Menu

Album review


Larbi Dida

Boug Boug


Paris 

02/02/2011 - 

After a long career singing with the Orchestre National de Barbès, Algerian raï musician Larbi Dida unveils some more personal choices with his own second album, Boug Boug, whose sound is firmly anchored in the present yet nurtured by the past.

print

send

react



Although the success of the Orchestre National de Barbès has never turned this unusual band into a music label commodity, Larbi Dida is only too aware of the direction things can take. The worry is to fall into the hands of one of those omniscient creative directors who work “in a closed circuit” with a network of so-called hit makers, convinced that they have come across the miracle recipe.

To avoid the risk of watching his music slip through his fingers, Larbi chose to take a different path when he launched into a second solo album to follow Malkoum, released in 2008. The owner of La Casbah, a chic and cosy club-cum-restaurant in Paris, was enthusiastic about the project and offered to play the role of executive producer.  It was in this climate of trust, and with the guarantee of total creative freedom, that Larbi worked with Hicham Khatir, a Moroccan arranger musician who counts Faudel’s 2010 album Bled Memory among his achievements.

They selected eleven songs and then got together with a small team of musicians in tune with their objective: to stay rooted in the present but at the same time remain faithful to the “real raï” spirit from back when the music first started to make waves, before the drum machines got involved. Violin and percussion play alongside synthesizers that never saturate the sound.

The singer’s trademark is undoubtedly this very strong attraction for alaoui and its energetic tempo. He played a key role in making the genre better known when he wrote the hit Alaoui, which became ONB’s anthem (and was played during the opening ceremony of the second Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers in 2009). On this new album, the recipe still works its magic on Choully and Ghrib ou Barrani, while the cover versions of Taila and Rani Mhayer, two tracks from Raina Rai’s repertoire, remind us that Larbi was also once part of this other emblematic, pioneering band.


Choully

 
 

 

Larbi Dida Boug Boug (MLP/Rue Stendhal) 2011

Bertrand  Lavaine

Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper