My MESA paper: "The New Social Media Archive of Maghrebi Popular Music (in Particular, Pop-Raï)"

   Below is the paper I gave at MESA on Sunday, November 23, at the session, “Social Media, the Digital Archive, and Scholarly Futures,” I co-organized with Rebecca Stein. The other papers, which were really fabulous, were: Negar Mottahedeh's "Tweeting Judgment Day, Rebecca Stein's "The Perpetrator's Archive: Israel's Occupation on YouTube", and Amahl Bishara, "A Popular Digital Archive of Resistance: Facebook Posts of Protests and Arrest Raids." Our terrific discussant was Elliott Colla of Georgetown University, the author of Baghdad Central. Below is the paper, pretty much as given, along with the images I showed, plus added hyperlinks and some asides.

 

      This paper has its origins in my efforts, beginning in spring 2012, to learn more about the development of pop-rai in Algeria, about that transitional period in the seventies and early eighties when rai was transformed from a genre of music that was rooted in the rural, sung chiefly to the backing of the gasba (reed flute) and guellal (hand-held frame drum), into the very contemporary and urban-sounding music that eventually blew up in the West's world music scene during the late eighties, sung to the accompaniment of electric guitar, synthesizers, drum machines, and trumpets. The written sources I have consulted cited a handful of specific songs considered to be seminal in the development of this new musical form, but these recordings, released on 45” vinyl or, by the late seventies, on cassette, were rare and out of print. Only a very small portion of rai music from this period has ever been released on rai compilations (which started to appear in the late eighties) for the commercial market, and none of the songs in question appear there. When I began my quest in 2012, however, I was able to find the recordings in question, as well many others from the period, posted on YouTube.¹

      Here's one of the key recordings I located, “Zarga ou Masrara,” by the group of trumpeter Messaoud Bellemou, from the town of Aïn Témouchent in northwestern Algeria. Let's listen to a bit. [L’ensemble de Belemou, “Zarga ou Masrara” (Brown and Radiant). Vocals: Hamani Hadjoum Tmouchenti, Sax: Messaoud Bellemou, Trumpet: Mouafaq (“Mimi”) Bellemou.]

 [Here I played a bit of the opening of the song.]

       At the beginning my chief interest in such YouTube videos was for the data they contained: the recordings themselves, plus the photos and the details about the artists that the contributors and commenters posted. I used a great deal of that material in a long piece ["In search of the origins of "pop-rai": Bellemou, Bouteldja, Boutaiba...and Cheb Khaled"] I posted on my blog, hawgblawg, in January 2013, and you can read my account of the emergence of pop-raï there. (But I will not be discussing those findings today.)

      As I was gathering and analyzing the data, however, I quickly came to realize that I was dealing with a rather novel sort of archive, one that I had on occasion consulted in other research, but not nearly to such a degree as I did for my investigation of the origins of pop-rai. And I had not previously given much thought to the nature of the archive. This paper represents my preliminary efforts to try to make some sense of the specificities of this data and this archive, what motivates those who produce it, how it is consumed, the discussions and affects it inspires, and so on.

      The early pop-rai YouTube archive I consulted is part of a much larger array of online sources that have proliferated over the last several years (YouTube was officially launched in November 2005; the earliest YouTube contributor upon whom I've relied, lunakhod, started posting in October 2006.)² There are also a number of music blogs and other websites that variously offer webcasts, mixes, singles and entire albums of rai music either for downloading or online listening, usually via SoundCloud. The rai archive in turn is part of a much, much larger array of online sources that are making available recordings from many other Maghrebi music genres (I've paid attention mostly to music from Morocco and Algeria). The sources I've relied on, moreover, do not limit their postings to rai music. (As an aside: two very noteworthy blogs in this universe are curated by MESA members: ethnomusicologist Tim Abdellah Fuson's Moroccan Tape Stash and historian Chris Silver's Jewish Morocco. Both are notable for the rare quality of the Maghrebi music they post as well as their scrupulous documentation and commentary.) I focus here on the YouTube component of the online rai phenomenon, in part because, of all the online sources for this genre, YouTube one perhaps the most “social” of all the relevant “social media.”

      The flurry of online rai music postings by afficionados, fans and collectors can be considered in part a response to the fact that the Algerian state has done virtually nothing to preserve, archive and make available this vast and important musical resource. This despite the fact that at least since the early nineties, rai music has been regarded as an important part of Algeria's national patrimony as well as very critical to the tolerant image of the nation that the state has promoted, especially since the early nineties. Beginning in the mid-eighties, and especially over the last decade, the Algerian regime has invested substantial sums of money to put on annual rai festivals, which were at first held in Oran, and since 2006, in Sidi Bel Abbès. But it seems not to have devoted any serious resources to archiving, preserving, documenting or distributing music from the vast rai tradition, and so only a few songs from the period I'm concerned with have been circulated commercially.

      The online explosion of rai music also seems connected to the recent rage in the West for collecting and curating “vintage” or “retro” recordings, what music critic Simon Reynolds (2011) dubs “retromania.”³ It is appropriate to link the rai collectors/curators and fans to the retromania phenomenon, as many of them are Arabs resident in France, and all use the same online technologies deployed by other music retromaniacs.

      In part, then, the rai phenomenon I am examining is about obsessive music collecting, a phenomenon that, as Reynolds observes, was once a minority pursuit in the West but has become, since the 2000s, very mainstream, in part due to the availability of new distribution and storage technologies (2011: 95). The new breed of music collectors is typically not just concerned with acquiring vintage music but also with “documentation” of that music (Reynolds, 99). Fortunately for us, this concern for documentation is true of many rai collectors as well. (And like in the West's music retro scene, the rai collection field is strongly dominated by males [Reynolds, 101].)

      The developments in distribution and storage have also enabled a shift in the nature of collecting, traditionally thought of as the effort to acquire what no one else has got. The recent trend in online collecting is to try to get one's hands on a rare/vintage recording but then to make it available to everyone (online), a collecting tendency known as “sharity.” In the sharity realm a person accrues cultural capital not so much due to his/her ownership of a scarce and valuable item but due to his/her possession of special knowledge about the item (Reynolds, 106). Collectors who share music in this way are typically quite scrupulous, and generous, about passing along whatever information they've got, including providing reproductions of the record or cassette jackets, and so on (Reynolds, 109).

      Through sharity, the act of obsessive collecting also becomes available to the avid fan, who may not have the cash or inclination to pay for rare recordings, but who can now track down such music through constant Google searches, by endlessly scanning relevant websites, and through subscriptions to YouTube contributors and music bloggers and so on. For this new breed of collector, “collecting” in large part involves the act of indulging in excessive, extensive, binge downloading.

      Some argue that the value of music has depreciated as a result of the shift from analog to digital recording. At first, and for many decades afterwards, when music was recorded (analog), it was reified, turned into a thing (a vinyl record, a cassette tape) that you could purchase, store, and keep under your personal control. When music was rendered digital, turned into MP3s and the like, it was liquified, in order that it might be transferable anywhere (Reynolds, 122). Even if users do still speak of digital music files as things, in the sense that they own them and make use of them, the materiality, the “thing-ness,” of the digital is not readily perceptible to the senses in the way that vinyl records, cassette tapes, or even CDs are (Sterne 214: 194, 214). It has also been suggested that liquefaction/digitalization has resulted in a shift in views towards recorded music. The fact that dizzying quantities of music are now massively available has, some argue, resulted in feelings of information overload as well as a growing indifference to recorded music and a sense that it is somehow now valuelessness, because it is “free” and easily acquired (Reynolds 2011: 127-128).

