Singer Profile: Cheb Mami: The Prince of Rai

18/02/2005

"Rai is my oxygen," says Cheb Mami, the Algerian artist who is taking the music genre to new heights.

(CNN World Beat Spotlight – 10/01/2000; chebmami.net; Yahoo France Actualites: Biographie: Cheb Mami)

[File] Mami comes from humble beginnings

A chart topper in Europe and North Africa, the so-called "Prince of Rai" mixes traditional rai with rap, Latin, hip-hop and techno. To him, rai is more a form of combat than a type of music.

Political violence faced by Algeria in the 1990s influenced Mami's artistic inclinations.

"As an Algerian," he told CNN in 2000, "I was very shocked to see my country plunged into horror. But as a singer it was combat. Every time I did a concert and saw the youth carrying the Algerian flag -- it was like a resistance…Algeria is fighting against its pain and unhappiness -- against people who wanted to kill it. It was fighting through rai."

Mohamed Khelifati, known as Cheb Mami, was born on 11 July 1966 in Graba-el-Oued, a poor district of Saida in western Algeria. His father, a paper factory worker, was a disciplinarian whose low wage was barely enough to feed all nine of his children. The family's situation forced young Mami to take odd jobs to help put food on the table.

Mami's penchant for singing appeared at a young age. He admittedly preferred humming bits and pieces of "bizarre songs" while doing school work, but ended up singing at weddings and nightclubs as he grew older.

When he reached 16, Mami stunned viewers of a televised talent show called "Alhan wa shabab" when he sang a traditional 1920s song from Oran with an impeccable Andalusian accent and tone – basically rai. Much to the audience's displeasure Mami was denied first prize because the government considered rai vulgar and subversive at the time. The fact that rai emerged among the poor and the disenfranchised likely led to his early fascination with the music.

"It was the marginalized singers, often the widows, the divorcées, the disenfranchised, the poor and the uprooted who invented rai," says Mami on his website. "They created rai from hardship and bad luck, using archaic and rudimentary flutes to improvise this haunting music that men would later adopt."

Between 1982 and 1985, Mami sold hundreds of thousands of copies of the numerous tapes he recorded – this despite the fact rai was still officially banned by the Algerian government and state-owned radio.

When authorities lifted the ban on the music in 1985, Mami made his debut alongside Cheb Khaled at the first rai music festival in Oran.

"At first, it was a little difficult because the authorities said rai music was vulgar because we used simple words -- words from the street. It wasn't poetry or some beautiful life. Instead we sang about our daily life," he told CNN. "Now, rai is accepted. It's even become very popular because they saw that this music succeeded in reaching even beyond the Arab world, and now they say it is part of our culture -- before they were saying just the opposite. "

A 1986 performance alongside Khaled at the Bobigny Festival in France led Mami to a record deal and memorable performance at the famed Olympia Theatre in Paris, a first for a rai singer. Soon after the concert, he recorded his first album "Douni el Bladi." After two years of required service in the Algerian army, he returned to Paris to resume his career. "Let Me Rai," produced in the United States, was released in 1990.

Mami consolidated his fame in his adopted home of France with "Saida" (1995), "Let Me Cry" (1998) and "Meli Meli" (1999, EMI), which reached platinum status in France. He became an international star when he collaborated with Sting on the "Desert Rose" (Brand New Day, 1999) song.

[File] With Samira Said in 2002

"Well, you know, he is one of the biggest stars in France," Sting told CNN. "It's quite easy to discover him. He's all over the plate. But he's not very well-known in America, and he should be. He's an extraordinary singer, a very gifted singer. "

In 2002, he had a successful duet with Samira Said "Yom Wara Yom" that introduced him to Arabic pop fans across the Arab world. His latest album, "Dellali" (2001), is a hip and melodic rai, infused with hip hop, reggae, and ragamuffin. It bears the signature of the Prince of Rai who has, over the years, developed his own original style of music.

"I know rai very well, but if I said I didn't want to mix it with other music, then I would be alone in my corner," he added in his CNN interview. "I prefer to be open toward other musical styles."