Desert Disco: the rise of Tunisian rave culture
There is no single Arabic language. While modern standard Arabic is used in an official capacity, the dialects of Arabic used throughout North Africa and the Middle East are as varied, complex and dynamic as the countries themselves. The same is absolutely true of the music. There is a huge variety of scenes and communities making music everywhere you look. Very few of them, though, are as exciting as a core of musicians in Tunisia, on the northernmost tip of the African continent, who are making some of the best dance music around.
Operating mainly out of Tunis, Tunisia’s capital city, are a generation of artists whose music is a thrilling mix of the country’s rich musical tradition and the thrilling, bleeding-edge of electronic music. Artists like Nuri, a Tunis native whose thunderous bass beats are intertwined with percussion instruments common to traditional music of the area like Krakebs (steel castanets) and Chaccas (a seed pod shaker).
Now living and working in Denmark, Nuri keeps his heritage alive in two ways. First, the mask and robes he wears in tribute to the friendly witch doctors native to his homeland. Second, the amount of cultural frameworks he injects into his music: the vast majority of the vocals on his records are sampled from the sub-Saharan African music tradition of Pygmy singing.
In a rare interview with Reform The Funk, Nuri went into the reason he uses these samples, saying, “The Pygmy singing I sample is a very spiritual sound for me. I hear my childhood and it evocates a pure feeling inside which makes me happy. Traditionally they are songs used for all kinds of rituals… The stories behind the music are religious, which I am not, yet there is still this uplifting energy.”
This isn’t to say that Tunisian artists aren’t producing straight-up bangers. Just one listen to the work of HearThuG shows just how hard the club scene in Tunis goes as well. His brand of grinding acid house got him noticed in dance circles all over the world. However, his drive to show just what his scene is capable of led to him creating one of the leading lights of the whole Tunisian music scene.
In an interview with Trommel Music, he said: “After years of experimenting with various genres and techniques, I began to understand what resonated most with me and my audience. It also led me to launch Are You Alien recordings, I always felt like my sound has a certain uniqueness to it, and I wanted my label to explore more productions that had that special sound.” Today, Are You Alien is the nerve centre for this most exciting of dance music scenes, for very good reason.
However, if, for one reason or another, you need a more experienced name in dance music to co-sign the work of another, then look no further than Houaida Hedfi. Initially a percussionist, she got her big break on a compilation album of female Tunisian artists. The producer was so impressed with her work that he asked if they could continue collaborating. That artist? None other than The Knife’s Olof Dreijer.
The two kept working together for the next nine years, leading up to Dreijer’s production turn on Hedfi’s album Fleuves De l’Âme, released in 2021 and still one of the high points from the whole Tunisian dance music scene. She’s not alone, though. If anything you’ve seen here has caught your ear, don’t be afraid to throw yourself into the sheer amount of blogs and zines covering the scene; you won’t regret it.
