In December, 2004, Khaled came to Los Angeles to put the final touches on the U.S. release of his album Ya Rayi.  He sat down with Banning Eyre and Sean Barlow for a lengthy interview, over three hours of thoughts and recollections.  As a mid-summer feature, hot on the heels of the Khaled and Friends tour, we now give you that interview in three parts.  This second installment focuses on Khaled’s early musical career, at least that’s what we tried to focus on.  Rai means opinion, and as you’ll see, Khaled has plenty of those…

Banning Eyre: Let’s talk about the beginning of modern rai.  We talked about the influences of folklore, and flamenco.  But I also want to hear about the outside influences, rock-and-roll, and so on.  

Khaled:  OK, I'm going to tell you about the sixties, and you are going to laugh.  The 60s.  That’s when I opened my eyes.  I was four years old in 64.  My father had a harmonica.  I took the harmonica and started to play.  Oh, my God!  It was terrible.  After the harmonica, it was the guitar.  I started that at six years old.  But my big discovery was in ’66—the “mod” style, elephant pants.  I’ll tell you something.  Everyone, all of Oran, was dressed in elephant pants.  Everyone was dressed like Elvis Presley.  Rock ‘n’ roll!  It was the hippie years.  Long hair.  I had long hair.  Jackson Five.  [LAUGHS]  Everybody, when they went to the hairdresser, it was “the banana.”  It was the same thing when you went to the nightclubs.  There were groups singing pop music, and rock ‘n’ roll.

I’m going to tell you something, but you can’t laugh.  Rock and roll made me happy, because I could not understand English.  We had singes who managed to sing English, but it wasn’t really English.  [DOES HIS VERSION OF AN ALGERIAN SINGER, APING ROCK N ROLL VOCALS].  We had a good name for that.  We said that you are singing in “yogurt.”  Now, you would say it was “cheesy.”  Cheese.  But it was beautiful to listen to Elvis Presley, or a black singer like Ray Charles.  There were so many.  I don’t remember all the names.  In Oran, it was Elvis Presley, it was Ray Charles, it was blues, jazz.  Then there was Jacques Brel, because we understood his language, and Aznavour.  There was also a Jewish singer named Jodason, who lived here the United States.  And then there was Edith Piaf.  It was through this music, that we discovered other things beyond the Middle East.  We in Oran, we weren’t really connected, except through films.  At the theaters, we had many, many, many, many Hindu films.  In North Africa that was all we had.

BE:   Even in the 60s?

Khaled:  Yes.  Even after 1962, when we got our independence.  The French had left.  Now, we were more Moslem.  We were—I don’t like this word; I have a horror of this word—but now they say we were “modern Muslims.”  Aggh.  No, no, no.  No way.  I don’t want to believe in that.  But we in the 1960s, me, I was young.  I didn’t understand life.  But my vision was, “My religion is Muslim.  We are Muslims, but we are not Muslims who are against others.”  We were not Muslim fundamentalists (integristes).  That’s the right word.  Fundamentalists.  We were not fundamentalists.  We were Muslims.  Enough.  We’re believers, religious, but we were already religious out of our experience of reading the Koran, but that doesn’t mean that we just go and kill whoever.  No.  Because our religion does not permit that.  It is forbidden to do bad things against an innocent.  There was not this mode that we see now in the years since the millennium.  We see now a mode that is called fundamentalism and terrorism.  We didn’t know about that.  That did not exist. 

For us, there were the bars, and there was the mosque.  And out of respect, the mosque was 200 meters away.  It’s like in France, maybe here also in the United States, where there are all nightclubs where people drink alcohol are 200 meters from a church.  Obligatory.  Obligatory.  It’s normal.  It’s to respect religious people.  You must keep a distance.  But it’s the question of respect.  It has nothing to do with sacred laws.

