washerman's dog: Rachid Taha

Showing posts with label Rachid Taha. Show all posts

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Despite the Sorrow of Syria: Rachid Taha and Tony Hanna

Rachid Taha and Tony Hanna

With all the sad news coming out of the tv about Syria and Libya its time to remember the musical brilliance that resides in the Middle East.

Rachid Taha’s music has an intensity that matches the passions that are currently burning up the streets and villages and cities of Syria. When he sings, you tend to listen. His voice commands authority; like a fist grabbing you by the scruff of the neck. But unlike the paid thugs of politicians, his power makes you dance and be joyful. I’ve spoken of Taha’s antecedents in other posts on this blog so will allow you to satisfy your curiosity at your own leisure, if you’ve not had the pleasure of this man’s music.

The fine fellows at AMG have this is say about Diwan (1998) the album we focus on today.

This is a stunning album, as Rachid Taha, the Algerian rocker, moves through straightforward rai to blues, rock, and the full spectrum of worldbeat. The album starts out with a song about exile from home, followed by a musical history of rai, covering all of the basic steps in the development of Taha's chosen base-style. An Egyptian film song from the great Farid El Atrache continues the barrage of bouncing Middle Eastern and North African sounds. A more modern version of the ay-ay genre ensues, with fuzzed guitars looped throughout. Some urban Algerian blues and a bit of chaabi follow, on the topics of love and love lost. The album finishes with a stretch of slightly more serious songs, with a number based on the Algerian war for independence and the torture endured by its prisoners, a political song from a Moroccan group, a basic rai number in French pidgin, and a song from the frustrated youth of Algeria. This is something of a North African tour-de-force, as Taha moves from one style to another, always partially based in the rai tradition, but always expanding to other styles in the process. The songs can be backed by a simple flute, or by a group of rock guitars. Either way, the works are held together by the overriding compositions that Taha is dealing from. It's a great album for those that are already knowledgeable in rai for its new directions, and a nice album for newcomers as it displays the full breadth in a single disc. (AMG)

Tony Hanna is a singer from Lebanon who rose to prominence in the 1970s when Beirut was the pearl of the Mediterranean. I spent several days there in the summer of 1974. The streets around the Phoencian Hotel, where we stayed, were quiet and lined with shops selling carpets and other tourist fare. Shop keepers were never pushy and seemed just as interested in chatting the hours away as making a sale. The blue sea sparkled in the sun. That a full on civil war would crush that same hotel and shopkeepers and fill the shady streets with blood and bullets only 12 months later seemed impossible to imagine.

Around that time Mr. Hanna, left Lebanon and settled in the West. He spent several years in London and many more in America’s great Arab city, Detroit. His music was loved by the expatriate/exile communities, especially his live concerts, one of which we share tonight. At the height of his popularity, Tony Hanna gave it all up and disappeared. I’m sure someone knows where he is and what happened, so if you know, let me know! The music of this grandly moustachioed sultan of song is very different from that of Rachid Taha’s. Different generations, different sensibilities. But both excellent!

Track Listing:

Diwan

01 Ya Rayah

02 Ida

03 Habina

04 Bent Sahra

05 Ach Adani

06 El H'Mame

07 Enti Rahti

08 Menfi

09 Bani Al Insane

10 Malheureux Toujours

11 Aiya Aiya

here

Track Listing:

Tony Hanna

01 Cherwal Jeddak Ya Jeddi

02 Yssid Sabahak

03 Al Dalouna

04 Ya Khiyala

05 Al Ataba Al Baalbakieh

06 Hala Bi Emm Al Ouyoun Al Soud

07 Inn Lansoub Telephone

08 Abou'l Zilouf

09 Ya Emm Al Foustan Al Nili

10 Ya Moyharati Al Fok Al Jabal

11 Kberet Wi Oumri Kbir

12 Ya Ghzayel Yamm Elheba

13 Cherwal Jeddak Ya Jeddi (Reprise)

here

Thursday, April 28, 2011

A Tale of Two Artists: Reinette l'Ornaise and Taha Rachid

This is the story of two musicians from the same but very different country. One kept an old tradition alive. The other transformed it and made it something modern.

