Algeria

Artists from Algeria, the birthplace of rai and a major centre of Amazigh music.

Rai came out of Oran in the early twentieth century, sung in the bars and shrines of the port by women whose material was frank enough to keep them off the radio for decades. It went electric in the 1970s, went global in the 1980s and 1990s, and made Algerian singers into some of the most recognisable musicians in the Francophone world.

Kabyle and wider Amazigh music runs alongside it as a separate and equally significant tradition, one that has carried language politics on its back for fifty years.

The other constant is France. Algeria’s diaspora is large and long-established, and a great deal of Algerian music has been made in Paris, Marseille and Lyon. Contemporary rap and electronic artists here work across both countries as a matter of course.