Tag Archives | Cheb Khaled

We Really Love Rai

Cheb Khaled is at its heart of remarkable Algerian rai.

Spending our class week in North Africa gives us the chance to enjoy rai, an electrifying, socially-engaged form of modern North African music. The genre originated in, and is most influential, in Algeria, where the expressive genre –“rai” means “opinion”– has been a thorn in the political side of successive Algerian governments since the ’70s. In this video we meet one of rai’s most dynamic performers, Cheb Khaled.