For us, it was more like, when I was young I used to pass by people who are drinking in the bars, because they had terraces.  Even now you see this.  When a wise man, a religious man, passes, people do this.  [HIDES HIS DRINK WITH HIS HANDS.]  “Hello.  Salaam.  Salaam.”  There is respect.  But the religious person who is passing, he knows that that person is drinking.  He turns his head, as if he has seen nothing.  Or perhaps he says, “My son…”  It is just like a church, with the Father.  All the Muslims in my time, when I saw someone drinking, they might say, “Hello.  But why are you drinking?  It’s not good.”  He would tell you, not kill you because you have shamed God or something like that.  No.  They would say, “It’s not good.  You will destroy your health.  You should live.  It’s better to profit from life.”

And you would reply, “Ah, yes.”  It’s like here when you say, “Don’t smoke.”  You don’t say, “Don’t smoke or I will kill you.” 

BE:  That’s a big difference.

Khaled:  Two different worlds.  You are forbidden, but gently.  For example, when I first came to the United States, I smoked outside.  I smoked in the room.  I smoked in the hall.  I smoked in restaurants.  Then I returned to France.  Then when I came back to the United States, I went into the same restaurants, and I found a smoking section and a non-smoking section.  Gently.  Afterwards I return to the same bar and I see, “No Smoking.”  It’s okay.  On the airplanes, I used to smoke.  Afterwards, gently, I went onto the airplane and there was a place in the middle of the plane, near the bar, smoking, no problem.  Now you go onto the airplane, “No Smoking.”  Forbidden, yes.  But gently.  Because one cannot forbid something suddenly, all-in-one shot, like that.  People will not understand it.

My religion.  I know someone who is very wise, just a month younger than me, who has truly explained to me my religion.  I said, “I have not read in the Koran that alcohol is forbidden.  Alcohol has existed since the long time ago.  Drugs.  They have existed for a long time.  That’s nature.  It was God who created nature before he created humans.  That existed.  And who has created that?  It is the one who is called God.  Nature, and afterwards Adam and Eve.  The animals before us.  The earth, the water, the animals, all before human beings.  Then Cro-Magnon man, then human beings.”

And he said, “Not so fast.  You must go step by step by step.  If you go to fast, you break everything.  No.  God is fair.”  I will explain to you.  There is a saying that you should not pray when you are intoxicated, drunk.  If you do that, you don’t respect God.  Why?  If your head is not controlled by yourself, that’s not good.  Because your head, who is controlling it?  You might kill someone, without knowing.  You might steal a car.  You might die yourself.  You might leave someone handicapped.  You might kill your wife.  You might kill your children.  You might kill your mother even, with alcohol.  When you are not under control.  In the Bible, it says that when you drink, you can abuse, if you pass the limit.  That is not good.

So drinking.  One glass.  Two.  But not 10!  Okay, you drink, you look around, you say, “My name is Khaled.”  But 10?  “My name… My name…. My name….”  That’s not good.  It is written in the Bible, drinking is not good with God when it passes the limit.  Because a human being is not under control.  He cannot control himself.  So the good God warned us about alcohol.  You must not pray when you are drunk, because you will go wrong.  It’s like being a singer.  If I have drunk past the limit, I’m going to forget the words.

BE:  This is interesting.  In the beginning, you are songs were very much identified with freedom, including the freedom to drink.

Khaled:  No.  No, truthfully, and Arabic, my language, it’s not like a European or American language.  No.  When one says drinking in Arabic, what is beautiful is that this means to drink life.  I am drunk with life.  And in French we say intoxicated with love.  When I’m in love, I am drunk, intoxicated.  You see what I’m saying?

BE:  You mean you are using language in a poetic way, like in Arabic poetry.

