Cheb Mami

Yet this "ovni" (unidentified flying object) from the prudish provincial town of Saïda, now enthroned as "youngest raï singer", still had to gain acceptance by the brotherhood of raï singers which included Cheb Khaled, Hamid and Houari Benchenet. They distrusted the "stranger", this ideal son-in-law type who warbled lyrics dipped in rose water to respectable young women - in their genre of raï love is a physical thing described in raw, physical terms. Thanks to his "family" brand of raï, Cheb made his first official public appearance at the First Oran Raï Festival in 1985, which marked the official recognition of the genre by the Algerian authorities.

Now famous, Mami went to work in France for three months, where he intended to buy equipment and then return to Algeria and start his own group. He arrived in Paris in 1985 but his cassettes had got there before him. Bootleg copies were being sold on the street in the Barbès quarter. He was therefore immediately in demand, and played the oriental clubs such as the Monseigneur, the Omar Khayam and the Khaïma, often at all three in one night, while perfecting his new compositions in the lively Arab bars of the 18th arrondissement. An all-round singer-songwriter, Mami took pains to "polish" the crude language of raï and his intricate crossbred melodies whilst taking care not to drown them in drum machine sounds. Proud heir to the great Oran raï singers of the 40’s and 50’s, Blaoui El Houari, Ahmed Wahby and Messaoud Bellmou, who themselves had modernised the raï of the Saharan bards, Mami felt his mission was to rejuvenate the genre, to render his precious Algerian patrimony more universal by crossbreeding it with Western instrumental arrangements