Cheb Mami
Meli meli
Mondo Melodia, 1999
Algeria's Cheb Mami has emerged as the reigning master of pop rai. Even if he can never match the burly, gravitational forcefulness of Khaled, the style's best known singer, Mami shows with this album that he has the strongest and most varied stylistic vocabulary in contemporary rai. Mami's forays into hip-hop and rap, reggae, new flamenco, and even Afro-Celtic music, are not gratuitous. His arrangements skillfully feature his lithe voice as it flutters and soars, never losing focus and clarity. In "Parisien du Nord" he uses dark melodies and rap aesthetics to address his core audience, young second generation North Africans living in France. Rai's overriding theme--the pain of "unfortunate love"--is prevalent here. But in "Bledi" ("My Country"), Mami adapts a Mexican folk melody and the propulsive flamenco rhythms music to comment tenderly on the ravaging effects of civil war in his homeland. Rai's signature sound is a kind Arab world funk, and the title track is as catchy an example of that as you'll find. But it's the surprises--like Mami mixing it up with a Scottish bagpipe on "Azwaw 2"--that make this release so memorable.
Contributed by: Banning Eyre
Originally published in: Boston Phoenix
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