Khaled:  Yes.  We always talk about that.  But when a European or an American sings about drinking, they are singing about alcohol.  For us it is a metaphor.  Even in my songs.  Like in the song “Serbi Serbi.”  We were just talking about that song.  In “Serbi Serbi,” I’m talking with a server.  I’m in love.  The woman I love has left.  What can I do?  I take medicine.  But there are some who have been poisoned.  It’s the same thing:  medicine, alcohol—it’s poison.  So I say, what can I find to relieve the pain?  I am at a bar, and I’m talking to the server, and I’m saying, “Serve me.  Give me what I crave.  Just to the point where I die.”  Because I am sick.  But the same time, I sing, “Serve me, because today I must get drunk,” but happily, there is something that pulls on all of us Muslims, and that is respect for our mothers.  So, at the same time, I sing, “Happily, my mother is waiting for me.”  That’s a revelation.  It wakes me up.  I sing, “Drink, drink,” but after a moment I say, “Ah, no.  There is a limit.”

BE:  And all that is in the song?

Khaled: Yes, I sing that.  In all my songs I sing that.  Whenever I sing about alcohol, in all my songs, I also talk about my mother, and as I am married, my two daughters.  I say, “There are my girls.  They must eat.”  They mustn’t see me like this, because they will copy me.  Children are what?  They are influenced by their parents.  If they see Papa drinking at home, they will drink.  When they see someone who smokes at home, they will be influenced.  In order to become big, like an adult, you have to smoke.

BE:  Khaled, listening to talk about this, I have the impression that maybe you are a bit misunderstood by people.

Khaled:  No.  I would not accept that word.  Not misunderstood.  It’s just that we haven’t often had the opportunity to ask these questions.  And more than that, for me, I haven’t always wanted to answer these questions.  You know why?  Because for me, in the eyes of Europeans, or Americans, above all they think, “He is happy.”  And that gives me the image that I want to give to Europeans.  And it is true.  For Europeans and Americans, when you say, “Khaled is a Muslim, and he sings about alcohol.  That’s beautiful.  For a Muslim to sing about alcohol.  Maybe I should see his country.”  They won’t find my country to be like Iran or Saudi Arabia.  Because I didn’t grow up like that.  No.  And that’s why I never wanted to talk about this, because of people see me is happy, I think that’s good.  Because I want people to feel welcome to come and see where I come from.  Come.  Come, see what it’s like with me, what is happening.  When you come to my home, one European comes to visit, he’s going to drink more than he drank at home.  He drinks more than he drank at home!

BE:  But I understand that you yourself stopped drinking.

Khaled:   Because that was my choice.  I don’t want to influence people.  I don’t want to be a fundamentalist.  That’s it.  It’s the same thing.  When you talk about alcohol and religion altogether, that’s fundamentalism.  That’s for fanatics.  I am not a fanatic.  I made my choice for myself, for me.  I said, “No alcohol.  Stop.  Stop.”  Why?  Because when I was young, my father drank, my father smoked, and all of my entourage, I started taking up cigarettes because I was influenced.  I tried alcohol because I wanted to taste what my father had tasted.  You see?  So why did I stop alcohol now?  Because I have my daughters, and I don’t want my daughters to be influenced by me.  I don’t want that.  Because they will copy me. 

And about my songs.  I don’t sing hate.  I don’t sing politics.  I don’t sing songs I tell people to go attack those terrorists or perhaps these other ones are not good.  I don’t say, “Wake up and start a civil war.”  I could say that.  I could.  Like Bob Marley and others who sang about politics, pure and tough.  Those are artists and they can do it they want.  That’s their right.  I respect that.  Everyone has their manner of singing.  Everyone has their way of passing the message.  I respect that, even if I don’t like it.  Respected anyway.  Because there are people who say they don’t like what I say.  But I wanted to respect me.  That’s why I respect them. 

For example, there is a group in France who sing in their shows about the police.  “They are evil.  Let’s go get them.”  Between you and me, who likes the police?  Nobody.  I agree completely.  But if we didn’t have police in our cities, we would not be protected.  Even if we don’t like them, we need them.  We need police.  You see what I’m saying?  Even if you are attacked, and you call out, “Help me!” and they come, but they come late, it’s OK.  You need police in the city to keep order.

