Algerian music archive: Dounia Music

Douniamusic is your gateway to a number of varieties of Algerian music: chaabi, rap, rai, Kabyle, Andalusian, etc. It's not for downloading, just for listening, but there is a lot there. The rai archive doesn't have much of the older stuff, whereas the chaabi does. But I've only just started exploring. Enjoy.

Ahmed Wahbi, "Ya Dzayer"

Ahmed Wahbi's ouahrani (wahrani) song, "Ya Dzayer," is notable for its ultra-smooth Cuban rhythms, as smooth as Tanzanian tarab. If you compare this version to the recorded version, it seems that the rhythm section is turned up here, and the Cuban element (produced by the bongos) is more prominent. I'm not sure when it was broadcast.

 

Footage of Cheikh Raymond Leiris

The original footage is from Algerian television, from the colonial era, which began broadcasting in 1957. The colonial authorities broadcast Arab musicians (in an attempt to co-opt them), particularly on the show, "Rythmes et Chansons," which ran from 1958 to 1962. It seems to have been broadcast in France, on a show that featured Enrico Macias (born Gaston Ghrenassia), who was Cheikh Raymond's protegé, and his father, the violin player Sylvain Ghrenassia, a member of Cheikh Raymond's troupe.

The title of the video is, of course, all wrong. Cheikh Raymond was not Amazigh (Berber), but an Algerian Jew.

113 feat. Rida Taliani, "Partir Loin" (rai 'n' b)

From the 113 album, 113 Degrés (2005). Rapping on this song is done by Rim'K.

Lyrics (from here, with some corrections)

Reda
-Ouais gros!!
-elle est où Joséphine!
-allez laissez moi de toi!
-ah bon c'est comme ça!
-mat hanich!
-113 Taliani!
-c'est bon!

refrain:
(Reda Taliani)

Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bladi rani mahboure
Aite aite ou j'en ai marre
Matrabish vocation
Fi dari sa fait montemps
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour nuit
Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misère
Evasion spéciale L'Algérie l'occidentale

rim-k:
Moi je suis de kabylifornie
On fumait 350 benji
Sur les bords de la corniche
Habsini maalich
Rien a perdre Rim-k le malade mentale
plus connu que le hadj memba
J'voudrais passé le hénné a ma bien aimée
Avant que je taille
Comme Cheb Hasni jsui sentimentale
Partir loin,rien a perdre
C'est Boston ou la cheba
Laissez moi de toi
Comme Robinson sur une ile
Mon mouton je l'apellerai Mercredi
Dès que l'avion atterie
Comme les chibanies jvou rends la carte de residence
Un moment d'évasion ya yma leve toi et danse

Réda taliani:
ça fait plaisir

Refrain :Reda taliani
Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bladi rani mahggoure
Aite aitou j'en ai marre
Matratish l'occasion
Fi dari sa fait longtemps
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour nuit
Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misère
Evasion spéciale L'Algérie l'occidentale

J'reste bledard, debrouillard
J't'annonce ammene moi loin de la misere
Mon + fidele compagnon en route pour l'elolado
Tellement plein c'est quoi dirou lsac a dos
Partir loin sans les cousin
Le plein toujour les carages c'est dur
J'me considère chanceux d'etre en vie
Pourvu que sa dur
J'ai grandis qu'avec des voleurs
Du haut toujours les youyous qui résonne
Dans ma tete etre a la quete du bonheur

Reda Taliani:
Yal bledi nti fik el khir
Nedi elii hanousse zhar ya aachlei
Andou lktef wou tzidi loul baloul bahr

Refrain : Reda taliani
Yal babour yamon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bladi rani mahggoure
Aite aitou j'en ai marre
Matratish l'occasion
Fi dari sa fait montemps
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour nuit
Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misère
Evasion spéciale L'Algérie l'occidentale

R2da Taliani
Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bledi rani mahggoure
Aaite aaitou j'en i marre
Matratish l'occasion
Arwah arwah c'est le moment
Hada nessetni qui je suis
Nkhdem aali a jour et nuit

Yal babour ya mon amour
Kharejni mel la misere
Fi bledi rani mahggoure
Aaite aaitou j'en i marre
N'sacrifie wine dire
Nta rouhi ntala wilili chah

Rim-k:
Algéri,Maroc,Tunisie
Viens jt'enmmene vien vien
(Taliani : ya yaaaa Yaaaa,ya Wouldi Ya Wouldi,wouldi)
Laissez moi de toi ! rraaay
Vive la J.S.K
MAGHREB UNITED
Algérie, Maroc, Tunisie réuni fi
Maghreb United
Partir Loin,

pour fuir les problemes qu'on a dans la tete mec !
Farid Williams o clavier, Rachid le toulousain o percus,
Maghreb United !

