Khaled | Yal Malblia

Listen to the title song

Reupped, due to the supreme awesomeness that is this album, here.

[Originally posted on April 29, 2012.] A very rare CD of early cassette recordings of what technically should be Cheb Khaled songs from 1979, when he was 18-19 years old. If you only know Khaled's later, over-produced work of the late 80s and 90s, this is going to be a revelation.

Found in Bay Ridge at one of the now-defunct Arabic music shops that used to dot Fifth Avenue below 70th Street.

Cheb Hasni | Hasni

Get it in 320 rockin' kbps here.

As some of the Bodega's regular customers know, your proprietor is a poet. Worse, he is a postmodern American poet. Given his thus obviously tenuous-at-best grasp of reality, why then, why oh Sir or Madam Customer, will you bother to listen to him when he hands you some long-winded BS explanation, circling around ye olde tired notions of gender and genre, class and (pre- and post-) colonialism, race and rhizomatic structure, as to why all of these rai songs are beginning to, um, sort of sound the same?

YOU: But I didn't say any--

BODEGA POP: I'm sorry. Are you an expert on rai, now? [Stares into your eyes with a questioning-yet-condescending look.] More like ham on rai. [Deep chuckle.]

YOU: But--

BODEGA POP: Shush, now. There's someone I'd like you meet. Sir or Madam Customer, I give you Ms. Helena Blavatsky.

HELENA BLAVATSKY: Accordeengk to my Weekee-peedee page, I was small gorl of 10 years when thees, my family, retorns to Ukraine and I contract zee herpeez.

YOU: I don't--

BODEGA POP: Is this your blog? I'm sorry, Helena; please, continue.

HELENA BLAVATSKY: Many of people zey tell me "Zis rai, she sounds always zee same to me. Which song is deefernt from next? How tell?" [Pause.] How tell, you are asking of me? [Wry smile.] To you I am saying there is no telling. Is like zee fonny accent, no? All blend into one, like zee single fonny accent. Could be Rohshan, could be Portugeesa, who is counting? Why count? Is not enoff zer is fonny accent or rai song in forst place? Why you need to know deeference?

[To be continued ...]

Cheb Hasni | Talghiyabek Ya Ghozazi

Get it here. 

Get other Hasni albums here.

Cheb Hasni | Tehroub Omri

I've never understood why Algerian Rai never took off as one of the hot, new "world musics du jour" here in the U.S. the way that, say, Afro-Cuban, Reggae or even Bulgarian music once did. (I'd probably never have had this conversation, if it had.) Not that I particularly care one way or the other, but it's my suspicion that, if it had taken off, we'd have seen more books in English than just Marc Schade-Poulsen's Men and Popular Music in Algeria: The Social Significance of Raï.

Born Hasni Chakroun in Oran in 1968, the year after the last French forces left the Mers El Kébir naval base, Cheb Hasni recorded more than 100 cassettes worth of songs before Islamic extremists assassinated him outside his parents' home in Oran in 1994.

That same year: 

• American-Israeli mass-murderer Baruch Goldstein senselessly takes the lives of 29 Palestinians; he is beaten to death by surviving victims and his grave subsequently becomes a pilgrimage site for Israeli extremists
• Hutus hack more than 800,000 Tutsis to death while the rest of us watch Friends, snicker at Tonya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan jokes and mourn the self-inflicted death of heroin addict, Kurt Kobain.

Get the album here.

Cheb Hasni | Menayfa

Get it here. 

Read more about the legendary Cheb Hasni and grab more albums this way.

Listen to "Sabrra" 

Cheb Hasni | Rani Khlitha Lik Amana

Grab the album.

Listen to the title song:



See previous posts this weekend to read about Hasni and to pick up other albums.

Cheb Hasni + Cheba Zahouania | El Baraka

Pick it up here.

In the summer of 1987, after gigging at wedding parties and cabarets, Cheb Hasni, whose star was clearly on the rise, was given the opportunity of a lifetime: a chance to record with Cheba Zahouania. 

Zahouania had made a huge splash the year before recording "My Uncle, Oh, My Uncle" with Cheb Hamid, who along with Cheb Khaled and Cheb Mami, were  modernizing Algerian rai and riding the last big wave of the cassette culture revolution sweeping in new generations of pop from North Africa to South Asia. Zahouania was, in a word, hot.

