Cheikha Remitti - Les Racines du Raï [Buda Musique] 1994

Les Racines du Raï ~
Raï Roots
Cheikha Remitti
Collection 'LaVoix du Maghreb'
Buda Musique [82874-2] 1994

01 - anta rabhi ou ras mali
02 - ana rabi sabni
03 - salmi farchi aangui
04 - ouchta dani naachak
05 - rabi radni lebladi
06 - mal galbi
07 - rani ghadya
08 - mal hbibi zaafan
09 - b'ni ou aali

Cheikha Remitti was one of the most famous singers of the Algerian folk musique style known as raï. She began performing in the raï style in the late-30s but her renown spread more rapidly after WWII when she began recording professionally and singing about a more hedonistic, sexually liberated lifestyle. This caused much controversy and led to her being criticized by both the country's Muslim leaders and the Algerian Nationalists fighting for independence against France. The former group denouncing her on moral grounds and the latter on nationalistic ones: they claimed her music expressed a distinctly French perspective.

At the origin of the raï movement, she sang of alcohol, night life, sex & love, but by the 70's & 80's her repertoire was being shameless looted by the rising generation of Algerian singers in France. Remitti remained popular with the Algerian people, despite being banned from the airwaves after the country gained independence. Appearing to have been born old & grown even older, Remitti was a formidable woman who exuded joy and bitterness in equal measure. Though in her later years she re-emerged, recording wild albums with the likes of Robert Fripp backing her up, Les Racines Du Rai features some of her most powerful and evocative singing. The craggy roughness of her voice is in & of itself a warning: live this sort of life, it says, & you might wind up like me, a gypsy, alone, at the mercy of men, fate, sex & wine. But it's said with a wink ~ there are far worse fates. She performed frequently at private events in the country and for Algerian ex-pats in France, where she lived and ultimately died of a heart attack at age 83, in May 2006. A lot of this music is really ecstatic and exciting to listen to.

i luv this schtuff. for the jaded , soundclips are thoughtfully included above