Mraya
Abdel Ali Slimani
Real World through Festival
Reviewed by Jenny Long
This album is an interesting introduction to the current evolution of Algerian "pop"-rai — the 1980 and '90s version of the bawdy, working-class rai originating from the cheikhas (women singers) in the port town of Oran in western Algeria in the '20s.
The original rai — a mainstay of Orani night life in taverns, brothels and cabarets and at weddings — was characterised by its performance at mixed-gender dances and by its concentration on wine, love and the problems of life for former peasants on the fringes of the cities — although the national liberation struggle and other social issues were also a topic for the cheikhs and cheikhas.
Rai was hotted up to "pop"-rai in the '70s with the relaxation of moral constraints imposed by the post-revolutionary National Liberation Front government. Rai took off with the evolution of cheap cassette technology, and became even more risqué.
In France, "pop"-rai became one of the cultural expressions for the Magrebi minority's struggle for an identity in racist surroundings. Its foremost exponent, Cheb Khaled, who began his career in the mid-'70s, was forced by 1990 to relocate to France by the Algerian Islamist campaign — including assassination — against rai artists.
"When I sing rai", Khaled says in an Option article by Banning Eyre (July-August 1991), "I talk about things directly; I drink alcohol; I love a woman; I am suffering ... I like Julio Iglesias ... but he just sings about women, whereas [I sing] about alcohol, bad luck and women."
During the mid-'80s rai began to transcend its ethnic connections with the explosion of interest in world music and the anti-racist campaigns in France. According to Hocine Benkheira, writing in Peuples Méditerranéens (April-September 1986), rai's successes in France led to the Algerian government stopping repression of rai and also to the vigorous cleaning up of the bawdy lyrics for the world audience.
This sanitising is evident on Slimani's album, although the sketchy liner notes leave a lot of the lyrics to the imagination.
Also evident in the lyrics is the sense of dislocation many of North African migrants feel amongst a French population that believes there are too many Arabs in the country and even that migrants should be expelled. The title track "Mraya" (mirror) expresses the migrant's vision of looking in the mirror and seeing "his father, his mother, his hometown".
Other songs are about different aspects of leaving and returning, with a dedication of a song each to Slimani's friends and all Algerians, and to the Algerian national football team and its coach.
The music is a very poppy and dancey combination of synthesisers and traditional percussion. My favourite track — less poppy but still with the fusion of traditional rhythms and synthesised melodies — is the first "Laziza", which Slimani dedicates to his mother.