Hasni and Zahouania's duet, "El Baraka" ("Lady Luck"), did Z and Hamid's "Uncle" one better: its outrageous lyrics, bright-n-chunky rhythm guitar and Casio-tastic trills and fills wormed their way into the ears of over a million Algerian youth, ensuring a bright future for the pair as international superstars.

I have no idea how faithful this CD, which I almost certainly found at a now-closed Algerian bodega on Steinway Street in Astoria, is to the original cassette in terms of the track list. The recordings themselves sound stressed and occasionally cut out, or allow moments of overlay, as though whoever recorded this did so with the jack only tenuously plugged in. It was clearly digitized directly from cassette rather than any (no doubt long gone) master tapes.

Spotty though its quality may be at times, it is the only copy I have ever seen or heard of this history-making music.

Here's a translation of "El Baraka," for which a very kind reader, Mark, supplied the following:

LADY LUCK

We made love in a tumbledown shack
It was me who took her, the others can fuck off
When you’re drunk you get these ideas
When you’ve been drinking, you get these ideas

Tough luck for me but not for my friends
Leave me to my problems, I can’t stand any more
Tonight he’ll sleep at mine
Oh, you know this night won’t end

I’ll telephone her and she’ll come tomorrow
I want a real brown-skin girl, not a suntanned one

We get together nicely and we have a good time
There is but one God and the passion keeps growing
Tonight we’ll drink at mine

Tough luck for me, but for her, she was sent by fate
I won’t get over her, I’m burnt and she’s made up her mind

Have pity on me, I'm shattered
We stayed up all night and we’re dead, get a car to fetch us

I picked her up in Gambetta and it’s none of your business 
Have pity on me if I say too much and I’m wrong 
We’re drunk, bring a boat to get us away
We got drunk or else forgotten

I’m with the people I like
Drunk we fell down, get a car to fetch us
We’re noble and free and we’re// good company
And eloquence is found among people of wisdom


Listen to a Hasni and Zahouania sing this legendary duet:

Cheb Hasni | Gualou Hasni Met

Grab Gualou Hasni Met ("They Say Hasni Is Dead") here.

[Originally posted in 2010; reupped at 320kbps with cover embedded.]

Algerian rai superstar Cheb Hasni was born in Oran to working class parents in 1968 and assassinated 26-1/2 years later in 1994. Read more about him and grab another album here.

I found this CD--my favorite of Hasni's--in an Algerian bodega on Steinway Street in Queens years before I moved to this neighborhood.

"Do you have any Cheb Hasni?" I asked the guy behind the counter.

"You are Algerian?" he countered. It wasn't really a question.

"No, why?"

"Ah, you are French!" he spat triumphantly, as he dug through the piles of CDs behind him, pulling out the one you see above and setting it down on the counter.

"If I'm French, why are you speaking to me in English?" I asked.

He looked momentarily confused, then a sort of sly "gestalt of recognition" passed over his face. He smiled widely. "For you? Four dollars."

"How much are CDs normally?" I asked.

He waited a bit before answering. "Four dollars."


Hasni in the studio

Cheb Hasni | Sid El Kadi

Get it here.

Born Hasni Chakroun on February 1, 1968, in Oran, Algeria, Cheb Hasni dreamed of becoming a soccer player, a "goal" that was abandoned (chortle) as he became increasingly interested in music. Or, as Google Chrome has translated the French website where one of his many mini-biographies resides, "He turned to another passion, music mome, we already knew in my corner because I still had deployed his throat, threw the satchel off is in a lively by night."

Lively by day as well--hell, lively any time one lends one's ears to such sweet throat deployment, nein? 

Ach, forgive me; it's late, I've worked very hard all week. So. You know the story of Hasni, right? After working the wedding circuit a while someone hooks him up to record with Chaba Zahouania in the late 80s and he becomes an overnight sensation, going on to record some 200 cassettes, stuffed with Casio-tastic tales of debauchery, of women, of drinking, and then, in 1992, rumors of his death sweep northern Africa, he gets wind of them, records Gualou Hasni Met ("They say Hasni died"), then, eerily, creepily, soon after, at the height of his now international fame, he's assassinated outside of his parents' home in Oran in 1994 while still in his mid-20s.