When I was young and I went to the movie theater, I saw, for example, Bruce Lee.  At the time, was 12, 14 years old.  I went to the cinema, and that marked me.  That marked me.  I went to the cinema, and I saw Bruce Lee:  Waaaaaaah!!  At the end of the movie, I went out of the theater, and started hitting all my friends.  Yaaaaaaa!  I was hitting everybody.  Because I saw that and I wanted to do like him.  People will do what they see and hear artists doing.  That is why I don’t want to pass a message that is not good.  I don’t want to influence people.

BE:  Was that always in your mind when you wrote songs, or is that something you’ve come to more recently?

Khaled:  No.  Always.  Because that is Oran.

BE:   I see.  You grew up having choices, and so you don’t want to limit other people’s choices.  

Khaled:  No.  Because that is Oran.  It is the city.  And it is my education.  That also.  Education.  You know, for me, a people like the Algerians, now, they look at me and they say, “We love you, Khaled.”  Why do they tell me that?  For us, a president is a father.  He is Papa.  He has all the people, just one president.  A government, with ministers, is a big family, with a father, a grandfather, an uncle, cousins.  That’s it.  So when you come to Algeria, and you see that the government that is there is stealing from its people, and putting its money in Switzerland or Monaco, like a dictator.  OK.  And tomorrow, there’s the civil war.  So the people, what are they going to do?  They’re going to do what they’ve been educated to do by others, by the president, by the ministers, the Colonels, the Generals, because they are pickpockets!  People suffer to have a little freedom.  Boom!  It’s finished.  Everyone sees that if I have a problem with the judge, who is my neighbor, or policemen, I go out and kill him.  I have a problem with a particular building, I blow it up with a bomb.  I want to go inside the bank over there, I break-in.  I take the money.  It’s mine.  That’s why I tell you that education is everything in life.  We talk about children, and we’re talking about life.  It’s my choice.  My daughters, my children, I want to give them an education.  My entourage, even my friends, I can show them Khaled the bad boy, drinking, smoking, smiling, coming home at two o’clock this morning.  Because these are my friends.  But when I write words to songs, it is different from what I do in my life.

BE:  Let’s get back to rai music, and your career.  Tell us about your earliest recordings.

Khaled:  I made my first record when I was 14 years old.  And when I went into the studio, I recorded with a Grundig two-track.  There were two little microphones.  One microphone was for the derbouka, because there were no drums.  There was a little Fender electric guitar, percussion, sax, me with my accordion, and two violinists.  So, me and the violins, and the accordion all on one track, one microphone.  I remember when I sang, I was afraid of the violinist would not be heard.  I was afraid.  [LAUGHS]  But it was fabulous.  I still find it now to be a beautiful sound.  It’s like when you listen to Elvis Presley.  Recently I was listening to a remix of Elvis Presley, but you hear that voice.  You hear the style of the recording.  It grips you.  When you come to the new generation, with all the sophisticated tricks, still, if it doesn’t have heart, it doesn’t touch you.

Now, the world has changed.  It was more musical before.  You hear the music, and it touches you here.  The rhythm.  It comes inside you.  And you hear the words, you understand the words.  The sound was like that, but now, you don’t understand the words.  Maybe two or three words, but not enough to touch you.  Lyrics have become less important now, I think.  That’s my opinion.

BE:  Even in rai music?

Khaled:  In general.  Even in rai music now.  It’s beautiful.  It’s good.  It’s like I told you in the 1960s, when rock ‘n’ roll was popular in North Africa—it was beautiful.  It was an opening.  It broke through the boundaries of culture.  Like I have always said, a country without culture is not a country.  It’s a dead country.  For me, culture is big.  It is strength.  Me, I’m from North Africa, but when I hear Khaled and rai in Japan, that’s beautiful.  That is an opening of the spirit.  That is breaking through boundaries.  That is giving love to the people.  That gives curiosity to others.  That is showing other countries that there is something else there in our generation.  Like a satellite.

