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When raï meets reggae
Big Men
Paris
24/12/2001 -
In an attempt to answer that question, RFI/Musique reviews the album and meets up with Guillaume Bougard, director of Tabou 1 and the braïns behind the Big Men project:
Reggae and Raï
Two Unlikely Musical Bedfellows
Raï meets reggae is the theme of this audacious blend of sounds from the Middle East and the Caribbean: 14 unlikely duets have been recorded by artists from as far afield as Paris, Oran or Kingston. And yet the idea of combining these two styles seems so right that you can only wonder why the producers hadn’t thought of it before!
Behind this project are two French independent producers Martin Meissonnier and Guillaume Bougard, who have shown enormous resourcefulness in bringing together the greatest exponents of raï and the legends of Jamaican reggae, along with a host of younger talents. This unlikely mix pits the likes of the legendary Gregory Isaacs - whose voice can still sear the hardest of hearts - against people like Horace Andy, the voice behind Massive Attack, here "duetting" with the late Aissa Jermovni el Harkati from a recording made in 1928 (born in 1886, he was a well-known anti-colonialist). Or, stranger still, U-Roy and Larbi sing a wild Daft Punk inspired duet...
Of course, this is hardly the first time raï and reggae have come together or influenced each other. Over the past few years, for example, Cheb Mami has recorded with Aswad and French ragamuffin star Tonton David, and Cheb Aissa guested on the last-but-one U-Roy album. In France, Baobab duetted on Algerie with the acclaimed singer Cheb Kadar, who sings in Arabic on the track. And Khaled recorded a few tracks of his 1996 album Sahra with Kingston’s finest. More recently, the latest album of Algiers-based rappers has been heavily influenced by Caribbean rhythms, as has the music of the Orchestre National de Barbes (a former leader of whom features on Big Men), Gnawa Diffusion, Sawt El Atlas, Brahim and Cheb Tarik (who has sung Jimmy Cliff’s Reggae Night in Arabic). Which just goes to show that heavy base and skanky rhythms can mix it up pretty well with raï’s Arab-style melodies.
Big Men remains faithful to the traditions of raï and reggae while at the same time developing the novel concept of a duet album. If the two styles of music go together so well, perhaps it’s because both were born on the wrong side of the tracks, and were originally ignored by radio. Reggae has developed through sound system parties and singles, just as raï took off in Algeria through cassettes and parties (weddings, baptisms). In other words both chebs and Jamaican DJs have had to adapt to a whole variety of situations to get people up and dancing. Indeed, what comes across most strongly in this album is that these two styles of music are above all about dancing. Raï and reggae are often about breaking down social taboos (against alcohol in Algeria, for example, or ganja in Jamaica), and yet there is no hint of revolt on this album. The common theme is simply love, often in the more physical sense of the word!
According to Cheb Tarik - who performs on two duets on this album and is an old hand at raï/rap/reggae/r’n’b fusions - the mix of raï and reggae works because of the musical similarity of the two styles. I’ve always listened to reggae in Algeria, says Tarik, a native of Oran and successor of the late Cheb Hasni. Reggae and rap rhythms are very alike, both are very simple and often use only two chords. The simplest is often the best, because it goes straïght to the heart.
Big Men very much follows this rule. The rhythms brewed by Jamaican studio legends Sly and Robbie (a drum and base combo who have accompanied the likes of Peter Tosh, Serge Gainsbourg, Joe Cocker and the Rolling Stones) are about as basic as it gets. And yet some of the bass lines are absolute magic and guaranteed to fill the dance floor. The downside, however, is that these and other contemporary rhythms so dominate the mix that they sometimes drown out traditional Algerian instruments and some of the more delicate vocals (particularly female ones). And this might well put off some of the purists on the first listen. However, after several hearings a more subtle production sound does start to emerge, leaving you to wonder whether the appropriate response should be Ya ray! or Yeah, reggae!
Elodie Maillot
Interview with Guillaume Bougard
RFI/Musique: Did this album go through a long period of gestation before recording D-day?
Guillaume Bougard: Well, I think it's fair to say it went through a long period of "pre-gestation." I've always been a great fan and enthusiastic promoter of musical fusion. But I guess I only got round to doing something about the project in concrete terms when I worked on U Roy's album Serious Matter (released in 2000). The album included a duet with Raï star Cheb Aïssa and I remember thinking at the time how well Raï and reggae worked together. That's what made me want to take the whole fusion thing further really.
