Rachid Taha ruffles a few stodgy French feathers

As I wait for Rachid Taha to come to the phone, it's appropriate that the tune that's playing in his management's Paris office is an old-style French ballad. Taha's punkish, caustically ironic rendition of Charles Trenet's "Douce France", a classic of the chanson genre, is what catapulted the Algerian-born singer to notoriety some 19 years ago. For many Frenchmen with immigrant roots, Taha's irreverent take on the tune was culturally liberating.

Although "Douce France" became a big hit with record buyers, only underground radio stations would play it. Taha had ruffled the Gallic rooster's tail feathers, and he was unofficially banned from the airwaves. His reputation as an outspoken and uncompromising critic of the status quo - social, political, and musical - was nonetheless made.

Most of Taha's songs are his own compositions, usually sung in Arabic. The music fuses North African rhythms and European hard rock with elements of punk, techno, hip-hop and electronica. It's not world music by most definitions, but Taha - who makes his Vancouver debut at the Commodore on Saturday (July 2) - has no time for such tags. "Frontiers between genres don't exist", - he declares, speaking in French in a terse, rapid-fire manner. "In music, what's interesting for me is to blend different things - and I definitely don't want to do something that's folklore!"

The first two cuts from Taha's latest album "Tékitoi?" are typical of his approach: the title track is a fast-paced pop- and hip-hop-flavoured duet with famed French rocker Christian Olivier, and it's followed by a fiercely danceable adaptation of THE CLASH's "Rock The Casbah", with the lyrics translated into Arabic.

"During the first Gulf War the GIs had made use of that song", the singer explains. "It was my way of taking it back".

Joe Strummer and company have provided much inspiration to Taha, and he has other strong connections to U.K. musicians. Steve Hillage (formerly with GONG) is a close friend and songwriting partner, and has produced all his albums. Recently Taha started collaborating with art rocker and electronica pioneer Brian Eno. "We've known each other for about five years, and just performed two concerts together, in St. Petersburg and Moscow. They went really great, and we're hoping to do more work together in the future".

For Taha, who just this past spring toured Morocco, Spain, Russia, Lebanon, England, Belgium, Romania, Turkey and France, music is his way of engaging in the worldwide struggle against racism, injustice, censorship and war. "When I sing in Arabic it's a way of defending a culture", he says. "Commercial radio stations here won't play any songs in the language unless they're huge hits, and even then. That's why I say that, for me, making music is a permanent battle".

Tony Montague
"Straight.com Vancouver", 30.06.2005