Rachid Taha (& Carte De Séjour):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachid_Taha
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachid_Taha
I perfectly remember, it was 1986, I was 9, maybe 10 and my mother and I were in the kitchen. RTL wasn’t yet such a cold feet radio and they were broadcasting Carte De Séjour’s cover of Douce France. The second it started, I was smitten. Nothing in terms of World music has managed to seduce me that much those last 20ish years except Balkans music. But honestly it shares too much characteristics with North-African music for it to be considered as an actual diversification. Starting with the hips-movement-inducing property, fundamental to me. Anyway my musical taste was altered for ever. Still a naive and innocent girl, I shared my enthusiasm with my mother, who slashed it right away with a sarcastic comment about how my father would disapprove of this. I don’t think I was already conscious then of the power of attraction forbidden things have over people and me especially, but this pre-label stamped on North-African music was obviously the cherry on the top.
Beyond the childhood/adolescence memories, Rachid Taha is to me immigration at its cultural climax. He appropriated the French culture but did not neglect his Algerian one. And blent them with some others (punk, African, electro). What he offers is consequently the product of a third culture. It is exploding categories by essence. It is integration the direction it should work, integrating your adoptive culture into yourself, not yourself into your adoptive culture.
The first song here, this cover of Douce France that started everything for me, is exactly an example of this, and also of the very political nature of Rachid Taha’s work. Douce France was the essence of the patriotic song, obsolete and nation-proud. Singing it with an hammed Arabic accent and on Arabic tones, in a period of French history when children from immigrants parents were starting to become politically visible, was highly ironic and controversial, an exact symbol of this directional integration I was speaking earlier. Appropriation, at its best.
The second song is the Arabic-styled cover of Rock the Casbah used in The future is unwritten.
Beyond the childhood/adolescence memories, Rachid Taha is to me immigration at its cultural climax. He appropriated the French culture but did not neglect his Algerian one. And blent them with some others (punk, African, electro). What he offers is consequently the product of a third culture. It is exploding categories by essence. It is integration the direction it should work, integrating your adoptive culture into yourself, not yourself into your adoptive culture.
The first song here, this cover of Douce France that started everything for me, is exactly an example of this, and also of the very political nature of Rachid Taha’s work. Douce France was the essence of the patriotic song, obsolete and nation-proud. Singing it with an hammed Arabic accent and on Arabic tones, in a period of French history when children from immigrants parents were starting to become politically visible, was highly ironic and controversial, an exact symbol of this directional integration I was speaking earlier. Appropriation, at its best.
The second song is the Arabic-styled cover of Rock the Casbah used in The future is unwritten.
two frogs in B'ham 