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Khaled's vocal comeback
Back-to-basics Rai
Paris
03/04/2009 -
Khaled: I knew it was time to release another album because I felt a real urge to go back into the studio again! I was looking around for a producer, but I didn't really know where to start. And then the phone rang and it was Martin Meissonnier. We'd worked together on Kutché, the first album I made when I moved out of Algeria twenty years ago. Martin and I know each other inside out. Anyway, I made a series of demo tapes - and Martin promptly binned them! Then we sat down together and started choosing other songs. Martin suggested recording everything under live conditions and doing introductions to each track, the way I do when I perform live on stage in Algeria. He insisted nothing should be done in a calculated way. "Just sing the way you do at weddings!" he said.
I'd lost confidence in what I was doing, yes, but I've always believed in my voice! I'd reached a point where electronics had started to take over and my voice was being drowned out by studio effects. My voice has a real presence on this new album, and we've gone back to doing things in more of an acoustic style with more woodwinds and more skin drums. We spent ages hunting down a little Kawai synthesiser which produces this typically Maghrebin sound. I'm famous for being a real perfectionist in the studio and doing ten takes of each track. But this time round, we recorded everything in a single take - no mouse clicks, no special effects, nothing!
What about the "intros" on each song? How do they work?
The introduction sets each song in context. On Liberté, for instance, I explain how "I was locked up in jail for two months, but the judge was just, and God has shown me the truth now I'm out, how wonderful it is to be free!" And then I launch into the song. It's like "tarab" - a style that's prevalent in the Arab world - where a poet starts off by presenting his poetry and then launches into a song. The system imposed by record companies here in France is never to make a song longer than four minutes. So I'd given up on the idea of doing anything like this… But look at someone like Oum Kalthoum. When she sang in the classical Egyptian style, she'd repeat each verse three or four times and her songs went on for an hour!
I grew up exposed to a lot of different cultures, but the most important African influence for us was Moroccan. I formed my first group when I was ten years old. We were called "Noudjoum El Khams" - "five stars!" We belonged to the Nass El Ghiwane generation and I was a huge fan. They were the first group to actually stand up and defy the king! When we played at weddings, people would come up and say, "OK, so you play Rai, but can you play Nass El Ghiwane?" As a Muslim country, we grew up under the influence of Egypt. In terms of music, culture, theatre and films, the Egyptians were like the Americans to you. When I got to go out to Egypt and record the string section for Didi it was like a dream come true! We recorded the strings for this album live in Egypt, too. They have that special tone you automatically associate with the Middle East - and the idea of mixing the sound of the Middle East with African Rai was just the icing on the cake for me!
Eglantine Chabasseur
Translation : Julie Street