      In some ways one might think of the rai posts on YouTube as efforts to resist the liquefaction, the dematerialization, the devaluation, of recorded music. The YouTube posts in question hearken back to a day when music seemed to have a tangible materiality, and they seem to prompt affects associated with the reified objects that existed in the past. YouTube rai videos could be seen as efforts to re-enchant recorded music, in response to the liquefied state of the recorded music of today.

      YouTube enables contributors and commenters to attempt re-enchantment and re-valuation in a number of ways. First, there is the matter of the music itself. Most of the recordings from the early, transitional pop-rai period are 45” vinyl records. What we notice immediately when we listen to the YouTube rai recordings is the crackle of the needle on the record (or, sometimes, but less remarkably, the hiss of the tape playing on a cassette recorder). According to critic Mark Fisher such crepitation (or hiss) reminds us of the materiality of the vinyl (or cassette), and it seems to mark a return of materiality in a world where musical sound has otherwise dematerialized into the MP3 ether. It also reminds us of a loss that is at the same time a recovery. The recovery of a forty year-old pop-rai recording is a collector's “find” that we can participate in, at second hand (Fisher 2014: 144). (And we can download it.)

      YouTube is a technology that allows, invites in fact, contributors to post images (static or moving) of their choosing, which are displayed onscreen as the music plays. The sense that the rai track we are listening to is material, not liquid, is enhanced by the fact that in some videos the contributor places the phonograph playing arm on the record, and so as we listen to the song we also see the record rotating, the needle moving in the grooves of the vinyl.⁴ Alternatively, we see the contributor punch the play button on the tape player and then, the revolutions of the cassette. This of course is the very opposite of the experience of playing songs on the computer, smartphone, or iPod, where we see no moving parts. Alternatively, the video simply shows us a still photo of a record jacket and the 45” record placed atop a turntable, as in this photo posted on a YouTube vid of a 1973 recording by Cheikh (or Cheb) Younes Benfissa. 

 

Or a cassette jacket in front of a tape player, as in this YouTube video photo of a 1979 recording ["Ana Ma Halai Ennoum"] by Fadela (soon to shoot to national fame in Algeria as Chaba Fadela) backed by the Bellemou ensemble, a recording said by some (but I think incorrectly) to have launched the pop-rai era.

     The photos of the pop-rai cassette or 45" record jackets likewise also serve to emphasize the music's materiality, especially as these almost never look new. The fact that these jackets are worn and aged in fact seems to be part of the point (and no effort has been made to spiff the images up with photo-editing software like Photoshop). 

L'ensemble Belemou & Hamani Tmouchenti “Mani M'heni” 1974-75 (source)

Ensemble Bellemou and Remitti (later: known as Cheikha Rimitti) (source)

Sometimes the contributor posts photos of the pop-rai musicians, and these too often serve to create a sense that the music in question is a material thing, as the photos are often faded, torn, marked with creases and stains. 

 Troupe Bellemou (Messaoud, upper right) while still amateurs, wedding procession, late sixties (source)

L’Ensemble Bellemou (source)

L to R: Kerbiche, kerakeb: Messaoud and Mimi Bellemou, trumpets;
Hocine (with soft drink), accordion and organ; Hamdane, tbal

(L to R): Messaoud Bellemou, Hamani Tmouchenti, Kerbiche (source)

Groupe El-Azhar (source)

(As an aside, it should be noted that the photos that produce this sense of musical materiality are in fact digital photos or scans of the originals, that is, simulations of a real, just as the scratchy, seemingly “thing-y” pop-rai music we listen to is digital as well.) 
      YouTube also provides space for written comments by contributors, who frequently provide details about the song and the artist(s). Viewers who sign up (free) for YouTube accounts can also post comments. The early pop-rai songs I was particularly interested in, however, did not typically inspire a large number of comments. Usually comments are put up soon after the video is uploaded, and are posted by a small number of comments posters, most of whom seem to know each other, at least online, and in some cases personally. Often no further comments appear after those posted a couple weeks or months after the video is uploaded. Discussions are typically geeky, the remarks of music enthusiasts, who add information, for instance, about when a song was recorded and the artists who played on it. Some contributors and discussants know the artists in question personally. Many comments assert that hearing the song on YouTube evokes a time or a mood in the past, when one first listened to the song at the time of its release. Here's a somewhat typical comment – written by attafi, himself a contributor of rai videos on YouTube, in a mixture of Algerian dialect and French, in response to a post by YouTube contributor maghrebunion. 

 
Attafi addresses maghrebunion by his (I think) nickname, Mutanabbi, and he writes that he remembers where he was when he first he heard the song. He adds that if someone had told him back then he'd be listening to the song again, forty years later, in Germany, he'd have considered that person crazy. Comments on the whole are mostly informational or nostalgic, and very rarely political. In one set of comments, a person who is presumably Moroccan comments on a discussion about Algerian pop-rai artists, and asserts that rai's true origins are in Oujda, Morocco, and not in Algeria – the commonly accepted origin. Other commenters, all of them – I think – Algerians, simply ignore or dismiss the Moroccan's claims out of hand, but they do not engage with him.⁵ (Perhaps this is because he writes in Arabic script, whereas the ususal discussion on such spaces, whether in Arabic or French or both, uses Latin script.) The character of YouTube comments about pop-rai therefore in no way resembles the sort that one often encounters on YouTube posts of music by Palestinian, Israeli or Jewish-Arab artists, where remarks are often political, have nothing at all to do with the music in question, and are unproductive, vituperative, ad hominem, and endless.

      YouTube contributors who post pop-rai music tracks also often resort to other visual strategies. Some post images of Oran (Arabic: Wahran), considered in standard accounts of rai to be the cradle of the music (whereas most YouTube posts I consulted point to Aïn Témouchent as the chief incubator of pop-raï). The images of Oran are typically historic scenes, often from the colonial period, and designed, it would seem, to induce nostalgia. Other YouTube posts feature images or video footage that is imagined to fit the mood of the song, such as a belly dance scene from an old Egyptian movie. Other relevant material I found posted on Youtube was footage of rai performers in concert, sometimes filmed by amateurs, sometimes taped from a television broadcast, in both cases “rare” and vintage. Other useful posts included interviews with a rai artist, taped from an Algerian or a French television show, and in one case, an important documentary film about rai.⁶ Finally, one contributor posted clips of a television interview with pop-rai pioneer Boutaïba Sghir and spliced them with clips from Boutaïba's major songs of the period. All these are also postings of rare, otherwise unavailable material, and examples of the practice of “sharity.”

Some Conclusions

      1. The portion of the Maghrebi archive I've discussed here is a somewhat marginal one. Some of the YouTube videos I consulted have attracted a decent number of views, and a few as many as 40,000.⁷ Only a rather small number of devotees, however, are involved in the discussions that occur in the comments section, and as noted above, many of them appear to have personal contacts with the artists whose vintage work they are posting. This then is social media, but it is of nowhere near the massive social scale or intensity that my co-panelists are discussing/have discussed. I don't know why more people who view the videos don't participate in discussions. Perhaps because the knowledge on already display is rather specialized and they feel they have nothing to add; perhaps it is that one has to be a truly devoted geek to put in the time it takes to comment. Perhaps it is because of the glut of available music postings on Youtube and other online sources.⁸ Despite the fact that the artists in question are respected, and some continue to perform at the annual state-sponsored raï festivals in Algeria, their contributions to the development of the genre have not really been well-promoted, nor are they well-documented in mainstream histories and studies of rai. The sources I've consulted are an essential source of documentation.

      2. I worry about this archive and its longevity. Is anyone archiving the archive, preserving the recordings and comments and images, all invaluable for the cultural history of Algeria, in some other form, in some other place/space, more permanent than YouTube? I personally convert the videos I'm concerned with to MP3s, I download and save the useful interviews and documentaries, and I screensave many images. But this is very haphazard archiving, and only available to me. I hope some of our Middle East librarians are at least thinking about these archiving issues, for when it comes to North African and Middle Eastern music more generally, extremely valuable sources for research are now available – but in a very haphazard and perhaps even ephemeral form.

