![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/rachid_taha.jpg\")
Are you familiar with a musical genre called Cha\u00e2bi? Me neither. Put simply (and reductively), it’s North African folk music, sort of a cousin to another style, ra\u00ef. One of the foremost artists to combine that style with rock was Rachid Taha; the Algerian musician released more than a dozen albums under his own name, in addition to four albums released earlier in the 1980s with a group called Carte de S\u00e9jour.<\/p>\n
Taha suffered from a malady called Chiari malformation; its effects included dizziness and an unsteady gait. That didn’t keep him from performing nor crafting a highly regarded body of work. The last album released during his lifetime was 2013’s Zoom<\/i>; featuring Brian Eno and the Clash’s Mick Jones, it charted both in France and Belgium.<\/p>\n
At the time of his death in 2018 \u2013 days before he would have turned sixty \u2013 Taha had completed the album eventually released as Je Suis Africain<\/i>. To ears familiar with African-Western hybrids like Al Farka Tour\u00e9’s Talking Timbuktu<\/i>, Taha’s posthumous release will sound positively commercial and mainstream. And that’s meant in a wholly positive manner.<\/p>\n
And to listeners whose only exposure to African styles might be the string arrangement on Led Zeppelin’s \u201cKashmir,\u201d the songs on Je Suis Africain<\/em> will sound warmly familiar as well. Exotic, to be sure, but appealing and inviting. A rock beat and hand claps draw the listener into the opening track, \u201cAnsit.\u201d And the ethnic instrumentation \u2013 saz, c\u00fcmb\u00fcs, tama and rain stick \u2013 gives the song a flavor that sets it apart from Western pop music. But even though Taha sings in French, the music doesn’t sound foreign so much as it feels worldly.<\/p>\n We (or at least I<\/em>) may not know what Taha is singing about on Je Suis Africain<\/i>, but the songs are all heartfelt, and there’s a sense of upbeat fun \u2013 shot through with a knowing melancholy \u2013 that makes it all feel real<\/i>. Some of the songs have a more pronounced \u201cethnic\u201d flavor,\u201d but even those will display a foundation of accessibility for Western ears.<\/p>\n I’m not familiar with Taha’s body of work released during his life, but if Je Suis Africain<\/i> is any indication at all, it’s filled with riches to be discovered. And in the meantime, his last musical statement can serve as a useful entry point for the uninitiated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Are you familiar with a musical genre called Cha\u00e2bi? Me neither. Put simply (and reductively), it’s North African folk music, sort of a cousin to another style, ra\u00ef. One of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17932,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,49,62,73,76],"tags":[4067],"class_list":["post-17931","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-folk","category-new-release","category-rawk","category-vinyl","category-world","tag-rachid-taha","cat-30-id","cat-49-id","cat-62-id","cat-73-id","cat-76-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17931","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17931"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17988,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17931\/revisions\/17988"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}