At one time in Algeria, if you talked about satellites to a fundamentalist, he wanted to kill you.  He would tell you that satellites, for Muslims, are not good.  But now we live in a world where everybody understands everything.  You can’t hide anything now.  Human beings know everything.  They have woken up.  They have evolved.  So when people said that satellites were not good, we knew why they were saying that satellites were not good.  You ask why are satellites not good?  Because you are Muslim, and the satellite passes by you, you look up into the night.  And that is not good for a Muslim.  But the satellite is there to open your eyes.  Because when a good man is in a country that has closed off by dictator, he doesn’t know what is happening outside.  The satellite opens his eyes.  Because when he sees a report, on Hollywood, for example.  He sees Hollywood.  He says, “Ah, it’s beautiful.  It’s good.”  Then he changes the channel, and he sees Hollywood with cops.  He sees cops. Pop. Pop. Pop.  He says, “Oh, no way!”

For me, satellites are respect for life.  Respect for human beings, respect for countries.  On the satellite you might see, for example, Oran.  You might find a channel about Algeria, or Morocco, or Lebanon.  Egypt.  You will watch it, and you’ll say, “Ah, it is beautiful.”  You’ll see the market.  You’ll see people smoking hashish.  [MAKES SNORING NOISES]  They are alive.  But you will not see drinking.  Alcohol, you will see in another place.  If you as an American come to Oran, or to Egypt, you will sense that this is the place of respect, respect for the cultures and customs of people.  With a satellite, I travel with no passport.  [LAUGHS]  And without being bothered by a customs official or a policeman.  Because when you go nicely to a country to discover it, you don’t want to go with the bomb, you don’t come to still, you don’t come to break windows.  And above all the police, when they look at your visa, they see you have passed by an ambassador or consulate.  And a policeman looks at your visa and he says, “How long are you going to stay?”

You say, “Three days, four days, five days.”  “You have money?”  “Visa card.”  “That’s it?  Nothing else?”

But with the satellite, you are home, and you click the dial, and you say, “Ah, beautiful country!”  And you dream.  You learn things.  For example, I have learned about countries that I could never see like my own country, Algeria.  I can’t drive at 110 through a red light like in Italy.  If you go to Morocco, it’s the same thing.  People do not respected lights.  Just an example.  But there aren’t more accidents.  Never.  It’s true.  There are no accidents.  I was trembling in the car.  I was terrified.  But there are no accidents.  They know what they’re doing.

Then if you want, you can see Dubai, and see the beach.  Oh my God!  I prefer Dubai to Hawaii.  It is beautiful.  Dubai as like Oran.  You have cabarets, alcohol, prayer, religion, alcohol, dancing, the beach.  There is respect.  That’s what is good.  Respect for life.  That’s what you look for and that we have lost in the world now, respect for life.

BE:  Let’s get back to music.  Between the time you were 14 years old and made that first record and now, when rai music has spread around the world like rock and roll in its time, a lot has changed.  One important guy was the producer Rachid, who was killed.

Khaled:  Poor guy.

BE:  What was his importance in this story?

Khaled:  It was through him that I found the drum machine.  Rachid was rich.  He went to France and came back with a really professional studio.  That's how he became known.  He was a son of very rich parents.  He didn't have to play music.  He did it because he loved it.  It was something extra for him.  So Rachid was there, but me, I made my own road, all alone.  Like Elvis Presley, I was helped by a Colonel.  Just like Elvis.  Rai music already existed in Oran but it was confined to Oran.  In the rest of Algeria, they didn't want it.  It's as if rock and roll were confined to Memphis only.  If you go to New York you find something else.  No way.  Rock-and-roll.  No.  The history is, rock-and-roll music: Bad.  Drugs.  Peace and love.  Hippies.  Dancing with the haunches.  Rock-and-roll.  No.  Rai music.  Bad boy music.  Alcohol.  Just like drugs.  Ladies.  And plus, they dance to rai music with the haunches.  No.  It's the same thing.  Rai was not forbidden by law, by the government, but by people who did not want their families to listen to it.  “Rai music is not good.  This music does not come into living room.  Rai music.  No.  Because they sing about women, they sing about alcohol.  It is the song of vagabonds.  Bad.”  But later on, it became number one in all of North Africa, in all of the Middle East.  It went all over the world, just like rock ‘n’ roll.  Rai music is also like jazz and blues because it comes from the cheikhs and cheikhas, from folkloric music.  And as I was telling you, about the evolution of the music, for me and my head, it was the music I grew up with.  Afterwards when I thought about it myself, I could see the evolution, because there were people with money went to France and brought equipment that we gradually discovered, the Tascam, audio cassettes., four-track recording.  Afterwards it was six tracks, 8 tracks, 24 tracks.  Little by little.  Afterwards people discovered the drum machine. 

