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Rachid Taha exhorts with fervor
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Philly Inquirer, Rachid Taha exhorts with fervor >>
Algerian-born singer's focus sharpens.
By A.D. Amorosi
For The Inquirer
Put the rai on the rock.
Fuse the elegance of Franco-lectronica and Bollywood's Technicolor touches with the unctuousness of punk and the intrigue of chaabi instrumentation (featuring the mandolute, the oud, the bender), which is as foreign as it is familiar.
Add a powerfully gruff voice that spits and simmers with righteous exhortations.
You get Rachid Taha, the provocative, Algerian-born genre-masher who gets better and chancier with age.
"And sexier," says Taha, 46, from his home in France. "My voice is getting sexier every day."
While efforts like the rough-hewn Made in Medina and the more delicate Ole Ole proved to be danceable mixed bags, his newest, Tékitoi, is the most focused. It is a raw, passionate record that asks "who are you?" with the sort of heft that seems like a threat. It's not.
"Tékitoi's motivation was to show that, despite everything, we're one and the same," Taha says. "Communion - whether we like or we don't like!"
Certainly his sensuously wound cover of the Clash's "Rock the Casbah" finds Taha's fervor in fullest bloom as he sings about lusty oil barons and religious fanatics.
"It became a soldier's anthem during the Gulf War, so I thought I'd bring it back in to the present - I haven't changed one word of the lyrics, except I sing them in Arabic, which has its own message."
But Taha's true indictments are saved for other moments. Such as "Safi," a song addressed to all Arab states with no democracy or free expression.
"Those with power in those countries find it too sweet to let go," he says. "I can't really blame the West for that, although they might be offering some of the candy." 07/01/05 >> go there
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