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#Music cheb khaled code
In the 1920s, the women of Oran were held to strict code of conduct. The word "rai" implies that an opinion is being expressed. A common characteristic of these songs included exclamations of the word "raï!" and variations thereof. The problems of survival in a life of poverty were the domain of street musicians who sang bar-songs called zendanis. Bedoui singers mostly collaborated with the French colonizers, though one exception from such collaboration was Cheikh Hamada. Senoussi was the first to have had recorded the music in 1906.įrench colonization of Algeria changed the organization of society, producing a class of poor, uneducated urban men and women. Performers of bedoui included Cheikh Hamada, Cheikh Mohammed Senoussi, Cheikh Madani, Cheikh Hachemi Bensmir and Cheikh Khaldi. Lyrics came from the poetry of people such as Mestfa ben Brahim and Zenagui Bouhafs. Bedoui was sung by male singers, known as cheikhs, who were dressed in long, white jellabas and turbans. Bedoui consisted of Melhun poetry being sung with accompaniment from guellal drums and gaspa Flutes. Another common musical genre was Bedoui ("Bedouin") (or gharbi ("Western")), which originated from Bedouin chants. Hawzi classical music was popular during this time, and female singers of the genre included Cheikha Tetma, Fadila D'zirya and Myriam Fekkai. The Arabs of Oran were known for al-andalous, a classical style of music imported from Southern Spain after 1492. These two-quarters had active music scenes, and the French inhabitants of the city went to the Jewish and Spanish areas to examine the music. Sidi el Houari was home to Spanish fishermen and many refugees from Spain who arrived after 1939.
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By independence in 1962, the Jewish quarter (known as the Derb), was home to musicians like Reinette L'Oranaise, Saoud l'Oranais and Larbi Bensari. In the early 20th century, Oran was divided into Jewish, French, Spanish, and Native Algerian quarters. By the early 1940s Cheikha Rimitti el Reliziana had emerged locally as a musical and linguistic luminary in the raï tradition, and she continued to be among the music's most prominent performers into the 21st century. It drew its name from the Algerian Arabic word raï ("opinion" or "advice"), which was typically inserted-and repeated-by singers to fill time as they formulated a new phrase of improvised lyrics. The cheikhates further departed from tradition in that they performed not only for women but also and especially for men.
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Instead, to the accompaniment of pottery drums and end-blown flutes, they sang about the adversity of urban life in a raw, gritty, sometimes vulgar, and inevitably controversial language that appealed especially to the socially and economically disadvantaged. Out of this milieu arose a group of male and female Muslim singers called chioukhs and cheikhates, who rejected the refined, classical poetry of traditional Algerian music.
#Music cheb khaled full
In the years just following World War I, the Algerian city of Oran-known as "little Paris"-was a melting pot of various cultures, full of nightclubs and cabarets it was the place to go for a bawdy good time. Raï emerged as a major world-music genre in the late 1980s. Regional, secular, and religious drum patterns, melodies, and instruments were blended with Western electric instrumentation. It appealed to young people who sought to modernize the traditional Islamic values and attitudes. Raï is a type of Algerian popular music that arose in the 1920s in the port city of Oran, and that self-consciously ran counter to accepted artistic and social mores.
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