Born in 1958 in Algeria's western port of Oran - the home of rai, North Africa's politically conscious, often-risque folk-dance music - Taha consistently gave the proceedings an edge, whether with his boisterous party vocals, rough-voiced laments, or offhand banter.

Taha offered a stirring melange of rai and electro-rock, including some chaabi, descended from the traditional Arab Andalusian genre, and a Bo Diddley beat of his entrancing original composition "Kelma."

Resplendent in red suit, orange shirt and white shoes, the impish ex-pat (whose family emigrated to France when he was 10) cavorted with arms outstretched while lasciviously thrusting to the beat or punkishly dangling the microphone by its cord with his teeth. He stopped to wet his fingers in his mouth and push back long black curls, sometimes donning a black leather fedora or shades, and chatted with the crowd between songs in a mix of French, Arabic, and heavily accented English.

Predictable, if impassioned, calls to stop the war in Iraq, along with linked put-downs to Bush and fascism (and a rejection of religious intolerance on all sides) were accompanied by more immediately pertinent gibes. Aware that he was performing at a 7:30 p.m. show with time restrictions, Taha playfully asked, "This is a democracy? 'You have 15 minutes; after that, stop?' "

(The band played past 9; the shows in the Kimmel Center's "Global Grooves" series for the next two Thursdays - the Latin-alt-folklorico band Pistolera and the Balkan gypsy brass band Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar - start just as early.)

Taha's rakish charisma worked an odd spell over the 400 people in attendance, getting many to do call-and-response in unfamiliar tongues and whipping most into a dancing frenzy. That was especially true on numbers like his popular cover of late Algerian chaabi music master Dahmane El Harrachi's "Ya Rayah," an aching study of exile that he began mournfully with just 10-string mandolute ace Hakim Hamadouche accompanying him before the full-band techno-rock assault kicked in.

And, of course, his arabesque take on the Clash's 1982 hit "Rock the Casbah" got its reading, closing out the set - Taha's just-released best-of compilation bears its translated title, Rock El Casbah.

-by David R. Stampone