About us: The Piranha Story

The PIRANHA may be a small fish, but it definitely makes its presence known. As an independent company for producing and publishing music, PIRANHA may not be able to swallow its biggest rivals, but it can show them the way: by presenting extraordinary sounds, with a repertoire ranging from traditional to fusion, from classical over left-field to hip hop and electro, with regional concentrations ranging from metropolitan Cairo to the otherworldly Romanian village Zece Prajini.

"It all started", one of the label’s founders Christoph Borkowsky recalls "when I went to Africa in the Seventies to do research for my thesis on resistance movements against German colonialism. The best bits of my field-studies were the weekend parties with huge ghetto blasters, radiating music from Boney M to Dolly Parton. When the batteries wore off, people would start making music themselves. That was cool. Having returned to Germany I soon enough found myself in a state of utter depression, due to the uninspiring atmosphere at the university. It was then that I realised what potential lay in music, in different kinds of music, to sustain one's mental and physical health."

Borkowsky started to organise festivals, the first being a benefit concert for fugitives from Afghanistan with punk bands from Berlin and New York in 1979. It was a sweeping success, fertilizing the embryo for PIRANHA: in 1987 the label was founded and in 1988 "Heimatklänge" (home sounds) began, a major annual event series which ran until 2006. PIRANHA's music publishing house was born at the same time. Piranha Publishing has It's proved to be a great success, resulting in movie soundtracks from both Berlin and Hollywood, half a million CDs for Mercedes Benz, the soundtrack for a Microsoft TV ad and numerous additional projects.

In addition to label and publishing activities, PIRANHA is also the initiator and organiser of WOMEX, the world's biggest world music trade fair, plus its internet equivalent, virtualWOMEX. In 2005, the first non-European WOMEX offspring PortoMusical (Recife/Brasil) came into being with more to follow. Such a network is the perfect platform for the promotion of artists and repertoire. And exactly this has been achieved: CD sales from PIRANHA artists such as Fanfare Ciocarlia, The Klezmatics and Jaliliah have topped the 100,000 mark, while sales in the licence- and synch-business for PIRANHA's catalogue have been stable for years.

PIRANHA's artist roster includes Boban i Marko Markovic with their mind-blowing brass music; the Grammy-Awarded Klezmatics; the music of Ali Hassan Kuban and Mahmoud Fadl, whose "Love Letter From King Tut Enk Amun" made it into the Rough Guide to World Music's All-Time Top 100 Albums list; best-selling, ex-Yugoslavian New Wave star Darko Rundek; the PianOriental maestro Maurice El Médioni and the belly-dancing producer Jalilah, who kicked off the Oriental-Dance boom in Germany with her ‘Raks Sharki’ series, to mention just a few. Our releases have earned a wealth of prizes and distinctions such as numerous German Record Critics Awards, Songlines Magazine "Top of the World" picks and listings in the World Music Charts Europe.

To step forward with a definite grounding in the past could be seen as a symbol for the activities of the company as a whole. Latest releases include a celebratory retrospective of the Klezmatics' 20 year career "Tuml = Lebn"; a cooperation with Germany's Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung entitled "Many Lessons" which presents Islamic-themed, West Aftrican hip hop; Boris Kovac's sumptuously filmed, award-winning DVD "Before and After... Apocalypse"; and Watcha Clan's French/Middle East migration electro. In a pioneering move typical of PIRANHA, we've recently fused together with IT experts from virtualWOMEX, forming a close partnership with the technological know-how to carry us into the digital future. PIRANHA swims onwards and upwards!