Nieuwsbrief
Artiest
Rachid Taha (FR)
- Podium: Plein 2015
- Dag: Zondag
- Aanvang: 19:45u
The America Rachid loves is an idiosyncratic one, gleaned from John Ford westerns, Johnny Cash’s country music and Elvis Presley’s rock ’n’ roll. Yet it is also that nerve centre that transforms and returns the raw material supplied by its immigrants. A metalworker’s son, once fascinated by his uncle’s ranch in the Oran region, that Algerian Far West where he was born at the end of the 50s and spent part of his childhood, before being hauled around from Alsace to the Vosges to the suburbs of Lyon, Rachid inevitably feels at home there. On Ha baby, where phonetics flirts with semantics (“Habibi” means “my love” in Arabic), Rachid has achieved a perfect blend of country and Alger-style chaâbi popular music. This mixture of Kenny Rodgers and Farid El Atrache is a love song and jewel among others, with Hakim Hamadouche’s Arab lute twinned with Marc Copely’s National guitar to produce a set of finery Rachid offers to his beloved. The album, which begins with a vibrant Je t’aime (I love you) and ends on the tender, disarming Viens (Agi) (Come), is very much a declaration of love addressed to his partner, life and difference.