I have no idea at what point in his staggeringly short but super-brilliant career he recorded this album, but it's one of my favorites and, as exhausted as I am, I love it so much I want you to have it before I crash.


Listen to "Sarhak":

Cheb Khaled | Ana Dellali

Another great early Cheb Khaled collection, most likely found in Bay Ridge, although I seem to recall having picked up at least one Khaled CD from this no-longer-there Algerian bodega on Steinway Street (where I got this). If you've stopped by the Bodega this week you already know it's All 70s-80s Cheb Khaled Week--I think I have two more CDs to go after this one, so stop by again if you you like what you're hearing.

There's some problem with my Divshare account; I can't upload. Which also means I can't make one of those song sample thingies. So, I found a video of the title song if you want to listen before you grab.

Listen to the title song of this CD

Get it all here.

Cheb Khaled | Best of Vols. 1-2

Listen to "Chaba" from Vol. 1

Listen to "Dalali" from Vol. 2

Get both at once here.

Contrary to how it looks, this is not a collection of Khaled's late-80s to present greatest hits. It's pure early to mid-80s Cheb Khaled, including raw versions of many songs that were re-recorded and spruced up for later albums--for instance, "Chaba," which you can listen to above. If you only know the Don Was-produced (and later) Khaled, you'll definitely want to check this out (as well as this and this.)

I'll be posting everything I have of Cheb Khaled from the 70s and 80s over the next few days, so check back tomorrow evening if you're a fan.

Cheb Khaled | Hada Raykoum

Given the response to the posting of Khaled's 1979 Yal Malblia yesterday, I hereby declare this Cheb Khaled Week at the old Bodega. Every night after work I'll be posting another great 70s or 80s collection by the King of Rai, stopping just shy of 1988's Kutche ... not because I don't like that album (I love it), but because most people visiting this blog will already be familiar with the later Khaled stuff. 

Although the recording in yesterday's post predates this one by some six years, it's this album--Hada Raykoum--that is generally considered to be Cheb Khaled's first studio recording. The sound on this copy is not the greatest--unlike everything else I'll be posting this week, it didn't originate with me; I found it online somewhere and I have no idea whether it was ripped from LP, cassette or CD. 

But, like I say, it's considered to be his first studio album, so it's sort of obligatory. And, yes, it does indeed rawk. You'll want to let the sample song below go on for 30-40 seconds to see what it's really going to do--although it starts out sounding a bit tame, it quickly winds itself into brilliantly fucked up, off-kilter territory the likes of which you've probably not yet experienced.

Listen to "Hadak Hobi Laoual"

Get it all here.

Cheb Mami | Douni El Bladi

Listen to the title track

Get it all here

This 1996 CD from early in the Prince of Rai's career completely blew my head off the first time I heard it after plucking it from the now-gone Princess Music electronics and Arabic music store on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge.

Shockingly, in 2009, the wildly popular singer was sentenced to five years in a French prison for allegedly forcing a former lover to undergo an abortion. (He was released on parole in March of this year.)

His last CD was released five years ago, in 2006; he says he plans to continue performing and recording, though I don't know whether he's begun to do so yet and/or how audiences will respond to him today.

Rimitti | Hina ou Hina

Listen to "Skerna And Amara"

Get the whole thing here.

I found this in one of many now-closed Arabic music places in Bayridge, Brooklyn, maybe three years ago or so. Each of those no-longer-existent places had a section of rai music, but for some reason, this was the only Rimitti I was ever able to find there.

Cheikha Rimitti is, of course, legendary. A bit about her here.

Cheba Maria | Ould Bladi

Listen to "Casablanca"

Download the whole CD here.

Found at Princess Music in Bay Ridge on what was likely one of the last days they were open. A totally great find.

Cheba Maria was born and raised in Casablanca and moved to France in 1998, where she's now apparently a fairly big rai star. Rai is the ultimate hybrid pop, incorporating anything and everything into its wake. Well, okay, not everything. But, still.

A video: