A posthumous record? “Nothing to declare!” as Rachid would
have said, leaning on the bar counter, with messy hair, bright eyes, and a
raspy voice. He’s there, you can’t miss him. He may be laid to rest in Algeria,
but he hasn’t left us. He knew that those who are allegedly missing are well
and alive: “Do you really know the others?” the master of rock-Chaâbi once
asked, quoting the greats Johnny Cash, Oum Kalthoum, and Andy Warhol in a
prophetic song titled Andy Waloo. He wrote this arabic-punk-electro piece with
guitars, balafon, and mouth harp before succumbing to a heart attack on
September 12, 2018. “I was there with you last night, you told me to come.
Every week you tell me, I'm waiting for you in my slum, there's a Picasso
exhibition, go see him. What a bastard, he had a nice mirror, I saw Jean
Cocteau kissing Jean Marais,” he sings, ending with a big laugh. So nobody is
gone, they live on in us.
With boundless energy, Taha wrote eleven songs together with
Toma Feterman for his eleventh solo album, diving deep into his roots as usual.
First, Algerian Chaâbi, so subtle, yet so complex. Then rock, which took the
world by storm during the postwar period, and punk, its offshoot, in the style
of The Clash. Finally, electronica, the musical revolution of the late
twentieth century, as hypnotic as the Gnawas guembris or Sufi trance sounds.
Rachid was influenced by all of it.
Youyous, flutes, women's choirs, metal riffs: the
French-Algerian, however weakened by the paralyzing effects of Chiari malformation,
which he suffered from, created whirlpools, deluges, torrents. He invited us to
dance with Andy Waloo, and also with Like a Dervish, his “first song in
English, I know I'm cheating, my English is not so rich.” His plays on words
were irresistible: English, backich, dervish, merlich... The troublemaker of
the “alternative Koran” also used to speak francarabe, a mix of French and
Arabic, which he used to both celebrate and mock the Jewish masters (Lili
Boniche, Reinette l’Oranaise, Line Monty…), humming their oriental boleros,
such as Chérie je t’aime, chérie je t’adore and Bambino.
That’s why his new record, which he had been working on for
two years before he was buried in the Sidi Benziane cemetery, had to be in
mandoline-embellished French. One of the songs is called Minouche: “Minouche ma
minouche, pourquoi tu te fâches, ne prends pas la mouche, ma jolie peau de
vache… Minouche, donne-moi ta bouche” (Minouche, my little Minouche, why are
you upset, don’t get into a huff, my pretty vixen... Minouche, let me kiss
you). A popular dance tune for sure, with words sculpted by Jean Fauque, who
worked closely with Bashung and Erwan Séguillon.
The rough voice and wild blend of styles don’t give an
accurate description of this son of immigrants (born near Oran, Algeria, he was
raised in eastern France and later settled down in Lyon). Rachid the rebel
built bridges, “introducing beautiful people to the world” by singing Charles
Trenet’s Douce France with his first band, Carte de séjour (French for
“resident permit”), in 1986 to mock French integration while the Marche des
Beurs (March of the French Arabs) was being broken up and François Mitterrand
was celebrating the creation of SOS-Racisme (a movement of anti-racist NGOs
founded in France in 1984). In 1998, he created a transgenerational hit with
the album Diwân, which included a cover of Ya Rayah, the anthem of Algerian
immigrants composed by the Chaâbi idol Dahmane El-Harrachi (1925-1980).
Throughout these years of experience—which also marked the
rise of Oranian Rai music, which Rachid sang the traditional way, following in
the footsteps of the great Cheikha Rimitti—he worked with Steve Hillage, whom
he met in 1984. The former Gong guitarist was a lover of looped electronic
rhythms, and starting in 1997, he infused his energy into the creation of
Voilà, voilà, an anti–Front National, anti-xenophobic song that Rachid would
never stop singing.
And ever since this sensory overload, Rachid continued to
speak to us, and jostle us, in Arabic, French, Franglish, and even Spanish,
through the limpid voice of the young Flèche Love (Amina Cadelli, born in
Geneva of an Algerian mother), whom he discovered on YouTube after finally
being introduced to the digital tablet. This extraordinary tattooed and
esoteric artist accompanied him on Wahdi, a song with Gnawa rhythms, to which
he added a Mexican trumpet, evoking Ennio Morricone.
The album was produced and co-written by Toma Feterman, a
gifted multi-instrumentalist and founder of La Caravane Passe, a band that
mixes rap, gypsy jazz, Balkan fanfare, alternative rock, and electro.
Toma and Rachid hung out at the same bars and clubs in the
north of Paris (Bellevilloise, Cabaret Sauvage), following their friend Remy
Kolpa Kopoul of Radio Nova (a French radio station created in 1981, which
played non-mainstream and underground artists of various musical genres), whose
death in 2015 left Rachid feeling orphaned.
Toma then asked him to sing Baba, a song that he had just
written for Canis Carmina, his band’s next album. Over the course of one night,
the two friends recorded a dozen tracks. “I used the recordings from this first
session,” Toma said, “without needing to make him sing again, because there was
nothing to change.” They improvised, and it was the beginning of a frenetic,
productive adventure, of nights partying at Toma’s or Rachid’s, or spent in the
studio. Hours of creation and surprises shared with his son Lyes, his friend
Toufik, his mandolin player Hakim Hamadouche, and his former keyboard player
Yves Fredj Aouizerate, who was also his last manager.
It was a club, a family, a community, a trip. The adventure
even passed through studios in Bamako, because Rachid is African, having been
born in Algeria, bordering Mali, the Mandingo musical empire. Je suis africain
(I am African), the song that gives its name to the album, is an homage to the
sounds of this great continent, that weaves together soukouss guitars, an
Arab-Andalusian orchestra, Middle Eastern violins, balafon, and talking drums.
“I am African, from Paris to Bamako, from New York to Congo”—the magnificent
joker is having fun, playing with elegance. He takes the accent of a
“fantastical” Africa and quotes Marley and Malcom X, Kateb Yacine, Franz Fanon,
Patrice Lumumba, Angela Davis—all of them “African.”
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