Rai in the 1920\'s Groups of Rural

Rai

In the 1920's groups of rural migrants "brought their native musical styles into the growing urban centers of northwestern Algeria," (Gross, McMurray, and Swedenberg p. 200). Their pulsating groves and concordant dance moves took root in the then-liberal port town of Oran, and it was soon to make waves on distant and foreign shores. Yet right from the start, the music represented the underrepresented: the peasants, the prostitutes, and the poor. Sang in the Orani language by female vocalists, early rai music was already a synthesis of a variety of tribal cultural traditions before it became blended with urban Algerian sounds and sentiments. Rai combined risque lyrics and dancing on top of its solid musical foundation. These harbingers of world music soon integrated the urban Algerian sounds, styles and personas into their already complex rural genre. Rai was, and remains, as much a cultural and political expression as a musical one. Following Algerian independence an "Islamic reformist chill" prohibited public performances by female rai singers and put a stop to the dancing as well. Rai did not go underground, though, but the music changed with the times. In fact, one of the distinguishing features of rai music is its adaptability and its heterogeneity, which is why rai reflects the transnational movements of populations, ideas, and cultural expressions.

Rai music would flourish in France, where large numbers of Algerians and other North Africans (called Maghrebi) found residence in the post-colonial era. However, the Maghrebi immigres have been and continue to be systematically persecuted in France. In their article "Arab Noise and Ramadan Nights: Rap, Rai, and Franco-Maghrebi Identities," Gross, McMurray, and Swedenberg discuss how France's "legacy of colonization" has impacted the evolution of Franco-Maghrebi culture, and specifically, rai music. Rai emerged as a "defensive" form of music, which the authors contrast with the more in-your-face attitudes found in hip-hop, a genre that is currently in favor with the young Maghrebi French (p. 200). Prejudice against the Maghrebi culture and its people is ubiquitous: Prime Minister Chirac once made an infamous comment about the "noise and smell" of "immigrants," (p. 200).

One of the distinguishing features of immigrant subcultures is that they represent transnationalism: its people stand in between identities, between religions, and between cultures. Transnational subcultures like the French Maghrebi are heterogeneous by nature, representative of a wide range of ideas and cultural expressions. For example, transnational music like rai similarly stands on the cusp of at least two disparate cultures and is not necessarily a strict fusion of Algerian and French sounds. Because of its significance for gender, race, and the politics of oppression rai implies the transnational movement of ideas and cultural expressions is never a smooth or cohesive transition. Indeed, rai has undergone a series of incredible transformations, both in its musicality and in its cultural implications and cultural expressions. Instruments that were once used in rural rai music were discarded in favor of "modern" ones, and later, electronic sounds to please younger ears. In order to expand the rai fan base, money-hungry record companies mass marketed some rai performers and made the music palatable to ears all around the world. Thus, rai rode easily on the crest of the world music craze, which has since ebbed. In this sense, rai's trajectory resembles that of rap music, which is why Gross, McMurray, and Swedenberg compare and contrast the two genres. Both rap and rai were products of the transnational movement of populations and cultural expressions, and both have undergone significant changes in their musicality and in their level of popularity.

In its earliest forms, rai was mainly the product of a conglomerate of various rural tribes of Northern Africa. Therefore, the first major transformation evident in rai is the shift from rural to urban locales, another key component of human population migration. When rai musicians and performers reached the Algerian urban centers in the 1920s, their music gained notoriety and changed as a result of increased popularity. By 1979, rai was becoming "pop" music, the unique pop music of the "diasporic Maghrebi community," (p. 201). Rai changed even more when it became a "central mode of cultural expression in minority struggles" in France, where many second-generation Maghrebi, called Beurs, added a strong political element to the music (p. 203). For "a minority striving to carve out a space for itself in an inhospitable, racist environment," rai was an ideal mode of cultural expression, a way to assert an identity that was neither fully French nor fully Algerian-Muslim, one that demonstrated an aware, intelligent, syncretism. Soon thereafter, what was once the exclusive domain of peasants and prostitutes became a potent and distinguishing feature of the Beur minority.