Highly recommended-- Houria Ivanan: Pop music From Kabylia

Thanks to Abdellah, I just learned about the music blog Cartilage Consortium. They have many interesting tracks of Middle Eastern pop music to download. Check out the most recent post, with two tracks from 1984, from Houria Ivanan, an early pseudonym for Nora At Brahim. Great stuff!

Algerian Chaabi

Interesting AFP story about Algerian chaabi, undergoing a kind of revival. I got this from the Daily Star. I'm glad to see that Damon Albarn is involved in promoting this. I met briefly him in 2003 through Anglo-Algerian d.j./producer U-Cef, and it seems that Damon is seriously interested in Arab and especially North African music.

One important dimension of chaabi that the article below fails to discuss is the importance of Algerian Jewish musicians. Luc Cherki, Rene Perez, and Maurice El Medioni, are all Algerian Jews, and are all terrific. Read on!

"Love, loss and mandolins: Algerian folk music goes global"
By Agence France Presse (AFP)

Friday, September 07, 2007

MARSEILLE: Singing tales of love and exile to the trill of mandolins and the beat of Arab percussion, 40 masters of Algerian chaabi, a century-old folk music tradition, have been reunited after decades for a four-nation tour that started on Thursday. Dubbed "El Gusto" - slang for high spirits - the tour is to be followed with an album in October produced by Damon Albarn, lead singer of the British pop band Blur and a long-standing fan of world music, and a film to be released next spring.

It was first dreamt up by Safinez Bousbia, an Irish-Algerian woman, after she was introduced to the genre three years ago by a musician in the Casbah in the Algerian capital Algiers.

Seized with curiosity about the musical tradition, which saw its heyday in Algiers in the 1940s and 1950s, she decided to set out in search of the artists who made it famous.

"I just wanted to put them back in touch. The idea of the film and the album came later," Bousbia says of her project - a North African version of Ry Cooder's mission to reunite the members of Cuba's Buena Vista Social Club.

As with the Cuban adventure, most of the artists involved in the chaabi tour, which kicked off Thursday in the Mediterranean port of Marseille before heading to Paris, London, Berlin and New York, are now in their 70s.

Many of the musicians who flew in from Algiers and Paris for the Marseille concert parted ways four decades ago.

"The greatest pleasure is simply to meet again. It's going to be extraordinary to make music together," says the singer Luc Cherki, who was recently reunited with old friends and fellow musicians Ahmad Bernaoui, Rene Perez, Abdelkader Chercham and Maurice al-Medioni.

Chaabi - which means "popular" in Arabic - first appeared in the late 19th-century, inspired by vocal traditions of Arab Andalusia, the home of Flamenco music.

A typical song features mournful vocals in Arabic set against an orchestral backdrop of a dozen musicians, with violins and mandolins swelling and falling to a piano melody and the clap of percussion beats.

While it shares many themes with flamenco - love, loss, exile, friendship and betrayal - chaabi is part of a deeply conservative tradition, its lyrics often carrying a strong moral message.

"This music is part of the culture of Algiers, it cannot be separated from everyday life there," says Al-Hadi Halo, the show's conductor and son of the pioneering chaabi musician Hadj Mohammad al-Anka.

"Even though it doesn't get a lot of media attention, it is everywhere: weddings, circumcision ceremonies, religious festivals," says Halo, who teaches a new generation of chaabi musicians at the Algiers conservatory.

In recent years, chaabi has been largely overtaken at home by rai, a spicy North African brand of pop music with often explicit references to sex.

The genres overlapped in 1998, when rai superstar Rachid Taha scored a hit at home and abroad with a cover version of "Ya Rayah," a 1970s song about exile by chaabi artist Dahmane al-Arachi, who died in 1980.

Organizers hope the tour will help introduce Algerian chaabi to a wider audience, as "El Gusto" travels from Marseille to Paris on September 29, followed by London on October 10, Berlin on October 31 and New York next year. - AFP

Freemuse on "Underground" Music in Lebanon

Very useful report from Al-Hayat on the Freemuse conference in Istanbul earlier this year, specifically on three papers dealing with music censorship in the Middle East. Most interesting is the report on Lebanon, which discusses, among other things, crackdowns on heavy metal music, rapper Rayess Bek, and Hizbollah's liberalizing attitudes toward pop music. There's also a short report on a presentation by Ourrad Rabah of the fabulous Algerian rap group MBS.