      3. Contributors are adding to this archive constantly. While working on this paper over the last two weeks I discovered that the YouTube contributors I follow had posted a good deal of new pop-rai material since last I checked (some of which I incorporated into the slides I've shown). So even when working with 35-40 year old material, it's difficult to keep up with additions to the archive, and I now feel the need to post an update to my 2013 conclusions about pop-rai. Among other things, I'd want to emphasize the important contributions of Younes Benfissa, who I only discuss briefly in my 2013 post. [This song from 1973 is particularly intriguing.]

And perhaps also Boussouar Maghnaoui (who may or may not be Moroccan or Algerian). [Check out these two songs, courtesy Phocéephone.]

      4. I've had no luck engaging the rai YouTube contributors I follow and whose material I've used, with one exception. I did, however, at least attempt to make my own contribution to the discussion, by using the online archive (and other material) in writing my analysis of pop-rai published on hawblawg, referred to earlier. The piece, at 7,000 words the length of a short article, has to date had over 2,600 views, but unfortunately received no substantive comments. Perhaps in order to receive such comments I need to translate the post into French.

     5. I am not aware of many studies of YouTube and its effects in our (Middle East) field, but I believe this a topic very worth of pursuit. Martin Stokes in a forthcoming article discusses the web of commentary, emotionality, and construciton of community that has occrred via the posting of YouTube Islamic videos by Turkish Islamists. On the other hand, in the case I've studied, it seems that if we can talk about any "community" constructed around these videos, it is a very small and somewhat exclusive community of geeks and afficionados. These two examples suggest that we should not expect that the YouTube technology and social medium will have the same impact and political effects in all cases, and that we should expect to encounter a range of uses and social significances. I hope others who investigate such phenomena will be willing to look at segments of the social media universe that are not necessarily caught up in political movements, but are nonetheless worthy of attention, even if only for the sake of very nerdy scholarship.

References

Fisher, Mark. 2014. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. Zero Books. 
Reynolds, Simon. 2011. Retromania: Pop Culture's Addiction to its Own Past. New York: Faber and Faber, Inc. 

Sterne, Jonathan. 2012. MP3: The Meaning of a Format. Durham: Duke University Press.
Stokes, Martin. Forthcoming. “Islamic Popular Music Aesthetics in Turkey,” In Islam and Popular Culture. Karin van Nieuwkerk, Mark LeVine and Martin Stokes, eds. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Footnotes

1 More recently some recordings from this period, chiefly by Bellemou, perhaps with Boutaïba Sghir on vocals, as well as Benfissa and Boussouar El Maghnaoui, have been released on the Brahim Ounassar label—but with no information on date of release, personnel, etc. Also important is the collection, 1970's Algerian Proto-Rai Underground, released by the Seattle label Sublime Frequencies in 2009.

2 My other chief YouTube sources: Nado Coeur, who began posting in April 2007, Kromagnon1999 in February 2008, maghrebunion in December 2008, nostalgerie in March 2009, rabnass ARCHIVES ALGERIE in March 2011, and toukadime in June 2011.

3 2009 was the first year that Soundscape separately tracked current and back catalogue sales of digital sales, and its skurvey revealed that 64.5% of digital-track sales were catalogue, versus 35.7% for current (Reynolds 2011: 65).

4 Presenting vintage music in this way on YouTube is not, of course, unique to Algerian rai music. I've come across the same phenomenon in YouTube vids of vintage Latin American music, for instance.

5 “Les débuts du Raï d'aprés Boutaiba Sghir,” maghrebunion, May 20, 2012.

6  Algérie: Mémoire du Raï, directed by Djamel Kelfaoui et Michel Vuillermet, 2001. (Here is part one, the other 3 parts can be searched on YouTube.)

7 Here is a range of total views on YouTube of the main songs from the period that I consulted in my blog post, as of November 19, 2014. All songs were recorded during the 1970s with the exception of one; where information is available, I provide the date. Missoum Bensmir, “Ya El Gomri‬” (1,138); Bouteldja Belkacem, “Serbili Baoui‬,” 1965 (45,477); ‪L'Ensemble Belemou, “Zerga Oua Mesrara” (41,610); T‪roupe Belemou et Bouteldja Belkacem, “Ândi Mesrera” ‬(4,505); Ensemble Bellemou and Bouteldja Belkacem, “Inta Âkli, ”1976‬ (16,043); ‪L'ensemble Belemou et Hamani Tmouchenti, “Mani M'heni,” 1974-75 (7,209); ‪Boutaïba Sghir, “Dayha Oulabes‬” (21,501); Boutaïba Sghir and Ensemble Bellemou, “Ki Kounti” (24,181); ‪Chaba Fadela, “Mahlali Noum‬” (7,300); ‪Boutaïba Sghir and Jaouk el Azhar, “Nar Ghuedate,” 1976-77‬ (15,355); ‪Boutaiba Sghir and Chaba Fadela, “Ya Khali,” 1977-78‬ (27,544).

8 Some of the YouTube contributors I follow, like maghrebunion have posted hundreds of videos.

In search of the origins of "pop-rai": Bellemou, Bouteldja, Boutaiba...and Cheb Khaled

I'm currently at work writing a chapter on rai for my book (provisional title: Radio Interzone; who knows when it'll be done). One of the questions I've been trying to work out is the history of “pop-rai.”

A number of accounts claim that it was the song by Oran artist Chaba Fadela, “Ana ma h'lali ennoum” (I don't enjoy sleep anymore), recorded in 1979, that launched the pop-rai era, with its chorus, “Beer is Arab, but whiskey is European.” Bouziane Daoudi and Nidam Abdi (“Records: Music from a melting pot - Rai, the sound of Algeria,” The Guardian, October 5, 1989) interpret the chorus thus: “I have no problem getting drunk on beer because whiskey is too expensive.” (Yes, beer is produced in Algeria, and in Oran, by the Brasserie Algerienne Oranaise.)

Others have suggested that the term pop-rai dates back to 1974 or 1975, and that it emerges with the release of recordings by Messaoud Bellemou and his various collaborators. I agree that in order to understand how modern rai developed after Algeria's independence, it makes sense to trace the developments further back than 1979. Unfortunately, this period (rai in the nineteen seventies) has not been well documented, neither in the literature nor in the musical archive. The Sublime Frequencies compilation of 1970s rai music, 1970's Algerian Proto-rai Underground, released in 2008, marked an important and very welcome attempt to document what liner-notes author Hicham Chadly regards as an unjustly ignored period in rai. But it's just one compilation.

Fortunately, and thanks in large part to the fact that so many Algerians are putting on the web previously very "rare" recordings, mostly on Youtube, there is enough material now to piece together  a somewhat more complete as well as much more complicated story than the one told previously.

Boys take over: Belkacem Bouteldja 

Let's start with what happened to the cheikhat (singular, cheikha) tradition, one of the key sources of contemporary rai, which emerged in Western Algeria. The cheikhat of the Oran region gained a national reputation during the 1950s (several of them were recorded by French labels during this period), and some of them, like Cheikha Rimitti participate in the short-lived cultural efflorescence that marked the first years of Algerian independence (won in 1962). But as the revolutionary regime consolidated itself, and particularly after President Houari Boumedienne came to power in 1965, women were banned from singing in Algeria's cabarets and restaurants. Meanwhile, the government made gambling and the sale of alcoholic beverages in Muslim public places illegal, regulations which were in conflict with the popular drinking culture surrounding rai and particularly the music of the cheikhat. The government also imposed curbs on popular religious practices, such as the wa‘dāt, the saints festivals that typically included song and dance, and where cheikhat typically performed. The wa‘da was an annual festival held at the end of the agricultural season, honoring the patron saint of the region. (It was at one of these festivals that Rimitti reportedly received her nickname, which is alcohol-associated.)      

