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While it's hard to still think of him as a punk at 46, after over 20 years in the business, Rachid Taha continues to tweak Western preconceptions of what it means to be an Arab living in the west. This is most notable on "Rock El Casbah", a remake of the hit made famous by THE CLASH; in which he simultaneously embraces what has essentially become an advertising slogan, while giving it a Middle Eastern makeover. He's been banned for doing this in the past, when he took Charles Trenet's bucolic ode "Douce France" and turned it into an ironic commentary on the treatment of Algerian immigrants.
The title song "Tékitoi? (Who Are You?)" also touches on the immigrant experience; with a confrontational exchange between a young Frenchman and an Algerian. The idea being that confrontation is an important first step in the healing process. However, this in your face attitude can be a bit much for an entire CD, with parts sounding more like AC/DC than Aisha Kandisha.
The enclosed DVD is a bit friendlier; chronicling the band's tour of Mexico and the at times amusing culture clashes that ensue. The press conference segments are especially odd, with Taha speaking French followed by a Spanish interpreter and subtitled in English. Well, mostly in English. At one point the subtitles lapse into French.
On screen, Taha comes off as a happy-go-lucky guy; chain smoking his way through Old Mexico, while getting to know the locals by dancing in a square with an older woman wearing a dress seemingly made entirely of neckties, and shopping for OSMOND BROTHERS 45s in Spanish. He also gets down with a local woman on stage, who, like Taha, is pushing the envelope of youthful exuberance. In the interviews we learn that he's mystified why people view him as a world musician, as he thinks of himself as a rocker, and apparently an American; albeit an American who doesn't live here much.
The whole thing is not really a concert video. The audio from the live performances is often distorted and few songs are played in their entirety, as it's the kind of behind the scenes look at a tour that often gets distributed in press kits. One comes away with the impression of a performer who has been at this for a bit longer than would conventionally be considered seemly, and finds himself playing to smaller and smaller crowds in the provinces as a result.

Eric Iverson
"RootsWorld Bulletin", 6.04.2005

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Arabic "Rock The Casbah" or no Arabic "Rock The Casbah", this doesn't bite down as fast and hard as "Made in Medina", and it'll take more than the crib sheet to hold Francophone and Anglophone attention when it gets all lyrical in the middle. Nevertheless, Taha transcends translation when he snarls - to quote the booklet, crude though it may be - "Bores, racists, the undecided, ignorants, know-alls, winners, show-offs". If you doubt his righteous rage, the beat and the raï subtext and the ululating hangers-on ratchet his cred. "Get rid of them! Ask them for an explanation!" Yeah!

Robert Christgau
"The Village voice", 11.04.2005

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Nils Jacobson
"All About Jazz", 26.04.2005

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No xenophobia, here's Rachid Taha's "Tékitoi?". Taha grew up in Algeria listening to Bollywood tunes, Arabic music and trance music from Guinea. It all melds with ease on this CD. But even more than his old influences, the cat can rock. The title track (which means "Who are you?") is an incredible mix of Arabaic and Western instrumentation, with a rockin' beat. His version of THE CLASH's "Rock The Casbah" is such a natural inclusion, and it's varied enough (again because of the different instrumentation) to make it a new piece. There's a definite punk influence, but without the dominant angst of thrashing guitars. A DVD documentary is also included, which this listener could do without, but that certainly doesn't take away anything form this artist, who deserves some international crossover.

