Thomas Burkhalter diagnoses a trend away from French Raï and toward Algerian rap in the young Algerian music scene. At the same time, this is associated with a new view of rap and hip-hop, which are going back to the roots in Algeria. The microphone becomes a symbol and a mouthpiece for the demands of a youth movement that has turned against government and society alike.
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For ten years Algeria’s youth has been experimenting with hip hop – and Europe has taken no notice. Rap is seen as an expression of increasing Americanisation, thus unworthy of support. Rap is MTV culture, McWorld, symbol of a lost generation that denies its local identity and its roots. This view is misguided: if the world of world music is supposed to reflect realities, Algerian rap belongs to the repertoire. Nowadays rap has more to say in Algeria than the marketable global Raï of the superstars Khaled, Cheb Mami, Faudel and the like. Especially since the eighties, Raï has been mutating from music with strong local influences to a standardised global music, while Algerian rap has been developing in the opposite direction.
MBS (Le Micro Brise le Silence), Intik, Hamma Boys, Brigade Anti-Massacre and SOS are in the vanguard of more than a hundred rap groups in Algeria and Oran that now compete with the Raï singers and producers remaining in Algeria. They imitate what they see on satellite TV from the USA and France, adopting the music, facial expressions, gestures and clothing. However, an increasing number of groups uses the Algerian dialect self-confidently, rather than rapping in French or English. This new generation of young musicians, most of whom have no steady employment, rarely minces words politically, rapping in protest against civil war, economic crisis and injustice and letting no one intimidate them: neither the regime nor the Islamists. "If you are silent, you will die; if you speak, you will also die, so speak and die”, the Algerian writer Tahar Djaout wrote shortly before he was murdered. Several groups adopted this motto; MBS printed it on the cover of a CD. Rap is the musical equivalent of the most recent youth protest movements, which strongly recall the youth revolts of 1988. "I must speak the truth and give a voice to those who are mistreated. I speak of children who were burned, of my sisters who were raped. We are like birds kept in a cage, thirsting for happiness and freedom”, Intik raps.
These language jugglers produce their music themselves, which makes them more autonomous than the local and global interpreters of Raï. However difficult it may be: "It costs much more to produce our cassettes than local Raï. We record a piece every day or two, and Raï singers record a whole album in an hour”, explains Ourrad Rabah of MBS: "Once we’ve finished a few pieces, we try to make them palatable to a producer. If you find a producer, he pays you a minimum price for every cassette sold. But hardly anyone wants to have anything to do with rap. Rap is too explosive."
Most rappers think little of Raï. They see Raï as French entertainment without a message. Leading groups like MBS and Intik have managed the breakthrough into the west, producing CDs for multinational labels. At the moment it is impossible to think that they will ever let someone dictate to them how the "Orient” is supposed to sound, as many Raï singers do. But the future is still uncertain. Ourrad Rabah hopes that Algerian rap is not a passing trend, but something that will grow. "I hope that rap will find its way into Algeria’s great, diverse musical culture, and I dream that the time will come when our cassette industry and the concert promoters will begin to respect our art and finally pay us fair rates.”
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Author: Thomas Burkhalter
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