In the wake of the marginalization of the cheikhat, it was young men from the greater Oran area who kept the musical tradition publicly visible and who took up the repertoire. They also performed the bedoui repertoire of the likes of Cheikh Hamada, Cheikh El-Madani and Cheikh El-Khaldi, another of the musical streams that formed the basis of what we now call "rai." It is perhaps the case that such younger artists began to displace the bedoui cheikhs from their position of popularity as well.

 Belkacem Bouteldja

One of the first to record and perform the cheikhat repertoire in the post-independence era was Belkacem Bouteldja, a young man from the El Hamri quarter of Oran. In December 1965, at age thirteen, Belkacem recorded his first 45" single, “Gatlek Zizia,” a song originally made famous by Cheikha El Ouachma (“the tattooed”) El Temouchentia (d. 2009), who recorded it for the French label Pathé in 1957.

Cheikha El Ouachma was from Aïn Témouchent, a town 72 kilometers southwest of Oran, and she recorded a number of tracks for various French labels in the fifties and sixties. As of 1965, she divided her time between Marseille and Aïn Témouchent. When rai gained national renown in Algeria in the 1980s and achieved international renown in subsequent decades, Cheikha El Ouachma never gained the sort of recognition won by other great cheikhas, like Cheikha Rimitti. Mohamed Kali for his part calls Cheikha El Ouachma the "mamie du rai," rai's grandmother. And Kali tells us that according to  Blaoui Houari, the great singer in the wahrani style (sometimes known more precisely as wahrani ‘asri, "contemporary" wahrani), it was El Ouachma who succeeded in making the transition from "baladi" or country style cheikha music to what eventually came to be known as rai. Or to use other terms, she was responsible for the movement from rai trab (rai of the land, another name for the music of the cheikhat) to rai moderne. (Unfortunately, it is somewhat difficult to hear, at least for me to hear, the musical evidence for Houari's claim.)

Bouziane Daoudi (Le rai [2000]) translates into French a line from her song "Gatlek Zizia"as follows: "Zizia te dit ce soir on couchera chez moi" (Zizia [diminutive for Zohra] tells you, tonight we'll sleep at my place). Daoudi also mentions two other songs by Cheikha El Ouachma, “Smahni ya el commandar” (Excuse me O commandant) and "Sid elhakem" (His honor the judge), both of which he says evoke the everyday experiences of ordinary people living under military repression during wartime. (If they are critical of the colonial regime, I wonder whether these songs might in fact have been recorded post-independence.)

Have a listen to Cheikha El Ouachma's 1957 version of “Gatlek Zizia” here, and then check out Bouteldja's 1965 recording, here. Bouteldja's version is very much in the same style as Cheikha Ouachma's, his vocals backed only by the gasba (reed flute) and guellal (hand-held frame drum). Such was the characteristic accompaniment of both the cheikha and bedoui musical genres. The chief difference between the two recordings that I can hear is that Bouteldja's voice sounds like that of an adolescent, and indeed, he was only thirteen when he made the recording. The song's release seems to have marked the taking over of the of musical tradition and repertoire of the now-marginalized cheikhat by an emerging generation of young male singers.

Bouteldja claimed, in an interview given in 2009, that the song in fact marked his supersession of both the cheikhat and the bedoui cheikhs. "Avec le titre Gatlek Zizia, j’avais mis fin au règne de Rimitti Allah yarhamha, cheikha Habiba, cheikha El Wachma, Hakoum, Kaifouh de Témouchent... J’avais déstabilisé le marché du disque de l’époque" (K. Smaïl, "Je vis dans la précarité sans retraite ni ressources", El Watan, January 6, 2009). (With "Gatlek Zizia" I put an end to the reign of Rimitti--God rest her soul-- Cheikha Habiba, Cheikha El Wachma [Ouachma], Hakoum, Kaifouh of Témouchent...I'd destabilized the music market of the time.) (Cheikha Habiba was from Sidi el-Abbès, and was popular in the Oran area during the sixties. Hakoum is presumably Cheikh Hakoum, who you can listen to here. Go here for a fragmentary bit of info on Cheikh Kaifouh.)

According to French scholar Marie Virolle (La chanson raï, 1995), Belkacem Bouteldja recorded under the name Kacimo, and he had a small "orchestre" called Étoile, formed in 1964, whose members included Missoum Bensmir and Belarbi, and in which he played the melodica. (Bouziane Daoudi (Le rai) says of Mohamed Belarbi: "de son côté, fait ses débuts en 1952 à Oran dans l’orchestre de Jacques Vidal. Il jouera de la batterie dans différents groupes à partir de 1956 tout en intégrant les rythmes afro-cubains dans ses compositions." Missoum Bensmir was the son of a celebrated bedoui poet, Cheikh Hashmi Bensmir. Here's a nice track from Bensmir, with lots of photos on the Youtube vid. I have no idea when it was recorded.)

Missoum Bensmir

Missoum Bensmir and unidentified musicians

source: here

Belkacem composed over 60 songs over the next ten years, and made records in Casablanca, Algiers, and Paris. Belkacem was also known by the nickname "El Joselito" or "Little Joe," because of his androgynous sounding voice. He shared the nickname with a Spanish adolescent singer and actor (born, José Jiménez Fernández) who was well known in Algeria at the time due to his film and television appearances. Despite the recent (1962) departure of Oran's very substantial Spanish colon population, Spanish culture remained important in the city remained, and Oran continued to host foreign variety shows, especially from Spain, until the beginning of the 1970s (Daoudi and Miliani 1996). (One also wonders whether the "Little Joe" moniker might have had something to do with Little Joe Cartwright, played by Michael Landon, a character on the US t.v. show "Bonanza," which broadcast from 1959-1973 and was very popular abroad. I saw it when I lived in Lebanon, but I have no idea whether it was broadcast in Algeria.)

I've been unable to locate any recordings of Kacimo with his orchestre. But here's another interesting recording by Belkacem Bouteldja from 1967 or 1968, which deals with issues of migration to France, called "Hedi Fransa" (This is France). One of Belkacem's best-known as well as most infamous songs from this period is the 1965 recording "Serbili Baoui" ("Serve me my BAO" -- the Orani-made beer produced by the Brasserie Algerienne d'Oran.) The picture below, from a recording of the song, shows Bouteldja pouring a fruit drink, not a beer. Belkacem recorded "Hedi Fransa" in the rural, cheikha style. "Serbili Baoui" is more or less cheikha style, but I believe that violins are also playing along with the gasba(s).

All the recorded material of Bouteldja's from this period that I am able to locate on youtube is done in "traditional" style. "Milouda fine kounti" is a song originally done by Cheikh El-Younsi Berkani. There is also "Ya Binti." Sometimes violins added, as on "Serbili baoui" and "Ya Rayi," a cheikha song. Unfortunately, I cannot locate any of Bouteldja's work with Etoile, which must have had a quite different and more modern sound. It seems that his recorded "hits" were all done in the "traditional" vein.

It appears that Bouteldja's career had fallen off somewhat by the early seventies, but was then revived when he began collaborating with Messaoud Bellemou.

