In 1989, it became dangerous for Khaled to stay in Algeria, where artists and intellectuals were being killed by fundamentalists. Later, after performing a concert for 20,000 people in Algiers in 1985, his became the voice of a generation for many. His voice still made its way into homes and hearts all over the country, thanks to cassette tapes. It didn't sit so well with the growing number of Islamic fundamentalists in Algeria, though, and his songs were consequently banned from state radio. Khaled's directness and his force-of-nature voice, which blurs the lines between anguish and ecstasy, made him the darling of Oran's cabarets and wedding parties. "When I sing rai," Khaled said, "I talk about things directly: I drink alcohol, I love a woman, I am suffering. Khaled says he prefers to take a different approach. When a traditional Oranese poet wants to describe love, Khaled once explained to me, the poet will speak in metaphor - for example, about a pigeon. Khaled was also a bad boy, a playboy and a partier, even rejecting the polite traditions of Algeria's poetry. In a land torn apart by intolerance and violence, Khaled stood out as an artist who embraced openness and peace. Khaled came of age during the lull between two bloody conflicts: the 1950s war that freed Algeria from French colonialism and the religiously fueled civil war of the 1990s. Oran marks an intersection of cultures, a place where Spanish, Moroccan, French, Arabic, American, Berber, Jewish and gypsy ideas and idioms collided.
He was born Khaled Hadj Brahim in 1960 in the Mediterranean port city of Oran - or "Crazyville," as he once called it. Taken literally, rai translates to "opinion," and Khaled has taken this idea to heart in his music, speaking out to his countrymen with a voice that transcends borders. Algerian singer Khaled is known as the King of Rai - a kind of North African music with roots in traditional folklore.
0 kommentar(er)