Chapter One: Princess becomes Queen

Sultana Daoud was born in the scrabbly hill town of Tiaret into a poor Algerian Jewish family at the end of the First World War. Before she was three the little girl had lost her sight from small pox and seemed doomed to a life of insignificance and anonymity. But Sultana (Princess) loved music. For years, while attending a school for the blind, she sang to herself and friends without arousing much interest. But Sultana’s mother was moved by what she heard and approached a master musician, Souad l’Ornais, who operated a music café in the Jewish Quarter of city of Oran, near the Mediterranean coast.

Souad l’Ornais, was a living master of an old musical heritage often referred to as Arab-Andalusian. I quote from the French Israeli writer Pierrette Missika: “Arab-Andalusian music, a unique art form, the love and knowledge of which are transmitted entirely by oral tradition, is not played in Morocco in concert halls, but is performed at festivities, often at family gatherings, where the traditional songs are sung. In this living creation, moving like the sands of the desert, the musician is guided by a master or by the musical community which each year is present at Fez or at Oudja.

“The texts, set to music, were written between the eighth and 15th centuries in classical Arabic form. This classical Arabic, hardly understood by the population at large, is still highly appreciated in Moroccan cultural circles. As for mystical poetry, often connected with Sufism, this is sung outside the mosques, inside which is no singing, unlike the case in the synagogues, where piyyutim (liturgical songs or poems) are part of the ritual. Various themes courtly love, devotional celebrations of the Prophet or of Islam, descriptions of the gardens of Andalusia, of Seville, Granada and the River Guadalquevir, or the nostalgia of the expelled Arabs for Andalusia, which parallels the poignant aspirations of Sephardi Jews were treated by the great Andalusian poets, either in classical Arabic (muwasha, a poetic form originating in Andalusia but formulated in classical Arabic), or in the Andalusian dialect of the period, zajal. The Moroccan Ministry of Culture has recorded the whole of the 14 musical modes (originally 24, each corresponding to an hour of the day), interpreted by great masters.”

Sensing grace, l’Ornais, mentored Sultana in learning the Arab-Andalusian tradition, a mix of folk, semi-historical and spiritual songs, enjoyed by Muslims and Jews equally. She mastered several string instruments and continued to sing, and kept the flame of old Bedouin song streams, like rai, alive. Such a powerful student did the blind Sultana turn out to be, that the Grand Master changed her name to Reinette l’Ornaise (Queenie of Oran). The Princess became a Queen.

Reinette travelled to Europe in the footsteps of her Master who had opened a music café in Paris. He encouraged her to return home which she did where she began to make her name. Back in Paris, the old musician and her Guide, was picked up by the Gestapo and exterminated in a concentration camp several years later.

In Algeria Reinette’s reputation continued to grow and she was a regular performer on national radio and concerts across the region. In the 1980’s she was ‘rediscovered’ (horrendously Oriental as that phrase is) by French musical boffins and ended her career and life the toast of concert halls and gala celebrations, at the pinnacle of artistic accomplishment.

Chapter 2: Rock’n roll is my soul

About 175 kilometers from Tiaret, the birthplace of Rienette l’Ornaise, is the town of Sig. Several decades after Queenie’s birth a boy child was born into the family of strict and lower class Muslims. Like many others the family answered the call of the French government to come to Europe to keep the factories of a booming post-war economy humming.

Settled in Lyon, Rachid Taha, dreamed of being a rock ‘n roll hero like his idols Elvis, and Robert Plant. While working in a heating appliance factory in the late 1970s, Rachid had hooked up with other Algerian immigrant kids and a few French ones to form a band. Finding there was little hope of playing in French clubs, he set up Les Refoulés ("The Rejects"), a nightclub where he would spin mashups of Arabic pop classics over Led Zeppelin, Bo Diddley and Kraftwerk backbeats. Drawing on the traditions for rai and the Arab-Andalusian music Reinette l’Ornaise had kept alive and introduced to Europe, Rachid Taha made sure that his own music was both Arabic and hard rocking. His live shows are something to behold: his long hair twirls like a dervish gone mad and electric guitars scream as mandolutes and ouds dance delicately above the mayhem.

The Washerman’s Dog is very pleased and thrilled by the two collections on offer today. Two outstanding artists from the same country and traditions but taking their music in very different if equally exciting directions.