Messaoud Bellemou and "pop-rai"

Messaoud Bellemou

Pop-rai emerged, some claim, when Bouteldja and other young vocalists and musicians devoted to "Orani folklore" began to work with the legendary figure Messaoud Bellemou during the 1970s. Messaoud Bellemou (b. 1947), like Cheikha El Ouachma, was from the town of Aïn Témouchent, 72 kilometers southwest of Oran. While a student at the municipal school, Bellemou was encouraged, according to an article found on wikipedia, to learn the trumpet from a teacher named Henri Coutan, a French colon. Frank Tenaille, in his book Le Raï: De la bâtardise a la reconnaissance internationale (2002), claims that Bellemou's trumpet teacher was a Spanish colon from Oran. Given that Bellemou was from Aïn Témouchent and not Oran, and that the wikipedia article names the teacher, Tenaille is almost certainly in error.

Kali tells us that when Bellemou started on trumpet, he played Western tunes, and in particular, the Spanish passacaglia. But he earned his living as a house painter. In the mid-sixities the Amar circus passed through Aïn Témouchent and recruited Bellemou to play trumpet in its orchestra. He toured with the circus for six months, working with seasoned musicians. After he returned home, Bellemou began to practice techniques for playing quarter tones on the trumpet -- necessary if one wanted to play Algerian music. It was also necessary if one wanted to perform the local, "folkloric" music of the cheikhat and the bedoui cheikhs, as the gasba, the reed flute, is central to the texture of both the bedoui and cheikha genres. So Bellemou attempted to recreate the sound of the gasba with his trumpet playing, but he also flavored his music with some Spanish paso doble and flamenco. (It's important to recall how strong the Spanish influence was in colonial Oran, and Oran province more generally. Orani residents of Spanish origin outnumbered those of French origin by two to one in 1886; by 1941, the ratio of Spaniards to French was three to one.) The ethnomusicologist Lechlech Boumediène, cited by Kali, states that Bellemou also seasoned his modernized rai with other traditional genres like gnawa and hawzi.

Kali claims that what Bellemou did was a revolutionary development, and that he managed to produce quater tones by using his breath to modulate notes as one would do when playing a bugle. (Kali also tells us that the Lebanese trumpet player Nassim Maalouf was instrumental in designing a trumpet that could play Arabic modes, with a fourth valve half the length of the second--but this occurred some years after Bellemou made his breakthrough.)

Bellemou's trumpet playing gave the local music what Kali calls a "jubilant charge." He began to play at wedding processions and was a big hit. (Playing at weddings was and is still an important source of income for musicians throughout the Arab world.) As a result of Bellemou's influence, the trumpet gradually began to replace the use of the double-reed ghaïta or mizmar which heretofore had typically been employed on such occasions, in Western Algeria. By 1968, at age 22, Bellemou started his own ensemble and was able to leave his painting job and to make his living from music.

Bellemou's music got no radio airplay, and cassette recording had not yet come into existence. So at first he chiefly made a name for himself by accompanying the local soccer team when it competed in other town. He used to play every sort of music, local, paso doble and film soundtracks. Bellemou's regional reputation grew more and more.

(According to wikipedia, Bellemou also used to accompany local singers (of both the cheikha and bedoui variety), including Cheikha Ouachma, Cheikha Bekhta and Cheikh Brahim, when they performed at weddings in the countryside around Aïn Témouchent. Unfortunately I've as yet found no recordings of Bellemou backing any cheikh or cheikha on trumpet, so I can't verify that this is in fact true.)

Bellemou recruited other young musicians from the area who were interested in the local "folkloric" traditions and, and reportedly started to make recordings (at first on vinyl) in this style in 1973 (source: wikipedia). The wikipedia piece says Bellemou's first recording was a track called "Sidi H'bibi," featuring (according to the bog Kaloulou) Hamani Hadjoum on vocals. For her part Marie Virolle (La chanson raï, 1995: 54) dates the emergence of the new, modern sounding "pop-rai" to Messaoud Bellemou's recordings with Belkacem Bouteldja, beginning in 1974. (Wikipedia says the two started working together in 1975.) Kouider Metaïr ("Oran, berceau du rai," in Kouider Metaïr, ed., Oran la mémoire, 2004) meanwhile dates the emergence of pop-rai to a specific recording by Bellemou and Bouteldja, “Zarga ou masrara” (Brown and radiant), released in 1975. K. Smaïl ("Les initiales: B. B. du raï," El Watan, December 15, 2009) also claims that Bouteldja sang on "Zerga ou mesrara.”

For his part, Kali states that Bellemou gained national recognition due to the release of two 1975 recording, one with Cheikh Hamani (i.e., Hamani Hadjoum Tmouchenti) on vocals, called "Ya hbabi ana bassit," and another track (unnamed) with Boutedlja.

Based on the successes Bellemou achieved due to one or all of these recordings, he went on national tour, a tour that was noteworthy for the fact that he charged admission (and people paid to see him), at a time when typically concerts were put on by local state authorities and entry was free.

Fortunately for the researcher interested in this history, it is now possible to locate, via Youtube, many of the recordings that are essential to it. (But not, alas, "Ya hbabi ana bassit" or "Sidi H'bibi"). It appears that the Bellemou recording called “Zarga ou Masrara” in fact features the Aïn Témouchent singer, Hamani Hadjoum Tmouchenti, rather than Bouteldja. Tmouchenti was one of those local musicians recruited by Bellemou as he developed a new sound for Orani "folkloric" music in the early seventies. (Update, June 15, 2013: here is a link to Bellemou's "Sidi H'bibi." The vocal is, mistakenly I believe, attributed to Boualem Bouchkara. I also don't think that the Bellemou version sounds much like the famous "Sidi H'bibi" of Salim Halali, nor does it resemble much the version by Mano Negra.)

Bellemou and Belkacem Bouteldja meanwhile recorded a song that sounds virtually the same as "Zarga ou Masrara," under a different title: “Andi Mesrara” (I have a radiant girl). (I eventually found this source, which correctly names the Belkacem hit though without attributing it to Bellemou as well.)

Please listen to both the Hamani Tmouchenti version ("Zarga ou Masrara"):

And now to the Bouteldja version, "Andi Mesrara" (note that the Bouteldja video below opens with a more contemporary concert clip, and the song in question doesn't start til 2:00).

What is remarkable about these recordings is how Bellemou and his ensemble have modernized the patented cheikhat (and bedoui) sounds, especially when you compare them to Belkacem Bouteldja's 1965 “Qatlek Zizia.”

Jacket of "Zarga ou Masrara" (45"); Bellemou in jacket and tie

The percussion on both resembles what one hears on the cheikha recordings, but it is also considerably punched up by the playing of a tbal, a drum that is much larger and louder than the guellal, played by pounding it with a curved stick. Here's a photo one from a collection of postcards from colonial Oran. It's played here by an Algerian Gnawa, but the instrument is widely used by various Sufi cults in Morocco and Algeria, such the Aissawa, as well as by the Gnawa in Morocco.

Now here is Cheikha Rimitti, playing a guellal, whose diameter is much smaller than that of a derbouka.

On these foundational pop-rai recordings you can also hear the sound of kerakeb (sing., karkaba), the distinctive metal castanets played by the Gnawa (or Bilali, as they're known in Algeria). 

A female chorus repeats the male vocals and also contributes ululation, adding to the fuller sound that characterizes the two "Mesrara" recordings, by comparison to typical recordings from the cheikhat and bedoui tradition. 

But what I find most remarkable is that on these two recordings, the essential place of the gasba is taken by both trumpet and saxophone. It's Messaoud Bellemou himself here on sax, and his brother Mouafaq (nicknamed Mimi) is on trumpet. Both the Hamani and Bouteldja versions maintain the feel of the cheikha roots, but overall it's a bigger sound, a deeper, groovier rhythm, and with a more "modern" touch provided by the sax and trumpet. 