I will tell you this story to make you laugh.  In the 1980s, as I began to become known and do business in Oran, and to be recognized in the United States, we had small producers who worked with artists, and earned profits from artists.  They made money.  There were like carpet salesman in the market.  A real record company?  We knew nothing about that.  Sell a few cassettes; make a little money.  But, I became an artist who worked well, who sold well, and the producers paid me well.  I had two violinists, guitar, percussion—and the musicians had to be paid.  During the 1980s, when I brought together my musicians, I said, "Let's go.  There's a producer.  I want to make a cassette."  And now the musicians started to say, "We have to ask for a lot of money.  We're working with a big star.  You have to arrange a lot of money for us."  And I though….[SIGHS WEARILY]  I had my friend who was producer in France, he brought me a drum machine.  I already had a keyboard, so I already played all the instruments.  My producer said, "Khaled, these musicians are becoming very expensive.  What should we do?"  I said, "What do we do?  I don't know."  He said, "You are capable.  I have 16 tracks on my Tascam.  I have a drum machine.   You can record the rhythm?"  I said, “Yes.”  I played, [SINGS DRUM MACHINE RHYTHM] .  I recorded a whole rhythm section.  Afterwards I went in the studio and put on headphones.  He played the music, and I sang.

I discovered that one person could create a whole orchestration.  I made rhythm section.  Afterwards I wanted a guitar, and I found that the keyboard could make a sound of the rhythm guitar.  Then the bass.  I put the bass.  We did the mix.  We made the cassette.  When you listen, you would think there was a whole orchestra.  And afterwards, when the cassette came out, the musicians came to my house, and they cried.  "What have you done to us, Khaled?”  And I said, "You did not want to work.  You demanded too much money.  So, it’s bye-bye.”  [LAUGHS]

After that, I did use musicians, especially when I went to Algiers to make my music known in Algiers.  This was in the 1980s.  I was 20 years old, and I was not well known throughout Algeria.  But the thing that made me known in Algiers was the song called “Shiran Nebrihan.”  It's a beautiful song.  It says, "Young girl, in I am in love.”  The word “shiran” is young girl, but in Algiers, 500 km from Oran, the word has a different meaning.  So when I arrived in Algiers, I found all these young people saying, "Sing for us, sing for us!  That's good, Khaled.  You are good.  You're passing a good message to young Algerians."  I asked someone why they like the song so much.  He said because you're singing about drugs. [LAUGHS]  Marijuana, or kif, as they say in Morocco.  In Algiers, they say shiran.  So I thought I was saying I love a girl, but they were hearing I love drugs!  [LAUGHS]  I said, "What have I done now?  I am going to land myself in prison." 

