 |
|
|
|
|
 |
The Structure
|
|
|
|
|
|
To communicate the variety of home sounds from home planet earth,
PIRANHA Kultur has been swimming among the sharks of the music
industry and cultural exchange since 1987. Head of the company is
CEO and co-founding director Christoph Borkowsky Akbar. PIRANHA
Kultur is made up of three individual companies:
- PIRANHA Musik Produktion & Verlag produces, publishes and
releases outstanding recordings of mainly African, Oriental, Jewish,
Latin American and Gypsy/Balkans origin. PIRANHA Musik's internet
affiliate PIRANHA Shop
(www.piranhashop.de)
distributes the company's own releases as well as a stock of more than 5000
world music classics and rarities.
- PIRANHA Events produces festivals like the Berlin summer classic
"HeimatKlänge" (“HomeSounds”),
"Junge Meister" ("Young Masters"), "Carnaval BerlimBrasil" or "Lange Nacht der Soundsystems"
("Long Night of the Soundsystems") as the official after parade party of Berlin's
"Karneval der Kulturen" ("Carnival of Cultures"). Moreover, being exceptionally well
connected world wide, the company, hived off in 2003, is an established agent of international
cultural exchange – resulting in regular local productions in cooperation with the likes of
Instituto Cultural Brasileiro na Alemanha ICBRA or Spanish Instituto Cervantes as well as in
successful programmes for the renowned German cultural festival "Ruhrfestspiele" or
"XX World Youth Day Cologne 2005".
- WOMEX has been producing the music trade fair WOMEX – the world music expo
since 1994. So far, the biggest and leading international networking salon for world,
roots, folk, ethnic, traditional, local and diaspora music of all kinds took place in
Berlin, Brussels, Marseilles, Stockholm, Rotterdam, Essen and Seville. From 26 to 30
October 2005, WOMEX 2005 will be visiting The Sage Gateshead in Newcastle Gateshead /
UK. For the rest of the year, the global community is networking at virtualWOMEX,
the WOMEX spin-off on the internet at www.womex.com or at the first so called WOMEX
outreach special Porto Musical in Recife ( 30 January – 2 February 2005).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Story
|
|
|
|
|
|
"It all started in the mid-seventies," PIRANHA co-founder Christoph
Borkowsky Akbar recalls, "when I went to Africa to research
resistance movements in the German colonies of South West Africa
for my doctoral thesis in cultural anthropology. The best part of
my field-studies on location was the weekend parties – complete
with huge ghetto blasters radiating music from Boney M to Dolly
Parton. When the batteries went down, people would start making
music themselves, which was fascinating, cool. Having returned to
Germany, due to the uninspiring atmosphere at the university, I
found myself in a state of utter depression. That's when I realised
how important music, different kinds of music, is to one's mental
and physical health."
Borkowsky began to organise festivals, starting with a benefit
concert for fugitives from Afghanistan with punk combos from
Berlin and New York. A sweeping success, the concert became the
spark that initiated the formation of PIRANHA. The company was
founded in 1987, in 1988 "HeimatKlänge" was kicked off
("HomeSounds"), Berlin's biggest world music summer festival to
this day, drawing an average crowd of two to three thousand
visitors per night.
Next was the music label publishing house, aiming successfully at
selling international licences and cooperating with potent partners.
Already twice, software market leader Microsoft used PIRANHA music
in image campaigns, once with Romanian Gypsy Brass Combo
Fanfare Ciocarlia,
once with Mozambique ballad
"Nwahulwana"
(Wazimbo)
also appearing in the Hollywood movie "The Pledge", directed by
Sean Penn, starring Jack Nicholson. Already twice also, Mercedes-Benz
in the course of MercedesCard promotional campaigns delighted their
customers with an exclusive PIRANHA 5 track sampler combining PIRANHA
acts with ones from other labels.
Ultimately, PIRANHA is the initiator, organiser and producer of
WOMEX, the biggest and leading international world music fair and
its spin-off on the internet, virtualWOMEX. Since 1994, the
networking salon proves to be the ideal catalyst for promoting
artists and repertoire of all kinds all over the world.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Label
|
|
|
|
|
|
How skilful PIRANHA is in developing and promoting its own artists
and repertoire, can be seen in the acts and styles PIRANHA Musik
internationally established in the range of six digit record sales.
Already classics are the label focuses on Jewish and Nubian music
as well as on Oriental Dance:
The Klezmatics
with their ebullient
survival energy, once among the initiators of the Klezmer revival
now maintain their unrivalled position spearheading the New Klezmer;
the godfather of Black Egyptian Music,
Ali Hassan Kuban,
has found worthy successors on his own label in
Salamat and
Mahmoud Fadl whose
"Love Letter from King Tut-Ank-Amen" has made it into
the top 100 world music albums appointed by the Rough Guide World
Music; producer
Jalilah,
once among the originators of the
international Oriental Dance Boom, by way of her meanwhile six part
series "Raks Sharki" now supplies it with its so-to-say
"official" soundtrack.
As a fourth label focus, Gypsy Brass / Balkans emerged over the
years.
Fanfare Ciocarlia
with their loony virtuosity and peppy
recordings and concerts have been the talk of the world music
community for years. Yet right next to them,
Boban Markovic
sweeps
the audiences off their feet as well. And with Boban's son Marko
Markovic, the next generation already blows the horn successfully,
too.
Common to all divisions in the Piranha repertoire, the catalogue
rather than on the short-lived surface of the pop market is
cultivated in the depths of the back catalogue – where artists
possessing pertinent substance prove to be way superior to the
one hit wonders of the charts. PIRANHA sales figures are growing
steadily, last but not least because world music has been discovered
as a creative pool for the regeneration of the whole music branch
since crisis hit the music industry. Microsoft and Hollywood these
days like to inspire their customers and audiences with music from
Mozambique, Mercedes-Benz with examples from all over the world,
mainstream top stars like Lou Bega and Outlandish have been using
the PIRANHA repertoire for years just as the international Global
DJ scene around the likes of Bucovina mixer Shantel. The listening
habits have changed – and that is just the beginning...
|
|
|
|
|
|