Now check out another Bellemou and Bouteldja number, “Inta Âkli,” from 1976, which has roughly the same sound as “Andi Mesrara,” except that Messaoud plays trumpet instead of sax, and it also features an organist, whose playing is quite subdued. 

The person responsible for putting this video up on youtube, "maghrebreunion" (who as of this date has posted 352 videos--mostly rai--and to whom I am eternally grateful) also provides a photo of the members of Bellemou's troupe from the mid-seventies.

They are identified, from left to right, as Kerbiche on kerakeb, Messaoud Bellemou on trumpet, Mimi Mouafak Bellemou on trumpet (I don't know why he is identified here as "Boumediane"), Hocine (holding a soft drink), the group's accordion player and organist, and Hamdane on tbal.

Please also listen to Bellemou's “Mani M'heni,” featuring Hamani Tmouchenti on vocals.

The rhythms on this track are quite amazing, and somehow the percussionist(s) manage to produce what sound like drum rolls. 

  l to r: Mouafak Boumediane ("Mimi ") and Messaoud Bellemou, trumpets, Hamdan on tbal

And if you really liked the Bellemou and Hamani Tmouchenti recordings, here's another: "Ana bhar aliya."

Listen too to another of Cheikha El Ouachma's recordings, “Hak Kachak Hak” (I'm not sure when this 45" was released). You will notice that Cheikha El Ouachma uses the Gnawa rhythms of the kerakeb here. It would seem possible therefore that when Messaoud Bellemou used kerakeb on "Zarga ou Masrara" and "Andi Mesrara" he may not have been innovating but rather following in the cheikha tradition, at least as practiced in the Aïn Témouchent region. (Recall that it is reported that Bellemou used to accompany Cheikha El Ouachma).

The idea for incorporating the tbal and the kerakeb might also have been due to the influence of the Moroccan neo-folk ensemble Nass El Ghiwane (and other similar groups, such as Jil Jilala and Lem Chaheb).

Nass El Ghiwane, huge superstars in Morocco, were notable for incorporating various regional and local Moroccan traditional musics and putting them together to create a new synthesis; they used both the tbal and (on occasion) karakeb. The Ghiwanian influence was enormous in Algeria at this time, and according to Bouziane Daoudi and Hadj Milani (L'aventure du rai, 1996), there were over 3000 Ghiwanian groups in Algeria in the early seventies. The young Khaled Hadj Brahim, later known as Cheb Khaled, started a group in the style of Nass El Ghiwane at age 11, in 1971, called Les Cinqs Étoiles (who, it seems, left no recordings). (The sound of Khaled's group, however, must have been somewhat different than Nass El Ghiwane, as Kalakoulou notes, since its instruments were accordion, bongos and violin.) Moroccan neo-folk quickly went out of fashion, however, after Morocco's occupation of the Spanish Sahara and the ensuing hostilities with Algeria in 1975. The influence of Moroccan neo-folk on Bellemou and company may have been that it provided a warrant for using instruments linked to separate folk traditions and putting them together to produce something new. It may have influenced Bellemou and company to use the tbal and kerakeb specifically. Or it may have been a more general influence, one which encouraged young people to take their local "folkloric" traditions seriously. Recall that we are discussing musical activity in Western Algeria, quite close to the Moroccan border. (The operative word here is "may," because I really have no idea.)

But what about the incorporation of saxophone and the trumpet? (I am unaware of any other recordings, besides those Bellemou did with Hamani Tmouchenti as well as "Andi Mesrara" with Belkacem Bouteldja, on which he played the saxophone.) Young Algerians were, of course, listening to music by the likes of James Brown in Algeria in the 1970s. Bouteldja tells us, in a 2009 interview with K. Smaïl, that as a young man he was listening to James Brown and Otis Redding, in addition to various Algerian and French musicians. But could cassettes by Egyptian Nubian musicians like Ali Hassan Kuban, Bahr Abu Ghreisha, Hassan Jazouli, or Hussein Bashir also have been making their way to Algeria at the time? Egyptian Nubian music of this period was noted for its use of brass and saxophone, and sometimes when I listen to Bellemou recordings from the seventies, I think I hear similarities.

Frank Tenaille (2002) claims that Bouteldja played accordion on some recordings, and that he used it to replace the sound of the zamr, a kind of double-reed clarinet favored in the bedoui music of Western Algeria rather than the gasba. I think Tenaille may be wrong again, both about Bouteldja playing accordion, and about the zamr, i.e. the ghaïta or mizmar, which was employed in wedding processions (as noted above) and not in bedoui music per se. Bouteldja, however, says that he played derbouka in Bellemou's group. Here's a recording of the Bellemou ensemble with Bouteldja on vocals which features the accordion. Perhaps Bouteldja is playing it -- but I've seen no other claims other than Tenaille's that Bouteldja played one. More likely it's Hocine of Bellemou's group (see above). The song is "Bakhta," which was originally written and recorded by Cheikh Abdelkader El Khaldi, and it is an excerpt from a long poem that El Khaldi wrote about his lover. (Here's El Khaldi's "Goul L'Bakhat Goul," which I think is a song from a different segment of the poem.) "Bakhta" was also recorded, previous to the Bellemou/Bouteldja version, by wahrani singers Blaoui Houari, Ahmed Wahby and Ahmed Saber, and later by Khaled, on his N'ssi N'ssi album (1993). A wikipedia article summarizes a description Khaled gave of the song in an interview in 1997. (Wahrani is another of the sources feeding into the development of modern rai.)

Sometime in the mid-seventies, Bouteldja was arrested, according to the testimony of Boutaiba Sghir in the very interesting 2003 documentary, Mémoire du Raï -- you can watch the segment here. I've not been able to find details on the arrest, only some vague references to Belkacem Bouteldja as a kind of "enfant terrible." Here's what he looked like in that period (from the cover of the 45" for the songs "Ndag Ndag" and Ya Rayi," recorded with Bellemou: you can listen to the latter here.)

As far as I'm aware, Kacimo did not play guitar, but I suppose that a photo of him posing with one, along with his hairstyle and his pullover sweater, would have helped to create an impression of the music as "modern."

(To confuse things even further: here's a live recording of Bellemou and Bouteldja, from the first rai festival in Oran, in 1985. They play "Ha Raï, Ha Raï," "Zarga Ou Masrara" [originally recorded, as we've seen, with Hamani on vocals] and then Bellemou does an instrumental. It's from an album, Le rai dans tous ses états, released on the French label Maison des Cultures du Monde in 1986, which also features tracks from Cheikha Remitti, Raïna Raï, and "Chab" Khaled.)

Boutaiba Sghir

Another young singer who Messaoud Bellemou recruited to work with him was Boutaiba Sghir (born Hafif Mohammed), from Chabate, a village located 7 kilometers from Aïn Témouchent. Bellemou in fact started working with this local vocalist even before he began performing with the Oran singer Belkacem Boutaldja. And although it may have been the Bellemou/Bouteldja collaborations (and particularly "Andi Mesrara") that put pop-rai on the map (at least in the Oran region), Boutaiba Sghir was equally crucial to the development of that "new" sound, especially given that Bouteldja disappeared from the scene for a time due to his jailing. The Sublime Frequencies compilation of 1970s rai music, 1970's Algerian Proto-rai Underground (2008) features three very fine tracks from Bellemou and Boutaiba Sghir. (For some reason, Bouteldja is absent from the album.)

Let's examine now some of the sounds produced by the Bellemou-Boutaiba collaborations. This recording by Bellemou and Boutaiba, "Dayha Oulabes" (featured on 1970's Algerian Proto-rai Underground), has an instrumental opening, with two trumpets and accordion, that reminds me a lot of Egyptian Nubian music produced by the likes of Ali Hassan Kuban.

