Darija rock
Rachid Taha in Morocco
After singing in Fez, Kenitra and Casablanca on May 11-15, French-Algerian singer Rachid Taha continued his world tour, scheduled to last until September. In Fez, his concert attracted 2.000 people, but most of them were left outside as only 500 could fit into the room. Portrait of a committed singer whose message is dedicated to "the Arab world and beyond".
Born in 1958 in Oran, Algeria, Rachid Taha emigrated to France at the age of ten along with his family. In his early twenties, like many North Africans at that time, he started earning his living in a succession of odd jobs. It was in a factory that he met the Amini brothers, Mohammed (bass) and Mokhtar (guitar).
One year later, the three friends created CARTE DE SÉJOUR (RESIDENCE PERMIT), a group whose very name announced the trouble-maker reputation they were to earn. In their songs, they claimed both their North African heritage and their French identities, becoming among the first groups to play world music.
This did not please everyone: the group were often deprived of access to FM radios under the pretext that they did not correspond to listeners' tastes, when in fact it was because they sang in Arabic.
Nevertheless, CCARTE DE SÉJOUR managed to take France's National Assembly by storm when, in 1986, their remake of Charles Trenet's song "Douce France" ("Sweet France") was distributed to MPs by Jack Lang, the then Minister of Culture. The event poured additional fuel on the fire as the country debated about its nationality law.
Despite their success, the group broke up in 1989 after a tour in Germany. Two years later, Rachid Taha returned on the scene with his first solo album "Barbès". In 1993, he published "Voilà Voilà". Its title song was a mixture of techno music and social criticism in which the lyrics express the suffering of the victims of racist abuse: "Everywhere, the words remain the same: you, foreigner, are the cause of our problems".
The song was a success, especially in UK discos. This led Rachid Taha to publish another album two years later "Olé Olé" in which he mixed lute and electric guitar sounds as well as other instruments from around the world.
However, Taha only really started to settle his accounts with the French Media in 1998, when he allied with two Algerian raï singers, Khaled and Faudel in "1, 2, 3 soleil". The wide success of the spectacle made the musical heritage of French Arabs part of the common culture, at least in the eyes of critics.
Later, in "Diwân", Taha returned with a new solo album which moved people on both sides of the Mediterranean. In it, he re-interpreted a series of old classics by stars such as Dahman El Harrachi ("Ya Rayeh"), Hadj Mahamed El Anka, Farid El Atrache or the Moroccan BEATLES, NASS EL GHIWANE ("Bani Al Insane").
His next album, "Made in Medina", a mixture of rock, electro, trance and North African music, included another Moroccan group B'NET MARRAKECH (DAUGHTERS OF MARRAKECH).
Rachid Taha's latest album "Tékitoi?" ("Who're you?"), published in September 2004, is filled with international voices including Christian Olivier, from the French group LES TÊTES RAIDES. In its main song, both singers answer each other with mirror-like questions: "Who're you? Me? Who're you? You! [...] What are you?"
However, its masterpiece remains Rachid Taha's very own version of THE CLASH's song, "Rock The Casbah", transformed into "Rock El Casbah". In it, he adds new lyrics, many of them in Algerian Darija, which make the song even more bitter than the original, like when mentioning "the Cheikh in his Cadillac", he adds "a fly, turned into a snake".
The music of "Rock El Casbah" is even stronger than the lyrics as it manages to present listeners with a perfect blend of Western and North African instruments, such as electric guitars and derboukas, proving his theory that "difference lies in the mind, in the way things are done, but the sound remains the same".
Houda Filali-Ansary
"Morocco Times", 21.05.2005