Then I understood.  Because rai music, in the beginning, when I was developing it, we were past the cheikhs and cheikhas, and we had started with instruments.  Even before me, there were instruments.  But after me, it was more modern, coming into the late seventies and eighties.  There was more synthesizer, more drum machine.  I modernize this music.  At the same time I enriched it, because it was a little bit poor musically.  I enriched it.  I added horns, brass section, and I added a rhythmic manner of singing, and I was talking to a new generation.  Because rai was strong, sort of like the rap music of today.  We did not sing like the poets.  We spoke the language of the street.  That was rai.  Rai was the language of the street.  Rai is like, I see a friend, and I say, “My God, I am in love with this girl but her father does not want me to marry her.  My parents don't want it.  My friends don't want it.  I'm going to let them talk, and I'm going to kidnap her.”  Why do I want to kidnap her?  Because we're in love with each other.  She wants to sacrifice herself, because a Muslim girl has to remain a virgin.  If not, she's dead.  So for a girl to give her virginity to young men, a boy, that is love.  She is giving her life.  If she gives her virginity, it says it she's dead.  She becomes what we call “the living dead.”

Because her life is lost.  She cannot marry.  She can't.  There is shame; there are all sorts of things.  So we sang strong in rai, strong words.  But the words are strong in a good sense, because the guy says he is willing to kill everyone in the entourage that surrounds the girl he is in love with.  He says he can give his own life as well, for this girl.  And for the girl, it is even more serious.  Because around the girl, there are the brothers, and the father.  And if the girl goes out with someone without marrying him, the brothers can kill them.  They have the right.  But they won't kill them just like that.  They have to be sure.  They have to kill him when they see them at a big event, at a party.  Not one he's walking alone outside.  That is forbidden.  It doesn't happen.  They have to see the two together a party, and then they have to kill both of them.  We call that a crime of honor.  Honor.

But, if the man with the girl says, "Stop!  This is my wife," no one can interfere.  So these are the problems of families, and that is what we sang about in rai.  Because maybe the parents of the girl don't want this, or the parents of the boy I don't want it.  This is why we have this problem with kidnapping.  And when you have the problem with kidnapping, afterwards the man, sadly, is mean.  He can let go of it.  He can return to his family.  But the poor girl…  And this is one reason why rai music is badly looked upon, because it gives great deal of importance to the plight of the girl.  It attacks both of them.  So there is balance.  It is not to the girl is below and the man is above.  No.  Sadly, the man is often bad, mean.  But sometimes a man leaves everything, leaves his family, everything, he gives his life for a girl, and then the girl he ends up with is also vicious.  She laughs at him.  Sometimes it's the woman who is mean.  It can be either one of them.  You see?

For me, in my Koran, my religion, that's what it is.  In my religion, it's not that the girl is below and the man above.  No way.  The woman.  The man.  Like that.  Equal.  There's no inequality.  No.  Together.  The two of them.  Each of them can be good.  Each of them can be evil.  [LAUGHS]  And rai sings that.  I think that in this world, when you sing something that is good, and true, one is not accepted.  It's sad to say that.  In music, through art, I came to understand that music is about researching life.  Music is about learning.  Music is like a bunch of grapes.  Everyone who passes, you take one and you eat it.  You serve yourself.  It's like a tree that gives fruit.  You pass.  Ah, an apple is good.  You eat it.  But you respect the apple.  It has to really be good, sweet.  You don’t want one that is not good. 

Music is written the same way all over the world.  It's the same solfege.  Music is universal.  When you create music in the key of G, it is the same she in United States, and in the Middle East.  You go to Holland, and it's the same thing.  The only thing that changes is the language.  English-speaking people sing in English.  Algerians, Maghrebians, Moroccans, we sing our language.  Arab classicists, Umm Kulthum, Farid al Atrach, Abdel Halim, they have their language, which is universal for Moslems.  These artists are loved everywhere, like Elvis Presley.  It's the same thing. 

But, for me, I made an evolution because I watched a lot of Egyptian and Hindu films.  Why in these countries were we so influenced by Egyptian and Hindu films?  Because there was no kissing in the films.  There was none.  But it's beautiful.  It's not like in France.  For me, if you go too far, it destroys the charm.  Rai speaks like that.  It breaks the charm.  Because the girl, when you see her dressed sexy, you are excited.  Your mind is working to know what she is like inside.  That gives you more love, more sensuality.  But when you see everything, there's no sensuality.

