dublab Radio presents Interviews with Progressive Music Makers & Communities: Tel Aviv – The MENA Region. Our guests come from across the music world, including artists, DJs, journalists, radio hosts, label owners, and more. This series spotlights their compelling work. All interviews were conducted in 2019.

Fortuna Records is a reissue label and a DJ crew from Tel-Aviv, championing the obscure forgotten sounds of the Middle East with a string of top quality vinyl reissues accompanied by notoriously wild parties.

With two Boiler Room sessions under their belt and fans such Gilles Peterson, Gaslamp Killer, Acid Arab, Optimo and John Talabot, Fortuna never cease to raise the bar with insane releases such as their recent Drums of Lebanon reissue by the mysterious Raja Zahr.

Fortuna Records were nominated twice for the Gilles Peterson Worldwide Awards for Track of the Year, in 2015 for “Jamilah” by Ihsan Al Munzer and in 2016 for our first original 12″ by Kalbata, “Al Shark”.

Their wild DJ sets are an all night belly-dance excursion into the psychedelic side of Middle Eastern Funk mixed with African tribalizm all the way into 4×4 techno workouts of a similar nature.

2020 sees Fortuna in top form, with a monthly NTS Radio show, a track record of gigs in London, Paris, LA, Germany, South Africa, Poland & Greece, while still releasing the Middle East’s most obscure records, they show no signs of stopping!

Zack Bar was interviewed by Alejandro Cohen.

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We’d like to thank our guests and contributors. This series was produced by dublab Radio and Matteah Baim. Interviews were conducted by Alejandro Cohen and Chris Kissel. The dublab sound logo was created by Suzanne Ciani. Alejandro Cohen made our theme music. Editing was done by Matteah Baim. Lauren Denitzio was our graphic designer. This series was made possible by a grant from Asylum Arts.