Houari shared a prison cell with a young freedom fighter named Ahmed Zabana, to whom Khaled dedicates a song on Liberté. Like most of his contemporaries, born in the euphoria of the early 1960s, when the young Algerian state had only just emerged victorious from its bitter struggle with France, Khaled can't help looking back with dumbfounded bewilderment and ask: "What the hell went wrong?" A need to find heroes and mentors untainted by the horrors of the civil war of the 1990s has led him to the avuncular embrace of the rai legend Blaoui Houari, who was singing in Oran's bars and cabaret's when Khaled's parents were courting in the 1940s. Khaled has also been busy contemplating the tragedy of Algerian history. I wanted to prove something to him, because he always used to say being a musician means getting involved in drugs, drowning in alcohol, being a tramp, never marrying, never having kids. "I also called the album Liberté, because of the freedom that my father provoked in me. As he nears his half-century, Khaled has clearly spent some time looking at the man in the mirror mulling over his rebellious past, the apocalyptic sufferings of his Algerian homeland during the 1990s, his relationship to God and Islam and his tussles with his father, a stern car mechanic who considered the phrase "a career in music" to be an impossible absurdity. However, the album's honesty doesn't merely reside in its production values.
![arabic cheb khaled arabic cheb khaled](http://www.victorkiswell.com/v3/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/cheb-khaled-chaba-zahouania-les-monstres-sacrés-du-rai-300x300.jpg)
In effect, Liberté relies solely and courageously on good microphones and great musicianship to achieve its epic power.
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I'll let you be free and I won't give you a click'," he says, referring to the computer-generated metronome that some producers use to tie their musicians to the beat. He said, 'I'd really like you to sing the way you sing on stage. Twenty years after Kutché, he made me an offer I didn't dare refuse. Khaled, who is a conversational engine that just fires up and motors in all weathers, emitting generous expletives and guffaws as it races along, says Liberté encompasses many definitions of the word "freedom". Produced by the French veteran Martin Meissonier, who last worked with Khaled on his landmark album Kutché in 1989, Liberté is a back-to-basics exercise proving that Khaled's voice need fear no rival in contemporary Arabic music, and that his rai-stew of raw trancey Maghrebi roots and French, Spanish and Middle Eastern pop is best served as simply as possible, with little or no studio frippery and electronic garnitures. For while "Même Pas Fatigué" has hoisted his banner among French "ghetto" kids – who probably weren't even born when Khaled, or Cheb Khaled as he was then known, first came to France from his native Oran in Western Algeria in 1986 – his new album Liberté has spruced up his reputation among fans and cognoscenti of rai. Not only did Khaled survive this extended slide into hell, but he came out of it smiling and smelling of some very expensive eau de cologne. Khaled was harassed by well-publicised matrimonial bust-ups, alcoholic misdemeanours, wrangles with his record label, taunts for being a fat irrelevant tax exile in short, the usual snarling furies that harass rich and famous pop stars as they stumble gracelessly into middle age.
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Rather they bagged (or vice versa) the most famous North African pop singer of all time, the king of Algerian rai music himself, Khaled, sporting a sober but stylish "gangster" suit, a louche tache and that legendary smile.Īfter dizzying peaks of success came a series of falls, however. But this time their partner from the Maghreb was no "junior" rap crew. A few months ago, Magic System returned with "Même Pas Fatigué", which topped the French charts over the summer. In 2007, they teamed up with top North African rap combo 113 to record the massive hit "Un Gaou Oran".
![arabic cheb khaled arabic cheb khaled](https://www.next-level-agency.com/userfiles/images/thum_big/20180109035529_7708813.jpg)
Their ability to glamorise and internationalise afro-disco styles such as zouglou or coupé décalé has made them about the most popular African band in the world – for the time being. The Merlins of this particular hit machine are Magic System from the Ivory Coast. Mix well, don't stint on the spice or the melody, shoot a video in a French suburb with plenty of ghetto-fab demoiselles and beefed up dudes in Technicolor football shirts, stick it on You Tube and. This is the recipe: take a four-to-the-floor disco beat with a deep beef-shank thud to it, add a vocal group of West African origin, a few mouthy French rappers, an Arabic wailer and a rainbow-mêlée of Francophone party animals. There's a pop trend that's bombarding the French charts at the moment.