The Story
Barbes, somewhere on the outer edges of Africa, is actually right at the foot of the Sacre Coeur in Paris. A neighborhood of couscous and chicken, of smoke-filled bars where dominos click on tabletops, of dish antennas transmitting floods of Middle Eastern music through televisions. In Barbes, you might meet
Cheikha Remitti, the grand dame of ra'i, on the Rue Myrrha walking back to her hotel. Or a band hired to sing at a wedding stopping to pick up their musicians at a cafe - The Oasis, The Delice, or The Danton.
People from every corner of Africa have crowded into Barbes, a refuge for exiles that directed Larbi Dida's
rai' towards Fateh's chaabi, and that brushed Aziz's gumbri up against Youcef's bass. It is encounters such
as these that led to the formation of the Orchestre National de Barbes.
The story starts in Selcourt, a working class section of Algiers, Algeria at the peak of the 1980s population explosion. Youcef Boukella's older brothers listening to rock and bossa nova, people watching Cairo film classics on TV and tuning in Kabyle folk music on the radio. In the Belcourt alleyways outside-pandemonium. Street criers, muezzins, gnawa street performers, chaabi concerts, ghetto blasters playing reggae, funk, and rai.
'My style of music goes back to my childhood in Belcourt," explains Youcef. In 1985 he was playing bass for the first Arabic-language rock group, T34. But when Youcef heard what visiting jazz musician Jeff Gardner was packing, that's when he decided to pack up himself and leave home.
Ra'i was a1l the rage when he arrived in Paris. He backed up Cheb Vani, a son of working class and Oran-rai singer on his international tours, and Kabyle native Takfarinas at diaspora parties. Safy Boutella plunged him into the vortex of underground jazz. He honed his vision while waiting to record his first album Salam ("The Greeting of Peace"). This was when his genius as a producer began to reveal itself (his production Night and Day was voted best world music recording by the French daily newspaper Liberation). Meanwhile, with former Raina Rai vocalist Larbi Dida, he recorded a four-title offering that foreshadowed his future approach.
Larbi Dida comes from the town of Sidi Bel Abbes and is a founding member of Ra'ina Ra'i, the rock-ra'i group that shook up the Algerian rock scene by zeroing in on a roots-meets-electric sound. Recognized by the Algerian media as a historic break through, this group was the first rock group to use ra'i in its repertoire. Ever since Larba Dida moved to Paris in 1989, his has been one of the great Arabic voices in the French capital.
Aziz Sehmaoui is another pillar upholding Youcef's vision. Raised in Marrakech, this Sufi was nourished on a combination of gnawa Arab-African beats and British American pop performed in Morocco with various traditional and electric groups (Association Ziriab, The Lemchaheb Group, and others). Like Youcef, Aziz attempts to weld the mystical power of healing rhythms with today's sounds. As the custodian of spiritual rigor and technique, he infuees the music with an aura of native authenticity molded by the luminous candor of his voice.
Fateh is the newest addition to the group. The violence that sends Algeria into mourning every day is what detached this redjla from his birthplace, the Algiers Casbah. As someone born in a citadel with a millenarian history, a symbol and shrine of the Resistance, Fateh was initiated early into Arab-Andalusian classical music at the prestigious El hlossilia school. He was wise enough to leave again quickly, however, choosing instead to study chaabi, a folk style derivative of the classical genre. His credits include accompanying (among others) Boudjemaa El Ankis and Amar Zahi, two famous chaabi performers. Fateh was introduced to the Algerian public through his 1989 album Moutaly. Kamel, although born in the 14th arrondisement of Paris, is as rooted in ancestral culture as the others. He is also the king of ragga rhyme.
As a percussionist, he thinks nothing of beating out the rhythms of his street culture on the quarkabous (or crotales, a kind of castanet) wielded by his new friends.
To get all of these styles together required a production company, a sound studio, and months of rehearsal. This is where Djilali saved the day with his "Bougnole Connection," a hugely good-natured joke with serious under- lying purpose. Djilali, an idea-man with an advanced degree in derision, spent two years putting the pieces of the puzzle together while the group was skimming off the cream of European festivals.
The festivals were opportunities to play with dozens of different musicians in dozens of different styles - acoustic, electric, pop, traditional, jazz. The music of Saharan Africa, which had long been neglected, finally got a hearing. Once a month, the Bechar musicians present a "divan" (sampler) of acoustic grooves that leave listeners cured of their urban stress. Everyone arrives bearing the spirit of their own homeland, and leaves nourished by that of the others.
Within the vast World Music movement, it is this deep respect for technical and cultural traditions that makes ONB a group unlike any other. They spend months working with each separate cultural heritage - Meknes, Sidi Bel Abbes, Algiers, and Harlem - in an attempt to grasp its spirit and plumb its subtleties. With this music, you travel from place to place without once being exposed to pseudo-exotic picture- postcards. The pop spirit, predominates, however. Irresistible little riffs and grooves punctuate the story, holding out a hand to all types of audiences. Youcef's magic whisks you from one style to the next with only his impeccable musicianship as guide. The members of ONS want Barbes to recognize all of its music in their music, and they want the whole world to lend an ear to Barbes.
This vision has borne fruit in many ways arrangements for friends, solo albums for the ONB vocalists. The first recording's mission was to reflect this explosion of ideas through the full Orchestra and its hordes of fans. The recording session was held in public on November 7th and 8th, 1996 at the Agora theater in Evry. Throughout this album surge the spirits of Sidi Blal and the drum and bass, of village festivals and urban adrenaline highs. This isn't fusion, it's just one way to glue together pieces of identity, and to take everyone who's interested along on the party.
ONB is at the forefront of a thriving North African music scene, one in which boundries are smudged, where tradition and inovation are not considered opposites.
Arabic hand drumming with a hint of salsa, West African balafons, swooping zouk-alypso basslines, dubwise electric guitar effects, accordions that sound both French and Argentinian and the scorching vocals of rai legend Larbi Dida create a world beat collision free from any hint of conscious crossover moves. -North Africa / Pop