Lorca. Of its origins—ripe with controversy!—raï has kept the acrid harshness and murky glitter of the dives and brothels of Oran, Relizane and Bel Abbès. For the good city dweller of Tlemcen or Mostaganem, a certain bad taste—that of the bad boys and lost girls, of the rootless invaders of cities—transpires in every note, every intonation, every movement. All he can see in raï is the uncouthness of shoeless goatherds, the base exaltation of vileness, the triumph of instinct over soul. Which explains its repression. In my early childhood I heard all tones indiscriminately. The moorish cafés of Tigditt, those of the lower suika or of Qadous el Meddah, broadcast the songs without worrying about the scratchy phonographs. The exclusivity of membership and the jealous care lavished on distinction ensured that one did not mix the genres; thus each place proudly confined itself to a music imposed by the taste of its customers. No matter the genre, the highest quality was required. There were constant arguments about some minor detail of the melody or about an inappropriate word. The specialists made faces. The struggle for independence has hatched other sounds in the fracas of revolution. Before all it has imposed the silence of the augural expectation. Today, as another silence grips the algerian landscape, I begin to see the painful and tragic consequences of the measures of austerity taken in those early days. (Certain perverse exegetes, due to impaired hearing no doubt, have always considered music to be the devil’s invention...) Native grade school and then high school taught me to appreciate other sonorities by slowly draining the inherited ones towards folklore. My late meeting with raï was due to chance. Perhaps I can speak to it, but to transcribe it seems pointless. Oran had never looked as beautiful to me than during that spring of 1987! Captive, I jubilated. The various elements came together in a sudden bedazzlement. I was immersed in raï, a passionate drama, similar to what had happened with the blues during my adolescence, except that the intonations of raï scoured the depth of my memory. I enjoyed the moment deeply with the troubled sense of reliving it half in joy, half in pain. Banality of the great moments of tension. Interior distortions! Wahran, Wahran, ruhtî khsâra (Oran, Oran, what a waste!) The mediatisation of raï since the 80s, first in Algeria, then in France and throughout the world, corresponds to a social phenomenon. Which doesn’t explain much. This kind of phenomenon rightfully scorns any explanation. “The facts are hard-headed,” Lenin used to say, but what does the hard-headedness of a music mean at the moment of a debacle?! The fear of a savage flood from the working-class suburbs may not be foreign to the interest invested in raï, rap and other marginal forms of expression. But the essence of raï is elsewhere! “Ana bhar ‘aliya wa ntiya llâ” ( I’m screwed, but you’re not ...) This leitmotiv of the raï song—it arises unexpectedly from each text like a collective signature—translates the cry of love and existential revolt of an algerian youth that is lost, idle and out of work in an quickly disintegrating urban space. It is from this crumbling younger generation, trying to grab life with both hands without worrying about any other form of identity quest, that raï draws its power and brilliance. A youth that no longer revels in big words, but with eyes and ears wide open. Idle, by malediction. It does not want to lose itself without having spent all of its resources. Indeed, raï is the music of the young ones, the chebs. They are numerous in Algeria: cheb Hasni (assassinated in Oran in February 1995), cheba Fadila, cheb Khaled, cheb Mami, cheb Sahraoui, cheba Zahouania, etc. Many leave the country, not understanding why they, who dwell at the core of their public’s (people’s?) frustrations, have become targets. Exile is their trade. When questioned, raï singers deny being politically motivated. They say all they sing is sharp desire and amour fou,
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