page_title: Rachid Taha
section_title: Solo years
hierarchical_section_title: Rachid Taha / Career / Solo years
caption_attribution_description: English: Show-case with Mon côté punk at Fnac des Ternes (Paris, France). Français&#160;: Show-case avec Mon côté punk organisé par la Fnac des Ternes (Paris, France) pour la sortie de l'album Anawah.
context_page_description: Rachid Taha was an Algerian singer and activist based in France described as "sonically adventurous". His music was influenced by many different styles including rock, electronic, punk and raï.
context_section_description: In 1989, Taha moved to Paris to launch his solo career. At one point he was invited to Los Angeles to record with musician Don Was, who had been a producer associated with the Rolling Stones. Taha mixed a variety of instruments and styles for his sound. With a drum instrument called a doumbek or darbuka, his new group played Arabic-style beats. It appeared at one point that Taha might become an "overnight success", but after the release of the album Barbès, sales were disappointing in the United States, possibly because Americans were not keen on Arabic-sounding music during the time of the first Gulf War.
  In 1993, Taha again worked with Hillage who helped produce his second solo album, the self-titled Rachid Taha and helped him achieve "the kind of clubland-raï synthesis". Hillage worked on three solo Taha albums from 1993 to 2001, helping Taha return to his "north African roots". In 1995, he released the album entitled Olé Olé with Taha looking like an "Aryan androgyne" with dyed blond hair and blue contact lenses, to make a point about anti-Arab bigotry and at the "homophobia of North African culture." Valencia features the singing of Kirsty Hawkshaw. In 1997, his song "Ya Rayah" became a hit. He performed in the Canary Islands.
  In 2001, Taha released Made in Medina, and a music critic commented that he used a "full and varied instrumental palette" along with "a dizzying vocal facility that transcends whatever style he's plugged." The album was recorded in Paris, New Orleans, and London with input from the American jam band Galactic. Taha saw parallels between African and American music and said "New Orleans is like Algiers ... They were both French colonies at one time, and there's even an area there called Algiers," and he noted that Louisiana Zydeco drum patterns were similar to raï music. Made in Medina combined Algerian roots, techno, pop music, and early rock and punk influences with "remarkable consistency" with previous works, according to Hillage. There were elements of political protest in his music leading a BBC critic to describe him as a "shit-disturbing artist who risks challenging his own culture as undemocratic." He wanted to record in New Orleans "because I see parallels between African and American music, and between the music of the African slaves who came to New Orleans, and that of the Gnawas, the black desert tribes who became slaves of the Arabs in North Africa. And New Orleans is like Algiers. They were both French colonies at one time, and there's even an area there called Algiers." He was delighted to find that some of the local Louisiana Zydeco drum patterns are remarkably similar to raï. A report in The Guardian suggested that Taha had achieved a cult status in pop music.
  Taha's breakthrough album as a solo artist was his bestseller Diwân, featuring remakes of songs from Algerian and Arab traditions. The album featured traditional instruments like the oud but with a "contemporary veneer of programmed percussion and samples added in." Taha mixed the oud with strings using a contemporary beat along with guitar work, according to one account. Taha's album Tékitoi, produced by Steve Hillage and released in 2004, brought acclaim and recognition from other rock musicians. The title track is "street slang" meaning, roughly, Who the Hell Are You? (from the French Tu es qui, toi ? shortened into T'es qui, toi ?) and the music had "echoes of Joe Strummer", according to a review in The Observer. In 2005 Taha performed with Robert Plant, Patti Smith and Brian Eno. He covered The Clash song "Rock the Casbah" which he retitled with the Arabic name of "Rock El Casbah". This song appeared in the 2007 film about Clash frontman Joe Strummer entitled The Future Is Unwritten. The song suggested rock music as "banned but unstoppable". Taha performed the song along with The Clash musician Mick Jones. The Guardian selected "Rock El Casbah" as one of the top 50 cover songs.
  Taha played in Morocco in 2006. In 2007, Taha performed in Canada and a reporter from the Montreal Gazette described his performance while wea
caption: An Algerian mandole or mandolute, played by a member of Mon_côté_punk.
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image DateTime": "2007:10:24 17:58:12", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "196", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "9716", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7154", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "28/5", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "800", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:10:24 17:58:12", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:10:24 17:58:12", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "193557/32768", "EXIF ApertureValue": "162885/32768", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Partial", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, compulsory flash mode, red-eye reduction mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "70", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3456", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2304", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "9230", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "1728000/437", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "384000/97", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}