Rachid Taha

Rachid Taha (18 September 1958 – 12 September 2018) was an Algerian singer and activist who lived in France and was known for his adventurous approach to sound. His music drew from rock, electronic, punk, and raï.

He was born in Oran, a coastal city considered the birthplace of raï. His birth year, 1958, was a pivotal moment in Algeria’s war for independence from France. Growing up in the 1960s, he listened to Algerian music, including the street style chaabi, and was raised with the sounds of the Maghreb region. At age ten, in 1968, he moved with his parents to France, settling in an immigrant community near Lyon. His father worked long hours for low pay in a textile factory, a life one account compared to that of a “modern slave.” At 17, Taha worked a menial daytime job at a central heating plant, which he hated, but at night he DJed at clubs, playing Arabic music, rap, salsa, funk, and anything else that caught his interest. In the late 1970s, he founded a nightclub called The Rejects (Les Refoulés), where he mixed Arabic pop classics with backbeats from Led Zeppelin, Bo Diddley, and Kraftwerk.

In the 1980s, Algeria’s indigenous pop music, raï, gained international attention. Originally a ribald style of city musicians adapting rural sounds, raï became a vehicle for political protest as young people in the 1960s and 1970s used it to voice anger and desire. Taha believed Algerian music and rock were closely linked. He was also influenced by the Moroccan chaâbi band Nass El Ghiwane, described as Morocco’s answer to the Beatles or the Stones.

In 1981, while living in Lyon, Taha met Mohammed and Mokhtar Amini, and along with Djamel Dif and Eric Vaquer, they formed a band. By 1982, Taha was the lead vocalist of Carte de Séjour (meaning Green Card or Residence Permit), an Arab-language rock group. He sang in French and Arabic, but mostly Arabic. Taha was inspired by The Clash, noting that they were both militant and hedonistic, and that they mixed hip-hop, reggae, ska, country, disco, and more while making it their own. In 1981, Taha bumped into members of The Clash in Paris before their show at Théâtre Mogador and gave them a demo tape by Carte de Séjour. When they didn’t respond, he assumed nothing came of it, but months later he heard “Rock the Casbah” and wonder