Menfi is a comune (municipality) in the Province of Agrigento in the Italian region Sicily, located about 70 km southwest of Palermo and about 60 km northwest of Agrigento.

The town lies some 3 km from the south coast of Sicily, between the rivers Belice and Carboj. In 1910, a full third of the population of the town of Menfi had emigrated to the United States [1]. There was a particularly large community of Menfi emigrants in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn, New York City. On Starr Street in this neighborhood in Brooklyn, the emigrants established "The Flower of Menfi", which was a social club for Menfi emigrants and their families. On April 16, 1927, "The Flower of Menfi", described as "an organization of young men in Brooklyn", publicly sent a telegram to Governor Fuller asking for clemency in the openly anti-Italian American trial of Sacco and Vanzetti. [2]

Remains of an Iron Age prehistoric settlement have been found in the 1980s outside the town.

Rachid Taha (Arabic: رشيد طه) (born September 18, 1958 in Sig, Algeria) is an Algerian singer and activist based in France who has been described as "sonically adventurous." His music is influenced by many different styles such as rock, electronic, punk and raï.

Taha was born in 1958 in Sig (Mascara Province), Algeria, although a second source suggests he was born in the Algerian seacoast city of Oran. This town was the "birthplace of raï" music, and 1958 was a key year in the Algerian struggle for independence against French authority. He began listening to Algerian music in the 1960s, including street-style music called chaabi. And music from the Maghreb region was part of his upbringing.

He moved with his parents to France when he was ten years old, settling in an immigrant community around the French city of Lyon in 1968. His father was a textile factory worker, with long hours and low pay, such that his life was compared to that of a "modern slave", according to one account. When 17, Taha worked during the day at a central heating plant, described as a "menial job", and hated this work, but at night worked as a club DJ playing Arabic music, rap, salsa, funks and "anything else that took his fancy." The contrast between menial work during the day and fun during the night may have helped to develop his musical sensibility. In the late 1970s, Taha founded the nightclub called The Rejects or, in French, Les Refoulés, where he would spin mashups of Arabic pop classics over Led Zeppelin, Bo Diddley and Kraftwerk backbeats.