Steve Athanas
"Toledo City Paper", 27.04.2005

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It's somewhat ironic that the title of Rachid Taha's fourth solo studio album is a question. It's a phonetic transliteration of the French "Te qui toi?" - "Who Are You?" - and though Taha spends a couple of songs on the record asking questions, he spends a lot more of it in the imperative. There are more exclamation points in the trilingual transcriptions of the lyrics than a 15-year-old girl's yearbook, and you couldn't call the music anything but urgent. Even when he is asking questions, as on the opening title track, he's spitting them out in a gritty, pungent attack, though it's worth noting that part of his guttural approach comes from the fact that he's a native Arabic speaker, as it's a very guttural language with lots of action in the back of the throat.
Taha's politics and his music are the same thing, reflecting his multinational/nationless background, a story that began in Oran, Algeria and moved on to France when he was 10 years old. Taha has spoken in interviews of being a "permanent immigrant", French and yet Algerian, a part of both cultures and yet not quite integrated with either. His music reflects both identities in its embrace of Western styles like punk, house, and electro, viewed through the prism of Algerian raï. The union makes perfect sense - raï is both Algeria's punk music and its signature dance music. It's the kind of stuff that proves the limitations and biases of a term like World music; this is where Taha's records are inevitably filed, owing to... what? The Egyptian strings that wind their way through most of the songs, perhaps? Because he sings in French and Arabic and occasionally in Berber? Honestly, it's sad that our marketplace can't just accept it on its own terms and recognize the global pop music world for the continuum that it is.
For "Tékitoi?", Taha and longtime producer Steve Hillage have captured a massive sound stuffed with crunching guitars, swirling strings and colossal beats that's guaranteed to go over well with anyone who liked his past work North African percussion and a guitar-like instrument called a mandolute also feature prominently in the mix amongst the programming and distortion, giving the music a layered, expansive texture that freely mixes the organic with the artificial. The mandolute has an awesome timbre, dry like the desert that bore it, with a loose-stringed edge similar to an oud.
When the world is your sonic playground, you're bound to come up with some interesting stuff, and Taha doesn't disappoint. "H'Asbu-Hum (Ask Them for an Explanation)" finds hints of French musette rising up through the bumping Algerian beats, the Brian Eno collaboration "Dima (Always)" is full of skitterign drum programing and aslow, darkly luxurious string arrangement, and "Meftuh' (Open)" splits open a conservative raï arrangement with slamming drums and blasting electric guitar. "My heart and yours are wounded/the doors to prosperity are still open!" he shouts in Arabic on "Meftuh'", mixing hope for the future with a curt acknowledgment that the past is full of pain and wrong.
As great as most of the songs are, though, there's an elephant in the tracklist that's impossible to ignore. It's called "Rock El Casbah", and it's a very faithful cover of THE CLASH's "Rock The Casbah", with the verses translated into Arabic and Egyptian strings fluttering in the wings. If that were the whole story, it'd be an interesting cover and little else, but Taha's history adds another layer, namely that his original band, a France-based punk group called CARTE DE SÉJOUR that incorporated elements of raï into its sound was concurrent with THE CLASH and may have actually been the inspiration for the original "Rock the Casbah". Taha himself passed THE CLASH a tape of CARTE DE SÉJOUR while they were touring France, and less than a year later found himself listening to a very familiar sound coming from the radio in the form of "Rock the Casbah". It's possible to view "Rock El Casbah" as a reclamation as much as a cover, and listening back, it's quite striking how well-suited Joe Strummer's odd, throaty voice actually would have been to raï.
Early pressings of "Tékitoi?" include a DVD featuring a 43-minute documentary called "Kienes" (it does the same for Spanish that the album title does for French) that rather loosely chronicles Taha's tour of Mexico, where he and his band play everywhere from what looks like a small-town fair to a posh theater where the audience looks ridiculous sitting down for such intensely kinetic music. It's actually better for the interview clips than the live clips, though, as Taha plays with journalists, asking them to define their lazy terminology (the scene where he asks a reporter to define the Third World is especially telling) and explaining that he's really a contemporary of THE CLASH and not a follower. For its part, the album scarcely needs any extras to make it worthwhile, and it's a perfect exemplar of pop's progressive globalism, bashing down barriers that governments have barely begun to tackle.