BE:   So if you hide a little, it's better. 

Khaled:   In music, there was Mohamed Abd al-Wahhab.  He was a great, great, great Arab musical composer, a big person.  The way he did orchestration was classic.  He could have been Beethoven.  You should see the archives that he left behind, music for Egyptian films.  You see those, ah!  Beautiful.  Classic music, but with an Oriental charm.  For us, Oriental classical music is a meditation.  You listen to the words.  Like Umm Kulthum.  She repeated the words, 1, 2, 3, 6, 20 times.  There was a journalist in Tunisia who asked Umm Kulthum, "Why do always repeat the same words?"  You know how she answered?  She told him, "So that an ass like you can understand them."  That is beautiful.  Because when you see Elvis Presley, and he sings, for example, "I love you too,” three or four times.  "I love you too, I love you too, I love you too…” Why does he repeat this?  Because for him it is a powerful word.  We repeat the words because we love them.  We love the words.  We repeat them because they touch us.  And it makes people understand.  He wants someone to know he loves her.  He loves her.  He loves her.  That's it. 

When I listened to Abd el-Wahhab, or when I saw Elvis Presley with his big guitar, and the contrabass behind him, and then in the 1980s, when I saw jazz with a little electric bass, and I heard the same sound [boom, boom, boom], I knew that the world had changed.  Artists at that time, when they traveled in an airplane, they were a big deal.  Now, no.  Little.  Nothing.  But this was how I understood that music is following an evolution.  And something that people did not always understand, music is a marriage.

BE:   You’re talking about fusing or combining different styles or traditions?

Khaled:   Yes.  There are many people who don't understand that.  For example, if you make rock ‘n’ roll, and you put derbouka into it—bu-koura-ka-du-koura-ka-- it works.  That works in rock ‘n’ roll, and it's a good marriage.  I grew up with Moroccan music—Nass al Ghiwane and Jil Jilala.  In 1974 when I formed my group, we were five people, and they said, "You need to give yourselves a name."  So we said Five Stars.  Like the Jackson Five.  What I instrument did I play?  I played the banjo.  Because Nass al Ghiwane used a banjo.  And the banjo comes from where?  It comes from Texas.

BE:   Well, yes, but if you go back far enough, the banjo comes from Africa.

Khaled:   I was just about to ask you that question.  The banjo comes from where?  If you say Africa, I say how do you know?  Because there is the skin.  In Africa they use a lot of animal skins in instruments, and there is animal skin in the banjo.  Thank you.  In the Middle East, they use wood, like the oud.  The oud is wood.  The violin is wood.  That’s the Middle East.  Africa, they work with skin, because there are many animals.  Other countries, like the accordion, you find that in Germany, in Egypt.  You find the mussette in France.  Even in the United States.  The accordion is my preferred instrument.  Where does it come from?  Some say Germany.  Some say Austria.  In my head, I say, “My God, in the past, people went everywhere.”  When I played in the Grammy jam last week, in the group that came at the end, there was a guy who came on with an instrument from Africa.  That instrument with metal prongs. 

BE:   Mbira?

Khaled:   Maybe.  I was really happy to see that in the middle of rock ‘n’ roll music, at the Grammys, here in Los Angeles, modernized, with a pickup and a chord, and attached to an amplifier.  It's just a small instrument, but that metal is strong.  Now I want to use that instrument in my music.  In music, I've understood one thing.  You must never be closed.  You have to go out.  You have to go out and see things.  You have to visit other countries.  You have to go and see other musicians.  You have to go see all the instruments that exist in the world.  Because back in a time when you didn't have passports, you didn't have the satellites we were talking about, what did people do?  They traveled.  The people who came from Africa had the kora, or the guimbri, or something like that.  The banjo made it all the way to Texas.  This creates a family.  This is the present I brought from Africa.  Is it a guitar?  No, it is a banjo.

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