On the Bellemou-Boutaiba recording "Manemchiche," dating from 1977-78, you can hear further development of the Bellemou ensemble sound, and in particular, the presence of bongos (or maybe derbouka), which give the song a distinctive rhythmic feel.

Another great Bellemou-Boutaiba outing (also on 1970's Algerian Proto-rai Underground) is "Malgré Tout." (Note the French title; French is routinely incorporated into the local Oranais dialect). You can hear an electric guitar clearly on the song's opening, and the rhythm here is dominated by bongos. (The chorus goes, "malgré tout mazal n'brik," or, "despite everything, I still love you.") The drum rolls are similar to those on the Bellemou and Hamani Tmouchenti track “Mani M'heni,” discussed above. (I guess, but it's only a guess, that it's Hamam Ahmad Zergui on guitar -- see below.)

Here's another excellent track from Boutaiba, I assume with the backing of Bellemou's ensemble, "Ki Kounti." It's notable in particular, from my view, for the strong guitar instrumental opening, and it's a real scorcher, with the percussion, vocals, trumpet, accordion and organ playing together to create a musical tempest. The person who posted it, "maghrebunion," says that it dates from the seventies and that it is off the album Ouine n'guiyel ana oughzali. Sublime Frequencies, or some other company with an interest in such material, needs to issue another compilation of seventies rai. If anyone does so, this track definitely belongs on it.

Chaba Fadela, who as we noted above has been cited by many as the originator of "pop-rai," used to sing back-up on occasion for Boutaiba in the mid to late seventies, before she started recording under her own name. Here she accompanies Boutaiba on "Ya Khali", from 1978 or 1979. The notes to the video state that it is Gana El Maghnaoui on trumpet, who was another important figure in the development of rai in the 70s. (I have thus far been able to find little hard information about him, but you can find lots of his music on youtube.) It is worthwhile comparing "Ya Khali" to Fadela's famous "Ana ma h'lali ennoum" track of 1979. After listening to both, it seems clear to me that Fadela's song, said by some to mark the emergence of "pop-rai," is more of a piece with "Ya Khali," recorded with Boutaiba, than marking any kind of radical break with what came before it.

Please check out "Ana ma h'lali ennoum" by Fadela (via Youtube). Helpfully (and once again, I am deeply grateful to the Algerians who have posted all these vintage recordings), it also features the jacket of the cassette, which looks like this:

Note that the cassette jacket attributes the track is attributed to Fadela and Bellemou. In Arabic, meanwhile, it says Fadela al-Wahraniya, or "Fadela the Orani." The person who posted the track on Youtube writes in his/her notes that she was called Fadela al-Wahraniya at the time in order to distinguish her from the well-known Algerian singer of hawzi, Fadhéla Dziria (1917-1970). The spoken introduction to the song introduces her as "Chaba Fadela al-Wahraniya." The recording then also seems to be one of the earliest uses of the cheb or chaba as a name for rai stars. (Here is another version of the song, from 1985 or 1986.)

The quality of the recording as reproduced on the Youtube vid is not very high. But you can hear electric guitar and accordion playing on the song's introduction. Although the cassette is attributed to Bellemou and Fadela, there is no trumpet playing. Perhaps it's Bellemou's "ensemble" who accompanies her. The accordion here substitutes for the gasba. We also hear (although it is not very strong) the electric guitar playing rhythm throughout. The song is also remarkable in that male voices (I don't know whose) respond to Fadela on the chorus. Compared to Bellemou's other recordings from the mid-1970s (at least the ones that are available), the major innovation of "Ana ma h'lali ennoum" song is that it features a female rather than a male lead voice. In that sense, it represents a partial return to prominence of female vocalists, the cheikhat, within the rai tradition. This return of women as featured vocalist in the "rai" tradition also happens to coincide with the cultural liberalization that occurred in Algeria after President Boumedienne (d. 1978) was replaced by Chadhli Bendjedid, who served as Algeria's President from February 1979-January 1992. (Chaba Zahouania, the other big female star of early pop-rai, reportedly started recording in 1981. Here's "Hey Delali" from Zahouania, recorded in 1981 with Groupe El Azhar.)

Benfissa, Groupe El Azhar, Frères Zergui, and others

Younes Benfissa

Bellemou also recorded with another vocalist named Younes Benfissa during the seventies, and according to wikipedia, before he even began working with Bouteldja. The article suggests that Benfissa too, like Hamani Tmouchenti and Boutaiba Sghir, was from Aïn Témouchent or its environs. [I've confirmed Benfissa was from Aïn Témouchent. The source also claims that Benfissa "avait été le précurseur du Raï." Added November 16, 2014.] I have been unable to learn more about Benfissa, but he did make a number of excellent recordings with Bellemou during this period when "pop-rai" was developing. Here's one, entitled "Li Maandouche L'Auto" (He who doesn't own a car), which you can find on the album, 1970's Algerian Proto-rai Underground. And here's another wonderful track from Benfissa, "Derou shour," which features him on both vocals and 'ud.

The 1970's Algerian Proto-rai Underground also features tracks from Groupe El Azhar and Cheb Zergui (from Sidi Bel Abbès). I cannot find much information about these artists, but based on their available recordings, they certainly are worthy of more discussion and research. According to Hicham Chadly, on the album's liner notes, Groupe El Azhar used to accompany Cheb Mami in the 1980's, before Mami moved to France in 1985. But they also made a number of recordings in the seventies, and were very active on the scene.

If you hunt around on Youtube, you can find tracks that Boutaiba recorded with Groupe El Azhar. Here's one, from 1975-76, which I think (based on the fact that maghrebunion reproduced the cover for it -- above) is called "Nar Guedate." Magrebunion also offers up this photo (below) of Boutaiba with the Groupe El Azhar, and he identifies the group's members as: trumpet, Saïd Tmouchenti (not shown); accordion, Bellebna (known as Hammani, RIP); guitar, Kouider; derbouka, Houcine Nahal; tar, Bellahouel. The violin and 'ud players are not identified.

I've been unable to determine where Groupe El Azhar were from. But maybe if they had a trumpet player named Saïd Tmouchenti, they were also from Aïn Témouchent?

There is also this track, "Ha Galbi Allah I'Ouatik B'Sbor", featuring Boutaiba and Groupe El Azhar. The Youtube vid features another photo of the group, I guess, but perhaps with some different personnel? It's hard to tell. Note that below we see someone on banjo and two violinists. The photo is not clear enough for me to tell what the gentleman standing in back is playing; perhaps it's a trumpet. Note that in both these recordings the ensemble playing doesn't really match the ensembles that are depicted. In particular, the trumpet is a central feature of both outings but the trumpet player only shows up (perhaps) in the photo below. 

Groupe El Azhar deserve a much larger place in the history of the early development of "pop-rai," perhaps as much as Bellemou and his collaborators do. Their recordings with the Frères Zergui in particular are especially interesting, most notably the wah-wah guitar playing of Hamam Ahmad Zergui. Check out this truly amazing track (title unidentified), featuring "Cheb" Zergui on vocals and guitar.

Groupe El Azhar recorded with a number of other artist--besides the Frères Zergui and Boutaiba--who were involved in the development of the pop rai scene. Via youtube, one can now find recordings they did with: 

Gana El Maghnaoui (mentioned above, 1978)

Cheb Khaled (1978)

Hocine Chabatti (Cheb Hocine) (1977)

Chaba Zahouania, "Hey Dellali," 1981

But...

Cheb Khaled

Based on all the research I've done, I was ready to proclaim Bellemou and his collaborators as the founders of modern pop-rai (possibly with the addition of Groupe El Azhar). And to give pride of place to the city of Aïn Témouchent over Oran, which has been conventionally cited as the originator of rai.

But then I heard this song, from Cheb Khaled.

