1970s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground LP

“1970’s Algerian Proto-Rai Underground” (Sublime Frequencies) Sublime Frequencies tags this record with the line “this is Rai music from Algeria as you’ve not heard it before,” & though Rai reaches more or less a mass market worldwide, mostly via Algerian expats in Paris, I’d guess it’s a relatively safe bet pretty much any Rai is “Rai music as you’ve not heard it before.” When I started poking around, I realized that certainly I had heard Rai before playing on a boombox in a market stall or wherever, but didn’t pay it much attention. Contemporary Rai is…contemporary. It’s a very worldly form of music, though rhythms, melodies & of course language are still centered around the Algerian origins. But in the ‘70s, Rai was still very underground, & western influences were more in the way of blaring trumpets & electric guitars than the drum machines & digital synths of modern Rai. The rhythms & melodies are Arabic, but the style is loud & proud – subtly & elegance are out the window. This was an outlaw form, performed in the clubs & bars with zero highbrow pretense, & indeed if you understood Arabic you would hear that these songs come out of basic, everyday concerns – cars, alcohol, sex, etc (song titles are thoughtfully translated in liners), despite the fact Algeria was, arguably more then than now, an authoritarian, Islamic state. Rai was a back-alley, street-level music, & it sounds it. Driving hand percussion, droning accordion which plays a role closer to a harmonium than the European styles normally associated with the instrument, electric guitar, trumpet, & vox – that’s it. Its origins are in Bedouin trance/celebration music, & that is plainly evident as well. By the last track of this comp, Cheb Zergui is getting into wah guitar & delay, maybe absorbing some sub-Saharan influences, or perhaps the American psychedelic soul moves which were infiltrating West African music in general around that time – magical stuff. In any case, the Arabic forms here are almost inherently psychedelic to western ears, & the sweat & dust in the grooves, & the rawness of the performance/recordings drop this into the beautiful pre-commercial, proto World Music realm so amazingly documented by Sublime Frequencies. Limited ed., heavy vinyl, gatefold sleeve.