Rai Music In Algeria Analysis

The word rai music has been able to create a distinct place in the Algerian history. The word rai means opinion. In the Algerian society, this genre of music has had a controversial position. Rai started off more as an expression of taboo topics, such as sexuality. It was the singer’s way of expressing their opinions and feeling about such taboo topics. So generally, in a growingly conservative society, rai was seen as “dirty,” “impure” and was looked down upon. In this paper, I am to look at how rai music grew its influence in the 1990’s during the troubled regime in Algeria and it became as a way to rebel against the Islamists. We are going to look at how the different components of rai such as, the singer, the songs and the performance played …show more content…
Most of the rai music dealt with topics relating to the opposite gender and the desires relating to women. Keeping in mind, that the singers were men, we could see that that rai music was there way of expressing their desire for women and using women as a metaphor to describe other situation in the Islamist Algerian era. Most of the singers belonged to the youth group that had been severely affected by the lacking of government efforts to improve the economic situation. They used the rai as a source of income, so that they could entertain people, however, at the same time earn an income. During the process of this, these singers used their art to entertain their crowd. This meant that the private, segregated events they performed at, such as cabarets, they used the dirty version of rai to entertain the audience, while clean rai was used at more sacred events, such as weddings. We have to keep in mind the difference between clean and dirty rai. Clean rai talks more about spirituality and mosques, while dirty rai deals with taboo topics like alcohol and sexuality. So as far as they singers were concerned, many times on local levels they indulged in the type of rai that was more audience …show more content…
There are many times when musicians use their music just to express their situation and what their opinion is. However, many times these rai songs could be interpreted by the audience differently depending on the situation and the context they are being performed in. So when looking at these we can tell while in some instances rai music did challenge the Islamic regime, it is really possible in many instance it was neutral and didn’t have to do with the political situation. However, most of the issues these rai musicians faced was more so because of the probable interpretation of their songs that could lead the youth against the Islamist