Rachid Taha: Diwan 2

"Traditional North African instruments and strings are to the fore, making this collection of tracks a gentle tour de force with a lighter more playful treatment"

"The story behind Diwan 2 is Rachid’s chance find, in his parents’ attic, of a recording of Ecoute-Moi Camarade, which he chooses as the opening track introduced by the melodic, romantic sound of Stephane Baudet’s plaintive trumpet and the voice of Miquette Giraudy, better known for her expertise on the synthesizer. But there’s also humor and laughter in the intimate throaty quality of his vocals and idiosyncratic chatty moments, as if he were there in your living room; the last track, Ghanni Li Shwaya, ends with a typical gravelly growl.

Happily, the prolific Rachid doesn’t totally deprive us of his own compositions, he gives us Josephine and Ah Mon Amour; his voice seems more comfortable with these and with the rocking percussion provided by Hossam Ramzy, and Kadi Bouguenaya’s reed flute, the gasbar.

But sadly in the UK we are to be deprived of the accompanying DVD, Ma Parabole d’Honneur, of his recent tour of Algeria, undertaken, after an absence of 20 years, at the behest of our own dear Andy Kershaw. It seems this is only available in France"

Meanwhile, I have been walking around town trying to whistle "Gana el Hawa" (an Abdel Halim Hafez song he covers here). A good song to cover. It seems like kind of an obvious choice, but I haven't actually heard many covers of it. (I do wish he had ditched the choral accompaniment on the two Egyptian songs, but oh well, it's certainly true the sensibility of the originals to keep it. It's just a typical aspect of Arabic music which I atypically dislike.)

I love Agatha -- I happen to be listening to it now. But, really, the whole album is fun. Do you know much about the songs?

I am familiar with the two Egyptian songs ("Gana el Hawa," a song originally sing by Abdel Halim Hafez, which is by the same Egyptian composer Jay-Z took that "Big Pimpin'" riff from, and "Ganeli Sheway Sheway," a song from an Oum Kalthoum move from the 40s). I am a lot less familiar with Algerian music than Egyptian music, but I've been picking up bits and pieces about the other songs from reviews and interviews with Rachid Taha. Also, I like Rachid Taha's own couple songs on here.

I have not been a Rachid Taha fan, but I am very impressed with what he, and everyone involved, have done on this. It maintains a lot of the actual flavors of North Africa and Egypt in the timbres and the rhythms. (On the other hand, I keep coming across reviewers who describe the whole thing as rai, which is either partly or entirely wrong. I think the North African styles are chabai or other forerunners of rai.)

If you don't have a legit. copy, the actual CD is worth having for the lyrics.

If you can, get the real, French 2-disk version, not the 1-disk abridgement that gets sold here as [i]Khaled Taha Faudel[/i]. That's not bad, but it drops some of the old rai songs, and it doesn't have enough Faudel on it (his voice is amazing).

But I also agree that [i]Diwan 2[/i] is definitely worth a purchase. It is really well-recorded -- great textures, great instrumentation (although not especially rai instrumentation -- no accordion), great feel. Taha's last record was very rock and very explicitly political. This one is much lighter, and more subtle -- a long celebration of hybrid francarabe culture, which presents embracing your confusion and syncretism as an implied alternative to Islamism and Salafist rigor.

In the pop rai vein, I liked Cheb Mami's [i]Delalli[/i] and any of the recent Khaled records.

If you like Taha in general, I can't imagine your not liking this. It's very much of a piece with his work, though it has a radically different emphasis than Tekitoi? or any of the last few records.