"La Habanera" is the name of a well-known aria from Carmen, an opera by Georges Bizet. The habanera aria itself is originally based on "El Arreglito" by Sebastián de Yradier, a Basque composer. "La Habanera" enjoys great popularity outside the opera world, it´s probably one of the most famous arias in the world, revisited and reinterpreted hundreds of times since its release in 1875. The aria is sung in Act 1 by the title character, Carmen (mezzo-soprano), in it she expresses her indifference to the protestations of love and advances of her numerous suitors.

Daniel´s "Vem" track, released in April this year already made use of string orchestration. Its string sounds and classic music that Daniel currently gets the most excited about.

When Daniel accidentally stumbled across the aria while listening to Berlin´s Klassik Radio, he noticed that the first notes of "La Habanera" are rhythmically played like a dembow rhythm. Soon he searched for the midi files of the aria, realised its metrics was based on 75bpm - perfect dembow tempo - and sculpted the dub in two days studio time.

Shortly after, Daniel met Armenian opera singer Naré, with whom he recorded an additional vocal version of "La Habanera" (which we´ll release in a couple of weeks from now).

Until then, enjoy the dub, maybe sing or rap on top of it, and we´ll get back to you soon with probably the first ever dembow aria!

Illustration by Anje Jager, https://soothingshade.com/artist/anje-jager/

La Habanera Dub

La Habanera

Man 124 Daniel Haaksman "La Habanera Dub"

Man Recordings is a Berlin based record label. Founded in 2005 by DJ and producer @Daniel-Haaksman it  has tirelessly promoted regional electronic music styles from the Southern hemisphere, particularly Brazil, the Carribbean and Africa and their international adaptions. Man Recordings has released the who´s who of early baile funk artists such as Mr.Catra, Deize Tigrona,  Edu K, João Brasil, MC Tha, or Mulú, plus some of the first international releases and remixes by artists such as Diplo, Tropkillaz, Crookers, Schlachthofbronx, Bert On Beats plus countless others. Recently the label has become more focussed on the releases and own musical outputs of boss man Daniel Haaksman.

Visit us at www.manrecordings.com

Demo submissions (in private Soundcloud player link only): office-at-manrecordings.com