"Love to the People"

Afropop Worldwide is very proud to present the world broadcast debut of Algerian rai king Khaled's adventurous new song, "Love to the People" featuring Carlos Santana as guest artist on the brand new version of Khaled's latest album "Ya Rayi" (to be released June 27th) which was previously released in Europe with a much different sound.  Khaled's "Love to the People" song is the perfect kick-off to this week's Afropop Worldwide program, "Summer 2005 Concert Previews" as Khaled and friends will be touring the U.S. from June 26th through July 16th. Joining Khaled at leading world music-friendly summer festivals such as Central Park SummerStage, Grand Performances in L.A., Stern Grove in San Francisco, and the Concert of Colors in Detroit will be a shifting cast of steller musicians: Don Was, KC Porter, Elan, Walfredo Reyes Jr., Cheb i Sabbah, and Luis Conte as well as surprise guests to be announced.

In Los Angeles last December the Afropop producers got to hear Khaled and 11 time Grammy award winner KC Porter (Santana, Ricky Martin) and co-producer Dawn Elder working on "Love to the People" in Porter's vibey Tapanga Canyon studio. There are two versions of the song--one in Arabic and the other in English. . Porter wrote the song and Khaled wrote the Arabic lyrics. Elan contributed guest vocals on the English version. Santana contributed guest lead guitar. Porter and Elder co-produced "Love to the People."

To our ears, the song's hook on first hearing is immediately catchy. Khaled leaps and swoops. Carlos does his trademark wailing. The song's message is universal--send an outpouring of love to your fellow human beings as we all struggle to keep it together spiritually in these dark, violent times we share. It will be very interesting to see if such a bold cross-cultural project can make inroads in the risk-averse format-driven world of commercial radio. AAA commercial and non-commercial stations will most likely jump on it. The download world will love it.  "Love to the People" just could take off, despite the conservative and ofen xenophobic media reality in America.

The "Ya Rayi" album was previously released in France, but for the title track of this special American edition, Don Was (Rolling Stones, Bonnie Raitt) re-tracked the vocals, and musicians and rearranged and remixed the song along with Dawn Elder. All other songs on the  album were edited, re-sequenced and re-mastered by Dawn Elder. And for the American version, they dropped the lead track from the original French version of the album"Ya-Rayi" which to many ears on this side of the Pond made a sappy, less-than-compelling first impression.  The street date for this brand new "Ya-Rayi" is June 27th.

The Afropop team, led by Sean Barlow and Banning Eyre, trekked to L.A. last December to interview Khaled about this latest recording project-in-progress. While there, Khaled gave us a three hour interview! In response to the first question about his memories of growing up in cosmopolitan Oran on the Mediterranean coast of Algeria, Khaled waxed on for forty five minutes alone. The man can talk!(One revelations was that Khaled held the nuns in his early education in high regard. Go figure.) A full transcript (dare us) of our interview and a photo essay of Khaled's extraordinarily expressive and theatrical face during the interview  will be posted on afropop.org later in July to accompany our full hour, in-depth, Hip Deep portrait of the rai revolutionary who changed popular culture forever of North Africa and its Diaspora forever.   www.demgmt.com.

Khaled fans will want to mark their calendars for these dates:

June 29--Variety Playhouse-- Atlanta
July 1--Lisner Auditorium--DC
July 3--Central Park SummerStage-- New York
July 5--Montreal Jazz Festival-- Montreal
July 8--Grand Performances-- L.A.
July 10--Stern Grove Festival-- San Francisco
July 13--House of Blues-- New Orleans
Juy 14--House of Blues-- Orlando
July 16--Concert of Colors-- Detroit

For other highlights of the Afropop summer concert season featuring Femi Kuti, Tinariwen, Daara J, see afropop.org's  2005 summer concert preview. And look for the Afropop booths at festivals in New York, Chicago, Boston, and Washington this summer where you'll meet our Afropop street team members and you can cast your lot in free sweepstakes for choice CDs and DVDs. And! You'll have a chance to win the grand prize of an iPod loaded with Afropop classic tunes. We promise, should you be the lucky one, you will be levitated. Goood luck and, win or loose, have a great summer!

-- Sean Barlow