Joe Tangari
"Pitchfork Review", May 19, 2005

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Rachid Taha is the biggest and best musician to come out of Algeria in a generation, and he's famous (and infamous) in his adopted homeland of France. In the U.S., though, he's made much less of an impact - something he hopes to change with the stateside release of his most recent album, "Tékitoi?" ("Who Are You?"). A longtime master of the native Algerian raï music and an old hand at incorporating trance beats and Arabic instruments like the oud and the darbuka into his music, Taha makes a great leap forward into western rock forms on "Tékitoi?". "I find a lot of rock rhythms hidden within Arabic music", he says. From his vocal collaboration with the legendary Brian Eno (with whom he claims to have formed a "mutual appreciation society"), to the satisfying punk edge in his music, he incorporates the two seamlessly. A sly cover of THE CLASH's "Rock the Casbah" may cause a stir; his last cover track, a snide punky interpretation of a beloved French pop hit, caused a furor in Paris, and "Rock El Casbah" nicely confronts the listener's prejudices about Arab culture. But Taha denies any subversive intent: "I recorded the song because I like it and as a tribute to Joe Strummer, who was an early hero". Hoping to make the kind of impression in America that he's made during successful recent tour stops in London, Moscow and St. Petersburg, he promises Chicago "serious rock'n'roll" blended with electronica and stunning pan-Arab influences. "Rock music is read from left to right and Arabic music is read from right to left", Taha explains. "I'm playing rock music, but from right to left".

Leonard Pierce
"UR Chicago magazine", June 2005

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Five years after Cheb Mami introduced raï to mainstream America on Sting's "Desert Rose", another Algerian superstar, Rachid Taha, may have taken the genre past critical mass with a clever cover of a punk anthem. Taha outfits THE CLASH's "Rock The Casbah" with a more traditional Middle-Eastern feel - it opens with a flute-and-drums intro - and the mix of electric guitars and ouds is positively sublime, as are the Arabic vocals. But Taha isn't just flipping irony on its heels; he's making a statement to the world. His intention, it seems, is to rock the actual Kasbah - as well as every discotheque or nightclub from Algiers to Paris to London to San Francisco. Other songs like "Safi", "Lli Fat Mat" and "H'asbu-Hum" show that Taha is on to something fresh with his Arabesque rock-funk fusion and lyrics that range from inspirational to political, while the album's title track, which translates to "Who Are You", is nothing less than a declaration of a new Arab identity - thoroughly modern, yet rooted in tradition.

Eric K. Arnold
"East Bay Express", June 22, 2005

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Rachid Taha is a maverick among Algeria's raï rebels. This street-wise, hybrid genre made its way to the global stage with passionate, young singers challenging social taboos. Taha went further, eschewing the slick pop of Cheb Mami, and the feel-good, funky raï of Khaled in favor of a rough-edged, rock vibe. Taha's brooding cover of THE CLASH ("Rock El Casbah") is only the most obvious gesture amid a 14-track feast of finely crafted rawness unlike anything else in African music. Producer/guitarist Steve Hillage heads a team of collaborators, but for all the techno grooves and layering of gnarly guitars, Middle Eastern instruments, and a blustery string section, Taha keeps it real with his gruff, edgy vocals. The voice is not pretty. It extends from a ragged whisper to a mad roar, calibrated to suit messages of despair, longing, and anger at "liars, thieves, killers, and oppressors". Taha is master of the terse, punk refrain on songs like "Meftuh/Open" and "Safi/Pure". He's also capable of high-concept rock bombast a la LED ZEPPELIN ("Nah'Seb/I Count"), and percolating, one-chord grooves reminiscent of TALKING HEADS ("Shuf/Look"). What endures is the expression of an angry man looking for hope and beauty in a soiled, broken world.

Banning Eyre
"The Boston Phoenix", July 1-7, 2005

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The last time Algerian rocker Rachid Taha made waves with a cover song, it was banned on French radio. He recorded Charles Trenet’s “Douce France” (think French Bing Crosby and you will get the picture), spitting it out in such ironic punk fashion that had France in an uproar. A leftwing politician seized the moment, delivering a copy to each French member of Parliament. Taha’s latest release, "Tékitoi" ("Wrasse Records"), features “Rock El Casbah”, an Arabic translation of the famous CLASH song. And though the world has had over two decades to digest this song’s lyrics, it takes on new meaning when sung by a French Algerian who cut his teeth in the punk movement.

"Calabash Music"