Algerian early rai legendary band from the 70's who gained notoriety for imposing their "Abassi" music style playing (different to the Oranese one). They're beng collaborate with early Rai legends such as Groupe El Azhar, female rai singer Chaba Fadela amongs others...
The band was fronted by Ahmed Zergui (pic below) who go on after the group disbanded, releasing many other tapes. I can't really confirm if he's the same artist who appeared under "Cheb Zeguir" on Hicham Chadly's "Proto Raï" as they are quite a lot of: "Cheb Seguir", "Mohamed Zaguir", "Sghir" etc in the whole rai scene. (Anybody to confirm ?)
Iranian music scene is one of my favorite in the all world, it's dark as the night, refined in a very special way, quite mystic. Here I want to introduce two greats albums of the sweet singer Pari Zangeneh (Pari Zanganeh in some others traductions). The first one is called "Series of music for young adults", 1978, from arranger Varoujan. Pari sings for children a selection of persian folklorics songs with poetic arrangements and a fine and sweet 70's orchestra. A love master piece for kids.
The second one is from a composer named Fariborz Lachini.
It's an audio story book named "Boze Boze Ghandi", 1989, based on a traditional Persian story. The songs and background effects are quite wild, Pari Zangeneh give her voice to the tale and sing also with Elahe Hamidi somes cool songs like you can heard in the following extract.
It's available to buy in MP3 here, with some greats others, like "Carnival of Animals" a 1979 album.
I recently came across that tape from 1984 which absolutely blew my mind away. Some of you following for the recent trend of oriental psych reissues (TOO MUCH) might have already heard for Les Abranis or Frères Megri (already posted on the blog HERE) but this seems now to be completely obscure stuff.
Well obscure not exactly as in the end H.I. was nohting but an early pseudonym for Kabylian Diva from Djurdjura origin: Nora At Brahim.
If you're keep looking for interesting music from all over the world so you should check this blog. It is run by an american Ethnomusicologist who traveled a lot in this area. Of course everybody have already heard the sound of the tuareg's guitar. Beautiful stuff like Tinariwen. But on this blog you may find also modern stuff, and things he record by himself.
Here's a splendid love song in french by a African hobo:
You will also find there two very good releases : "Music from saharan cell phone". In this region people use cellphone as mp3player. Forget K7. This is now the first way for listening music in this zone. So he swap these track from cellphone to cellphone via Bluetooth with the people he met in Kidal (Mali).
So here come a few tracks from these major compilations.
Composer, stage director, comedian & virtuoso pianist, Ziad Rahbani son of Libanese pop superstar Fairuz & Assi Al-Rahbani is both an iconic & controversial figure in Middle Estern countries. Appart from his contribution to many succes of his mother is the man behind many remarquable scores for various Libanese, Egyptian movies...
While digging for rare soundtracks from the man (a post should follow soon), I felt on that record compiling rearranged instrumental tracks from the Lebanses diva. There's not much more to say, anyway those of you dear readers familiar with the likes of Vladimir Cosma or Francois De Roubaix should highly enjoy the songs posted above.
Two hot cuts as taken from the latest installment of the W.U.S. compilation series. Like the previous one the record is pretty well assembled with absolutley unkown Middle Easter bands but also including some rare & early stuff from nowadays Nothern Africa superstars like Naïma Samih (mp3 & picture below)...
Fans for the "Lucifer's Dream" Lp beware, despite the fact "Minx" pseudonym hides german flutist Ralf Nowy... This is no orchestral spacey rock in here! Could be compared to his other and later efforts...think Methusalem but in a far cheesier way.
Born in 1947, Messaoud Bellemou started learning the trumpet following the encouragements of a french teacher from his village: the elder man was convinced that the young boy had serious music predispositions and could probably escape from a life of labour in the fields.
In the early 70’s, Bellemou injected a modern style in Raï, replacing the ghasba flute (a flute made of reed) by his unique sound of trumpet, with a spicy hispanic touch.
Sidi’h’bibi, one of his first reccordings, made an huge succes in Algeria. It’s a very personnal version of a beautiful melody from the Judeo Moroccan folklore that many people actually recorded, one of the most interesting version being the furious rock version recorded in 1989 by the french band Mano Negra.
In company of his friends Bouteiba Sghir & Benfissa Younés, Bellamou came to the big city of Oran in order to play music in the clubs and earn a living with their art. They made several recordings together, true classics from this era, creating a new sound which announced the next generation of Raï production, from which big star of the genre are issued.
The Fawazeer are specials TV shows made for waiting the end of Ramadaan's fasting in Egypt during the 70's and 80's. There were two big stars dancing and singing, in an "indian bollywood" way : Sherihan and Nelly Kalfayan. It's a magic part of the disco scene from the country of Anubis. Like bollywood made in the Pyramides, with not so much space or money but a lot of brillant ideas, spellbindings melodies, a very good sense of rythm, poetry and a lot of humour. The following extract videos are about Sherihan, I will post an other time about Nelly.