I'd been looking for a bit of a new angle for a while, actually. I'm a big fan of Raï and at the same time I'd witnessed the problems Jamaican artists had getting their music across in France. They've never really managed to cross over onto the mainstream. And I thought it would be good to come up with a bit of an original idea to help bring reggae out of the ghetto and promote Raï at the same time. Because, let's face, it apart from a couple of big-name stars, Raï's still in a bit of a ghetto itself – which is a great shame because there's a wealth of amazing voices out there!
What motivated your choice of Martin Meissonnier as producer?
It was all down to chance really. What happened was I'd just brought out Michael Rose's album, X Uhuru, which had been produced by Sly & Robbie. And one of the things that struck me most about Michael is that he has these incredibly "Oriental-style " vocals. And I remember thinking to myself at the time that it would be fun to invite a bunch of Algerian guest stars to put together a compilation of remixes of the album.
Anyway, I got in touch with Sly & Robbie but they'd lost the original mastertapes so I found myself back at square one really. But then one of my acquaintances in the music business suggested I should contact Martin Meissonnier. In my view, Martin's one of those real icons from the 80s, one of the figureheads from the time I discovered black music myself. I never dreamt that he'd be up for getting involved in this kind of project. But anyway my friend called him and he was really enthusiastic about the whole idea. We hooked up in January 2000 and got down to work immediately. What came out of that original meeting was a series of demo tapes and then in July we flew out to Kingston for the first time.
How did you go about getting Jamaican artists involved in the project once you were out there?
Well, basically, we went out to Kingston with the demos and, as I'm the only reggae producer in France, I know everyone out there and they all know me. I started out by testing things out with Sugar Minott, Gregory Isaacs and a couple of my other contacts out there and they were all really enthusiastic about it from the word go. They all wanted to come on board. They had no problem getting into Martin's music which, although it isn't Jamaican, actually has a very West African feel to it. And, let's face it, given the huge number of people who were shipped over from West Africa to the Caribbean in the past, the Jamaicans tapped into that musical heritage rightaway.
And how did you go about choosing the Arab singers involved in the project?
Well, basically, Martin and I put our heads together on that one and we ended up doing a lot of research. We went round buying cassettes and getting in touch with everyone Martin knew in the Raï community and, after some fairly intensive listening to cassettes at home, we came to have a pretty clear idea of who we wanted on the album. Basically, the main idea behind Big Men was to introduce Western audiences to a new wave of up-and-coming singers who everyone's going wild for in Oran right now. I'm talking about people like Djelloul who's sold hundreds of thousands of cassettes in Algeria. He's really one of the big stars on the local Raï scene but nobody's ever heard of him in France.
Where does the title of the album come from?
We knew we'd found our album title when we heard Sugar Minott singing Big Man. Because that's what it's all about really. A "Big Man" is someone who looks after his neighbourhood. Even when he's reached a certain level of fame and wealth, he uses his cash and his status to help others in the community, educating people and opening up all kinds of opportunities for them. It's like Sugar Minott himself, in fact. He's just set up his new studio in a down-and-out neighbourhood of Kingston. It's a sort of "Kalatuka Républic" (like Fela's outfit in Lagos) with a recording studio, a machine for pressing singles and a gigantic sound-system and it's run by a bunch of local neighbourhood kids who Sugar's helping out.
The duos on Big Men are all "virtual", aren't they? None of the reggae artists actually met the Raï singers in real life, did they?
No, that hasn't happened yet, but we're still on the first stage of the project right now. Basically, our budget didn't stretch to flying fifteen Algerians out to Jamaica for recording sessions. But thanks to modern technology I think we've come up with something which we're all keen to take further. All the singers involved in the project are into the idea of re-creating the reggae/Raï fusion live on stage. The next stage of the project will involve organising a tour of the festival circuit in 2002 – and that's precisely what Martin and a tour promoter are working on right now!
Interview: Patrick Labesse
Album : Big Men : Raï Meets Reggae (Tabou1/ Virgin)
Big Men Reggae Meets Raï (Virgin)
Intik La Victoire (Sony Music)
Cheb Tarik Metisstyle (Atoll Music)
Gnawa Diffusion Bab El Oued Kingston (Musisoft)
Orchestre National de Barbès “ Poulina (Virgin)
Sawt El Atlas Donia (Sony Music)
Cheb Mami Dellali (Virgin)
Brahim Dans quel Monde on vit ?
21/10/2002 -
