven Wunder on the song Helia featuring strings by the Stockholm Studio Orchestra.

The full release will drop in April, the first single „Hanadi“ is out now, a punchy Somali-inspired track with warm non-lexical vocals and saxophone which you can already listen to on at Habibi Funk Bandcamp where you can also pre-order the light mint Vinyl edition, which is limited to 300 copies, as well as the CD and regular black Vinyl edition.