Music

Once, in Paris, we went to a club at midnight for a concert of Algerian music. When we left at 2:30, no musician had yet taken the stage. So…Khaled in February of 2002 --- why not?

 

We had aisle seats. Usually a good thing. Not so great that night --- the concert was close to a riot, and the aisles were filled with running, screaming fans. You wouldn't have expected this; the audience was the most international gathering of adults I've ever seen in a theater. Grown-ups, not kids.
 
Khaled caused the riot. He was drunk, but that wasn't much of a factor --- it seemed that all he had to do is stand on stage and people were agitated. But because he was drunk, he was decorated all over: an Israeli flag, Arab head gear, Algerian scarf.
 
So this was a special kind of riot --- an outburst of internationalism, a triumph of the basic human love for a good time. Happy, party music. A big night out.

 

And then there’s the simple fact that Khaled is one of the world’s biggest music stars. Bigger in India than Michael Jackson --- the "King of Rai" toppled "the King of Pop." Forty-five million CDs sold, including the single biggest-selling album in the Middle East.

  

Rai can be raw. And was, in the early days. Khaled’s become much slicker. Here’s “Aicha,” a love song about --- and for ---his daughter. [To buy this song from iTunes, click here. To buy it on the CD, "Sahra," from Amazon, click here. To download the MP3 of the song from Amazon, click here.] It’s almost a ballad. But it kicks just enough: five million views on YouTube, the top-selling song in all of Europe in 1996:

 

 

 

Catchy? Sure. As a romantic ideal, though, the guy seems handsome, pleasant --- but not a hearthrob. How very wrong you would be to think that. When we saw him, a decade after he made that video, he reminded me of nothing so much as an Algerian Van Morrison --- and Van, if you’ve seen him lately, is no oil painting. The women didn’t care. Clearly, it’s about the music. Like, say,  “Trigue Lycee.” (I know: The video has weird imagery, but it also has great sound ---- if I had a talk show, the opening twenty seconds might make tasty theme music. To buy this song from iTunes, click here.)

 

 

 

 

Unless you’re exceptionally devoted to NPR, the odds are that you have never heard of Khaled, or, for that matter, his brand of music. Rai comes out of the religious music of northwestern Algeria . But as rock ‘n roll moved around the world, the background got livelier --- accordion, electric guitar, multiple drums --- and the lyrics were no longer derived from Sufi prayers. Instead of hymns to God, singers started praising alcohol, parties, sex. And politics --- which is why “Rai,” freely translated, means “point-of-view” or “my way.”

 

Here's a very early lyric from Khaled:

 

Where are the brave ones?
The rich gorge themselves,
The poor work themselves to death,
The Islamic charlatans show their true face...
You can always cry or complain
Or escape...but where?

 

“Islamic charlatans” --- yes, that could inspire a guy to put some distance between himself and the Fundamentalists. Especially because he was also singing about women’s' liberation, religious freedom and cultural tolerance. And because Islamic fundamentalists did assassinate a Rai singer in Algeria, Rai singers promptly fled to Paris, where Khaled would come to record with some Jamaican musicians and hire Don Was, a Jew from Los Angeles, as his producer.

 

Where to start? There’s so much, and the purist in me says to go with the early, raw stuff, released on tiny foreign labels. Then I catch myself and go with a more accessible choice: “Sahra,” Khaled's breakthrough CD in 1997. [To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. To download the MP3 from Amazon, click here. To buy it from iTunes, click here.] It’s more international than you'd expect --- this is really Rai blended with reggae. But there are no formulas here; every song has its own appeal, and there isn't a dud in the bunch. It works at any volume: background music, during dinner, full party mode, late at night, mood music.

 

“What was that?” friends may ask. Worldly, world-music you now has a ready answer: “Pop music from the Middle East --- fun, isn’t it?”

 

Bonus: Khaled recording his most recent CD, “Liberte”. [To buy the CD from Amazon, click here. To download the MP3 from Amazon, click here. To buy it from iTunes, click here.]