Piranha
“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.
