Even better than a protest song!

 Hi Charlie, 

I hope you are doing well and that you spent restful holidays (when I say restful I mean without too many homeworks, which is a bit ironic in OIB I agree...). Today, I decided to make an effort and to try to write an article that was not about food. However, to compensate, this article will have some links with politics (otherwise, it's not funny ^^). 

As some of you may know I have Algerian origins, so growing up and still today I was very exposed to Algerian music. Wrongly, I used to qualify it as Arab music, putting it in the same basket as Egyptian music (that is REALLY popular in MENA and really beautiful) or music from the Arab peninsula. In reality the musical genre that I am going to introduce is called Raï and is typically and exclusively Algerian, which is not exactly the same as Arab. But I am not going to write an essay about why Algeria cannot be reduced to "Arab" even if it could be a really nice topic for another blog article ;) . If I chose to write an article about Raï, it is because the whole musical genre is about protest and revolution! 

I - The origins of Raï

Firstly, Raï can be considered as a protest musical genre because its first characteristic is modernity and breaking the codes. This is why in this genre you can find completely different songs : at the very beginning of the genre as long as you were not singing Arab poetry for the nobility, you were considered as a Raï singer. Indeed, traditionaly, the nobility would pay male and female artists to play traditional instruments like gasba (a sort of flute) or derbouka (a drum instrument) and to recite poetry related to nature or religion ; of course this poetry had to be in a perfect literary Arabic because it was more fancy, even if the population was (and is still) speaking a completely different dialect. In the 1920's, some singers from nightclubs and cabarets started to sing about more casual subjects such as the difficult everyday life of indigenous people (at this time Algeria was under French occupation), poverty, social injustice, the place of women in society and even THE taboo in 99,999% of societies aka sex. They were speaking in Algerian dialect, considered as vulgar at the time and were performing in a very bawdy milieu so they ironically decided to call themeselves Cheikhs and Cheikhas which means "(old) scholar" or even "religious scholar" in literary Arabic. As they were giving their (undesired) opinions, they decided to call the musical genre Raï which means "opinion" in Algerian dialect. Moreover, the rupture with traditional music is also about rythm. As I said before, Algerian classical music was mainly sung poetry recitations, the rythm was thus slow in order to allow a spiritual reflexion. But Raï was born in cabarets and nightclubs, were people wanted to move and dance. Thus - and you may have saw it if you've ever been to a North African wedding - Raï music is characterised by a fast and catchy pace, inspired by tribal berber music (like Chaoui gasba or Kabyle music). Due to this drastic change, new instruments were used such as guellal (another drum instrument used by the bedouin tribes from the south of the country), and old instruments like gasba and derbouka were used in a completely different manner. 

here is a picture of men playing Gasba 

To sum up on that part, we can say that Raï is a revolutionary musical genre as it rejects the literary Arabic language, the traditional themes and offers a completely new rythm. But until the 1980's, Raï isn't really popular as it is only played in nightclubs only accessible in the cities for the richest indigenous.

 II - The emergence of Raï in the 1980's and its politisation 

As we said, Raï only became the popular genre we know today in the 1980's. Indeed, the immediate period that followed the Algerian independence in 1962 was full of ideals and characterized by a feeling of freedom for the population. At the time, Algeria was really powerful in the Third-world, and its strong links with USSR made it a perfect refuge for communist people or even left-wing activists from all over the world. When groups such as the Black Panthers arrived in Algeria, they spread their ideals and also their musical tastes. In the nightclubs - more and more popular due to the secularisation of the country and to its urbanisation - a new generation of singers emerged. Younger, influenced by jamaïcan reggae or rock'n'roll, this new wave of singers decided to call themselves Chababs (which means young) and started to hold new revendications. Of course, it didn't please the government that used severe censorship and repression. To cheer everything up, terrorism and religious fanatism started to develop in the country, which added another layer of censorship, all the more that Raï was still associated to "un-islamic" stuffs like alcohol, drugs and nightclubs where prostitution was extremely common. Under all this repression, Raï became even more popular and a real social phenomenon. The youth that saw all the ideals of the 70's vanish under an authoritarian regime and the rise of terrorism, started to see music as their only loophole. At this point, singers like Cheb Khaled, Cheb Hasni, Bilel Sghir, Cheba Zahouania or the intemporal Cheikha Remitti are becoming real superstars; however everybody can meet them in the street in Oran, and the birthplace of Raï. The second city of the country which is quite poor compared to the Capital, is popular and the place to be if you want to listen to Raï. There, Cheb Hasni becomes the rising star of "Raï sentimental", mainly because of the scandal he provoked with his first song "El Baraka". Indeed, in that song featuring Cheba Zahouania ten years older than him, the 18 years old Hasni dares to talk about sexual moral and the housing crisis of the time with a sentence that became iconic : "derna l'amour fi baraka mranka" which translates to "We made love in a shabby shack". In 1980, the group Raïna Raï is formed and its single "Ya zina diri latay" is a success with their new insight on the Raï : Concerning the music, they come accross with a rock formation and the chorus is replaced by a beautiful electric guitar solo. The lyrics are also interesting as they pay tribute to the Algerian woman "a black-eyed beauty" at a time when the ideal of beauty in Algeria is a white, blond and blue eyed woman (not really realistic though but still...colonisation is never really far). 

Cheb Hasni

Cheikha Remitti

This blooming of music was too much for the terrorists groups developing in the country at the time, so they decided to "purify society" by themselves : instead of spreading joy and music, those fanatics decided that spreding blood and terror would please God more. When they really took power during the 1990's called the black decade, they started killing popular symbols like journalists, politics, artists etc.. A lot of singers freaked out and decided to move to France, helped by the important Algerian diaspora in the country. Cheb Hasni, who had French nationality, still decided to stay in Algeria, refusing to submit to the pressure; he was killed in September 1994 by a terrorist group in front of his home. This assassination moved the whole country but also marked the end of an era for the Oranese Raï. Indeed, as many singers fleed to France such as Cheb Khaled, the genre started to be influenced by French culture. Some singers started to sing in French, and some people that grew up in France started to appropriate the genre. Thus the 95/2000 years witnessed the emergence of the "Raï'n'B fever" phenomenon, with singers that only spoke French, singers that only spoke arabic, singers that spoke both and as you can tell by the name, R'n'B strongly influenced this new form of Raï.  

Today Raï is still very popular in Algeria and a must in every party, but with globalisation, it now has to share the scene with other musical genres. In France, Raï is now less popular, but it still has a great influence on actual music, notably on singers such as Fianso in his song "arafricain" or Soolking who is Algerian but began his career in France and sings in French.

That is all for me, I hope you enjoyed this article that is quite long but that I really enjoyed writing! Of course I cannot leave you without a small playlist, so here are some songs that you must listen to (I tried to pick from different types/eras of Raï) : 

- Raïna Raï "ya zina diri latay"

- Cheb Hasni "chira li nebghiha" , "baida ya mon amour" , "el baraka"

- Cheikha remitti "nouar" , "nta goudami"

- Cheb Khaled "Didi" "nti sbabi w sbab blaya"

- Soolking and Cheb Mami "Ca fait des années"

- Rai'n'B fever  "Mon bled" , "Un gaou à Oran"

- Cheb Mami "Bent Colonel"

- Faudel "Tellement je t'aime"

- 113 "Partir loin" "Tonton du bled"

- Cheb Khalass "Daouar daouar"

ILRDM