The title is either "Mahna Sigliya" or possibly "Hala la (Mahna Sigliya Maamda Ala Zega .....)." Two sources claim that it is from Khaled's first album, an EP really, released in 1974, when he was only 14, and named after its title track, "Trig Lycée" (The way to the high school), which you can listen to here. (Sorry, this is the best photo I could find of the "Trig Lycée" EP.)

"Mahna Sigliya" is immediately remarkable for its guitar work, which kicks in strong right from the beginning, is shadowed by a sax (at much lower volume than the guitar) and then is joined by an accordeon (perhaps played by Khaled). It has a quick paced beat (bongos and tambourine?), quite a bit quicker than traditional bedoui or cheikha rai. The accordion, sax and guitar play basically variations on the same riff over and over in between Khaled's vocals, but the interplay between them is quite intriguing, as the volume varies and the guitar and sax really go at it. It's really a wonderful track, fully as unusual (compared to what came before) and as compelling as Bellemou's "Mesrara" cuts.

The much better known "Trig Lycée" is less wild, but it's the same ensemble (such recordings usually took place in one session), but without any guitar. (Khaled recorded a new version of "Trig Lycée," now called "Trigue Lycee," on his 1999 album Kenza.)

I've been unable to determine who played with Khaled on this recording, but it is possible that he played accordion himself. (Unlike in the case of Bouteldja, there is not a shadow of a doubt that Khaled played accordion.) It could be Bellemou and his group. It could be Groupe El Azhar. Or perhaps there were some other musicians active in Oran (where the "Trig Lycée" album was almost certainly recorded) who were working in the same vein as Bellemou. (The Audotopia music blog says it was the Le Cinq Étoiles, but they don't really sound here like a folk band in the Ghiwanian vein.)

Kalaloulou meanwhile says that "Sidi H'bibi," Bellemou's first recording, with Hamani on vocals, sounds remarkably like Khaled's "Trig Lycée": "La similitude est frappante: le phrasé, le rythme...seule la voix fait l'écart" (The similarity is striking: the phrasing, the rhythm...only the voice makes the difference). Given that "Sidi H'bibi" was recorded in 1973, the year before "Trig Lycée," Kalaloulou concludes that "Hamani Hadjoum passe pour être le premier chanteur de Raï moderne." That is, Hamani, not Khaled, not Kacimo, not Fadela, was the first "pop-rai" singer. What a pity that I can't find the "Sidi H'bibi" recording, or any photo of Hamani! (June 15, 2013: See above, I have now found a link to the Bellemou/Hamani version of "Sidi H'bibi.")

You can find a truly amazing and invaluable treasure trove of early Khaled recordings here, including Trig Lycée, courtesy ƮᏲҾ дևծιστøρία. 20 albums! And if you are interested in Khaled's earliest material, check out the compilation, Ala Rayi: The Early Years, for some more tracks that sound like they came out of the same milieu as "Trig Lycée" and the "Masrara" material. It's also found at the Audiotopia link noted above.

And a note on the term "rai"

Boutaiba Sghir, interviewed in the film, Mémoire du Raï, says that both he and Bouteldja combined what he calls "gasba music" (the film translates "gasba" in French as "ancien") and the "modern" in their work. His use of the term "gasba music" rather than "rai" is quite interesting; Boutaiba means here the music of the cheikhat and the bedoui music of the cheikhs, and his formulation underscores how important the gasba was to this music.

Some scholars call the music of the cheikhs bedoui citidanisée, or "citified bedoui," by which they mean bedoui (literally, "Bedouin") music done by urban cheikhs who sang and composed in a rural tradition.

A youtube video of the Bellemou-Bouteldja recording of Cheikh El Khaldi's "Bakhta" calls this genre, Orani "makhazni." Bouteldja uses the term wahrani-makhazni well, in an interview he gave in 2009. This article about Cheikh Abdelkader Bouras, who was associated with Cheikh El Khaldi, says that makhazni gave "new life" to the bedoui genre, and that it was based on a change of rhythm that permitted easy transition from one qasida, or poem, to another.

The ethnomusicologist Boumèdiene Lechlech, in a very detailed account of the bedoui genre, states that bédoui wahrani includes three main forms: guebli, performed without percussion, just the gasba, mekhzni, with guellal and gasba, and bsaïli, performed with only percussion, what he calls a kind of primitive rap. The term mekhzni, he writes, comes from the tribal cavalry, charged by the ruling elite (the makhzen) with collecting tribute and maintaining order. Its meaning then is upbeat music.

Bedoui ensemble (screen save from Mémoire du Raï)

According to Virolle (La chanson raï), it was not until the 1970s that a genre known as "rai" came into being. The music performed by the cheikhat, she states, was known prior to that time as "elklām elhezal" -- which she translates as "parole leger" in French, or "light, amusing speech." (This in contrast to elklām eljed, which apparently is more characteristic of the melhoun verse sung by bedoui artists.) The name rai trab, country rai, commonly given these days to the music sung by the cheikhat, as distinguished from rai moderne as well as from bedoui, is perhaps then a more modern invention.

A cheikha and her accompanists (screen save from Mémoire du Raï)

One imagines that recordings like Bouteldja's "Ya Ray," dating from the 1960's, played a role in giving rise to the name of the music, as it became known in the seventies. Note that this Bouteldja track features a violin in addition to the gasba and guellal; note too that the jacket of the recording advertises it as "Chante folklorique oranais" (Orani folkloric singing).

It seems that the term "rai" really came into existence with the rise of pop-rai in the seventies.

Mohamed Kali, writing in the Algerian daily El Watan ("Querelle des clochettes," July 9, 2011) also states that the term "rai" wasn't used to describe a musical genre until well after independence. (He gives no date for its first use.) It is used, he says, to designate a style of singing in which singer-songwriters refer constantly to their "reason-unreason" in their refrains, which is how he translates "rai." It is the "unreason" aspect of their songs, he claims, that made rai music subversive.

More on the place of origins: Oran, Sidi Bel Abbès, Aïn Témouchent

In the past few years controversy has arisen over the place of origin of rai, especially as rai has become a kind of national folkloric institution and the occasion for festivals and tourism (thus far, mostly local). The main rivalry is between Oran and the city located 70 kilometers to the south, Sidi Bel Abbès. Kali says that it is partly true that Sidi Bel-Abbès has a claim on rai, because the music's practitioners were able to find a kind of refuge there after independence, especially after the strictures placed on female performance by the Boumedienne regime. (It's not clear from his account, however, exactly why Sidi Bel-Abbès was so protective of rai.) Some claim that it's Raïna Raï, who were originally from Sidi Bel Abbès, that gave rise to pop-rai when they established their group in Paris in 1980.

Kali puts the origins of rai back much further, to the inter-war period. It was the Aïn Témouchent region, he claims, that was the true origin. The city sits at the center of the most intensely colonized and fertile region of colonial Algeria. During the summer harvest season, it attracted thousands of seasonal workers, known as "chouala," from all over Algeria, as well as from the Sahara and from Morocco. Women made up a large portion of the labor, as they were favored by the colons who considered them more easily controlled and manipulated than men. Rai, in its origins, was music sung by migrant female laborer, says Kali. (Recall that the wa‘dât, the saints' festivals held on the occasion of the end of the harvest season, were important performance venues for both the cheikhat and the bedoui cheikhs.)

I intend in future to look more deeply into the issue of migrant labor in the inter-war period, and specifically in the Aïn Témouchent region. At minimum, this account helps make sense of the importance of Témouchenti artists like Cheikha El Wachma, Messaoud Bellemou, Boutaiba Sghir and others in the development of modern rai. It's unfortunate that they have not received the recognition they so greatly deserve for their role in inventing this incredibly important genre of music.