Hey! I'm Bahjat and I firstly just want to thank everyone who has helped me get where I am today.
In collaboration with Corite, my team and I wanted to lay out a campaign that is different, exciting, and fun for you to take part in. We are going to release not one, but two new versions of “Hometown Smile”! One of them is a new version with a brand new Arabic verse, and the other one the official Nightcore version (fun fact: the nightcore versions of Hometown Smile have accumulated over 50,000,000 views on YouTube!).
Last but not least, the most exciting part is this: all the revenue that all the versions make will be shared with you - the people who made the song happen and continue to reinforce its message beautifully.
Whether you’re investing, simply checking this out, or even just thinking to yourself “this is cool”, I would like to thank you for supporting me and also for helping pave the way towards a new music industry - one that is truly driven by the fans, for the fans.
All the money raised from this campaign will go to the making of a music video, and the marketing of the songs.
About the music
“Hometown Smile” is a song I wrote on a guitar in my bedroom, at a time when I was relearning the way I viewed “home”, unconditional love, and their relationship to each other.
When we - my mom, siblings and I - left our home in Libya and moved to Malta, everything I knew about the world and how to survive in it changed abruptly. I was 15 years old and these tough times taught me lessons that changed my life forever. I remember one day we were sitting in our new living room, in pitch darkness - trying to save money on electricity bills, while eating noodles we bought in cheap bundles. We were at our absolute lowest point, but we were happy. We were happy, and felt safe, because we had each other. I remember looking around this foreign place that I’ve barely lived in and thinking “this feels like ‘home’”. That was when I realised that ‘home’ was never a physical place, but a feeling. A feeling of love, security and hope that everything is going to be fine, no matter how hard the present may seem.
When I put “Hometown Smile” out, never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that it was going to go on and touch millions of people. It sort of became this online phenomenon, with so many people interpreting it in their own way - putting their own pictures, videos, dances, and storylines to it. The way things happened for “Hometown Smile” is so rare, especially for an independent artist like myself. So, it made me want to revisit the song and present it in a new way, and include you all in reinforcing the song’s message and spreading even further.
About Bahjat
Bahjat is an independent music artist from Libya, living in Malta and making music in Stockholm, Sweden. With over 20,000,000 on-demand streams, and 50,000,000+ collective views on YouTube, Bahjat is already one of the most successful Libyan music artists in history.
Born and raised in sunny Tripoli, Libya, Bahjat and his family fled to Malta after the Arab spring in 2011, which was a major turning point in his life. In the fall of 2017, Bahjat stumbled upon an opportunity to spend a few months at Musikmakarna, a pop music academy in the north of Sweden, where he met his songwriting and production heroes Max Martin and Johan Shellback.
With today’s music landscape being more multicultural than ever, Bahjat is emerging as a pioneer from the Arab world offering ambitious youth a much-needed role model. By blazing trails and overcoming hardships, Bahjat is an advocate for the fact that one’s circumstances do not define your future.
Corite is a fan funded marketing platform where artists and fans come together for a common goal. Find a fan campaign you like, make a contribution and get paid for one year when it’s streamed, based on the size of your share. Backing a fan campaign means supporting dreams, independent artists and contributing to a more transparent and sustainable music industry. And remember music is a work of art, this isn’t Wall Street.