Dubai’s dance scene to grow with Ma’ana label

You’ve got three types of people in Dubai. Your hip hop heads. Your heavy metal fans. And your dance music obsessives. Tobie Allen falls into the latter category.

Head of UK label Bootleg Social Records, Allen moved to Dubai a couple years ago with his wife and spent nine months observing the music scene, absorbing whatever it had to offer.

“I’m not sure my wife liked the late nights. I was out four, five nights a week for six months, from November 2014, through to the beginning of last year, just getting to know who’s who and doing what,” he said. “Basically, I chucked out the idea — I’m going to do an album, what have you got?”

The result was a compilation album titled Sounds of Dubai, a mishmash of local talent that garnered attention as far as America, the UK and Germany.

But as with any project, there was room for growth. Last month, he launched two more ventures: a Dubai-based imprint of his Bootleg Social label, Ma’ana Records (“I came up with Ma’ana, which means ‘Together’ or ‘As one’ in Arabic. In essence, we’re all together in a great place — it doesn’t matter who you are or where you’re from.”), and Sounds of Dubai 002, a mix of 25 dance tracks that come from the UAE’s biggest underground names.

“I love feedback, I love criticism if it’s constructive. You always want to make a product better. I always wanted to provide a platform for others. There’s some great producers coming out of this region,” said Allen.

“I’m a strong believer that you’ve got to understand how to respect a scene. You can’t come in like a lobster [makes lobster claw movements], giving it all the big mouth, ‘I’ve done this, I’ve done that.’ People look at you and just go, ‘Who the heck are you?’ You’ve got to understand that there’s people who’ve been here for years setting up a scene. Without them, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do.”

Though he’s proud of the first edition of Sounds of Dubai, he found that the “levels weren’t quite right, engineering wasn’t quite right, stuff was older — [artists] were just giving me a pack.”

The first album was: “What’s Dubai got? Give it all to me.” The second one was more discerning. After immersing himself in the dance scene, he was able to cherry-pick some of its best DJs, scouring his contacts as well as Beatport’s Top 100 (a specialised, global chart for dance music).

The final tally: 31 artists, Middle Eastern and beyond (Allen is still looking for an Emirati house musician), including the likes of Andy Buchan, Moe Turk and Acid Underground.

“The one thing with Ma’ana is that it’s representative. It’s never going to be 25 tracks of one style — it can’t be, if you’re representing a city.”

Allen says he’s always on the lookout for talent and is happy to hear what strangers have to offer in the UAE.

As for what’s next for the label — a couple of poolside records on one side, and an ambitious expansion into the rest of the Middle East on the other. “There’s so much good things about this place — and the one thing that binds things together on a dance floor is music. Because it has no race. It has no creed. It has no colour. It has no class.”

*Check out Ma’ana: Sounds of Dubai 002 on iTunes and Anghami.