Hi,

We're glad you're here.

We're glad you're at Shabakamusic.com and we're glad you have a chance to hear some of our work. You'll notice that although some tracks are available in full, others are only partially available, or not at all.

This isn't to rip you off. This isn't to stop you from hearing our music. This is not so out of some sadistic desire to bust your balls.

This is so that you can hear some of our music, and therefore make an informed decision about whether or not you want to hear more of it. If you want to hear more of it, well - we expect you, no - we ask you to buy it. If you live in Egypt, it should be easy to do that. If you live abroad, well, we'll see about that when we've worked out some international distribution deal.

Yes. We'd like you to pay to hear our work.

We're not trying to buy yachts, we're not trying to rent a $20 Million seat on NASA's space shuttle. We are not, in short, trying to buy Sony Records, or start a McDonalds franchise.

However, we do want to continue to make music. We enjoy making music, and we've so far managed to survive without selling our guitars, without renting out our pets, and without breaching our main lines of integrity.

We simply cannot afford to do that if everybody pirates all the material. Wanna pirate it first - then - following some sort of honour system - buy it? We can't stop you.

In fact, no matter what you eventually decide to do, know this:

We can't stop you.

You, however, can stop us. You can copy the CD for a friend instead of asking him to buy a copy. Instead of directing him to a site where he can buy himself a copy. You have the power to copy it, to mp3 it, to spread it over the net. You can, if you chose to, distribute it using Gnotella, Limewire, and other file-sharing applications. In short, you have the power steal every single minute of work we've put into this music.

We sincerly hope that's not what you have in mind.

Remember this - not because it's wise or profound, but because it's true -

A musician is just a music fan who got carried away.

Thanks,

Shabaka