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 | The Story | | |
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| "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. | | |
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| The Label | | |
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| 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... | | |
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