The studio,
in its own words.

MYB Studio is my independent home studio in Pennsylvania, where North African heritage meets the global underground. My music carries the rhythms and memories of Tunisia into the life I have built in the United States.

One side of my music is Raï-Phonk — a genre I named and catalogued, because a genre is a body of work with a definition, not a Bandcamp tag. The two words had touched before: Cheb Terro and Taymour, Rai Futura (Drowned By Locals, 2 September 2022). I put the gasba flute and the melodic soul of Algerian raï over drill 808s and Memphis-lineage phonk drums, with lyrics in Tunisian Derja that can move into French in a single breath. It is street music twice over: Maghrebi street opinion on American phonk pressure. The title track "Rai & Phonk" flies the flag; the catalog is five titles: "Darb El Ghubar," "Chamchoun," "Rai & Phonk," "Darb Assoumoud," and "Ghaddara."

The second wing is older than any of us: Malouf and muwashshah — the Andalusian classical tradition of Tunisia, sung the old way, treated with the reverence it demands. "Sawti Kafani" belongs to that wing. One studio, two wings; the tension between them is the whole point.

None of this is accidental. At the University of Illinois I took ethnomusicology courses under Professor Buchanan, a specialist in Balkan music, and performed darbuka live with the Balkanalia Ensemble. The tradition that marked me deepest was the Greek rebetika: underground songs of resistance and defiance, simple and beautiful melodies rooted in oral tradition, sung by the displaced. Years later, when I chose raï — North Africa's blue-collar rebel music — and phonk — the internet's voice of the powerless — I was making the choice rebetika taught me: stand with the faceless and the nameless. My sociology training and my own life pointed the same way. This music has one job: to give the forgotten a sound that catches the ear and challenges the status quo.

The words carry the weight. I write in Tunisian Derja because refusal sounds truest in it — ما نسلموش, "we don't surrender," is an engine, not a slogan. Themes of loyalty, exile, betrayal, and endurance run through all thirty-plus songs, and every lyric is mine. I shape the recordings through repeated listening and revision, developing each song until it expresses what I mean.

I release my work independently through MYB Studio. This website brings together the recordings, accompanying films and writing.

I compose and record the foundation of every song myself — melody, voice, darbuka — then use modern tools, including Suno, to develop the arrangement. On my vocal songs, you hear an AI model of my own voice.

I develop the music in Cubase and use DaVinci Resolve to edit and finish the accompanying videos.

Darb El Ghubar visual credits: My personal portrait photography and AI-generated imagery I created with Grok.

Listen to two complete recordings, watch a film excerpt and read the full accompanying essay without signing up. The introduction includes credits for each featured recording and more about my musical journey.