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Sample Track 1:
"Rock el Casbah" from Tékitoi
Sample Track 2:
"Winta" from Tékitoi
Sample Track 3:
"Dima (Always)" from Tékitoi
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Tékitoi
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Newark Star-Ledger, Look inside, then out >>

Taha wants listeners to see themselves and the world
Friday, July 01, 2005
BY MARTY LIPP
For the Star-Ledger

The title of Rachid Taha's latest album asks "Who are you?"

It's a question the Algerian- born, French-raised rocker has had to answer repeatedly as he steered his career into unmarked territory.

Born in Algeria, Taha moved to France at the age of 10. "I felt as if I were born all over again," he said, "as if I came out of my mother's stomach again."

But when asked if that was good or bad, he said "both," and talked about finding new musical loves and persistent discrimination.

Taha brings his Arabic-tinged rock to the Bowery Ballroom as part of a U.S. tour promoting "Tékitoi" (a corruption of the French "T'es qui toi?" or "Who are you?"), the latest in a series of assumption-breaking albums.

He began his musical career spinning tunes as a disc jockey in Lyons, then formed the band Carte de Séjour (the French equivalent of "Green Card"). His first notoriety came when the band remade a beloved French song, "Douce France," reintroducing it as an ironic, punked-out tune that highlighted Arab immigrants' dissatisfaction -- it was banned from French radio.

The singer was able to find the slippery balance between cultures after he teamed up with producer- guitarist Steve Hillage, who was formerly with the British progressive rock band Gong.

"We're like an old couple that keeps getting younger," Taha said. Their "Diwan" rocked up Middle Eastern popular classics, while "Made in Medina" masterfully brought together fuzz guitars, Moroccan singers, the New Orleans band Galactic and Nigeria's Femi Kuti.

"Tékitoi" rocks relentlessly, but in a range of flavors, using crunching guitars and the mighty Egyptian String Ensemble; sparkling synthesizers and polyrhythmic Arabic percussion.

Most notably, Taha remakes The Clash's "Rock the Casbah," bringing out the Middle East flavor of the original. While one suspects that Taha just liked the song, he said he did it because American soldiers had played it in the first Gulf War and he wanted to show "it's not a song of war."

Saying he was spurred on by the declining state of the planet, "Tékitoi" is his most directly political album to date. Each song is an unambiguous exhortation to listeners. "There's not as much imagery," he said. "It's the best way for (audiences) to hear you and to touch them."

On "H'asbu-hum," he sings in Arabic: "Liars, thieves, humiliators, killers, oppressors ... Get rid of them!"

The electric guitars abate for "Dima," co-written by synthesizer wizard Brian Eno, and Taha growls: "If you could see what I saw, you'd turn blind. ... I question myself, always, I search for what is pure, always."

Taha now finds himself between the grinding tectonic plates of the Middle East and the West. He jokes about his upcoming U.S. tour saying, "If they are looking for weapons of mass destruction, one is coming and its name is Rachid Taha."

While he presents himself as a glib, insouciant rock star, his words and action belie a more complicated person. Taha calls himself a "Western boy," but is sharply critical of the persistent discrimination in his adopted home, calling it a "sickness."

And though he celebrates Arabic music, he is critical of the lack of democracy in Arab countries. Taha reserves his disdain for leaders on both sides of the Arabic- Western divide, saying that the general public is far less hostile.

Though Taha snarls "Who are you?" provocatively, it is meant to provoke listeners to look inside, but only as a precursor to looking at the world around them.
 07/01/05 >> go there
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