Sometime in the winter of ’93, I heard about Didi. <\/i>Then I heard the song. Then I learnt that the music was a form called Rai, and the singer was an Algerian named Khaled Hadj Brahm. My uncle ( my maternal grandfather’s younger brother’s youngest son, and a year elder to me ) won a prize at a local dance competition groving to this song. Even AR Rahman, in one of his interviews, mentioned how much he loved Khaled’s music. My father bought a cassette for me, some label called Peacock Music <\/i>which, as I found out from The North-Eastern Sun that used to run anti-piracy ads, was a pirated label. That’s why it cost only 22 rupees.<\/p>\n
Then came the mandatory follow-ups. Khaled sang Didi<\/i> in Hindi, yessir, with atrocious pronounciation and much rolling of the words “Bharr de bharr de, dil ki dua oh dilruba”. The HMV cassette ( again, bought by my father ) also had Mory Kante’s original Tama Tama<\/i> and some wacky song called Nappy Rap <\/i>(which I am still looking for, it was THAT weird a song) A song called Ladki Ladki <\/i>was featured in a Hindi film called ‘Shrimaan Aashiq’, the lyrics of the song modified to make it an anti-women\/anti-love song.<\/p>\n
It was much later that I began to listen to the other Khaled songs on the album, and whatever else I could find. El Harbi <\/i>was cool, so was N’ssi N’ssi. Hey Ouedi<\/i> featured a stunning violin solo( or was that some other traditional bowed instrument?) In college, loads of friends had mp3 collections of Khaled’s songs filed under World Music, and it was a treat rediscovering the the old ones and trying out newer tracks. Aicha Aicha<\/i>, later remixed as a hiphop track, has one of the funkiest guitar riffs ever. There was a live version of El Harbi, <\/i>a Bhangra mix, a Club version, none of which has the charm of the original version.Sahra <\/i>(named after Khaled’s daughter), Wahrane<\/i> ( a tribute to his hometown), Yalla Bina<\/i> ( the only Khaled song whose Bhangra version sounded better than the original).<\/p>\n
Ya Rayah ( <\/i>which I suspect is a cover version of a folk song), has been copied by Sanjeev Darshan in ‘Mann’ as Kaali Naagin Jaisi<\/i>. <\/p>\n
Seems the guys who produced Khaled’s eponymous album ( which was his first international venture) were Don Was and Michael Brook. The same Michael Brook who collaborated with U Srinivas on Dream<\/i> and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on Musst Musst <\/i><\/a>and Night Song<\/a>.<\/i> Man, that guy pops up everywhere. Seems that album charted maximum sales in (gulp!) India. I wonder if they counted the pirated albums too, when they came up with this statistic.<\/p>\n Khaled: Live in Paris<\/i> was an absolute delight. Live versions of all the familiar songs, variations aplenty. He is accompanied by fellow Rai artistes Faudel and Rachid Taha, and a superb set of instrumentalists ( the electric guitar solo that comes at the end of Didi<\/i> , ooooh), and the three voices complement each other very well. Abdul Kader<\/i> is a song that’s traditional, but sounds great live, with three voices and a combination of ethnic Middle-eastern and western instruments. The energy of the live performance is just awesome, as you can hear from the audience response ( people singing along to most of the songs ) <\/p>\n Some Khaled songs sound very poppish, completely Western instrumentation. I have never been able to like Chebba<\/i>, for instance. Not that the song is bad, but a voice like that deserves better.<\/p>\n Find of the week: El Harbi Wine<\/i> (from the album Kenza <\/i>) was one of the songs in my Khaled folder, which I heard pretty recently. Starts off with a very familiar tabla beat,( later I remembered it was the same as the beat at the beginning of Tere Bina [Sanoo Ek Pal] <\/i>from <\/a>Musst Musst<\/a>. Hmm, the Michael Brooks connection strikes again) and then Khaled is joined by a female voice who sings in Hindi. The song is very similar in mood to Hisham Abbas’s Naari Naari. <\/i>a little cheesy at times, overexaggerated Bollywood homages and all.The female voice interested me, and a couple of googles led me to her name. She is Amar, a UK based singer who has her own album<\/a> , part of which is produced by Nitin Sawhney. Interestingly, Amar is the same voice I had heard on the song O Meri Jaan<\/i> in Talvin Singh’s ‘Sounds of The Asian Underground<\/a>‘. The song said ‘Talvin Singh feat Amar’ and I didn’t realise Amar was the female voice.<\/p>\n Khaled is cool. Definitely.<\/p>\n Note: If you listen to Khaled, and like his music, you might also be interested in albums like Jimmy Page\/Robert Plant’s No Quarter<\/i>, which has interesting reinterpretations of Led Zep songs with middle-eastern instruments. Deep Forest: Live in Japan<\/i>, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Shehbaaz,<\/i>Hisham Abbas’s Naari Naari, <\/i>and I can’t seem to think of any other album right now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sometime in the winter of ’93, I heard about Didi. Then I heard the song. Then I learnt that the music was a form called Rai, and the singer was an Algerian named Khaled Hadj Brahm. My uncle ( my maternal grandfather’s younger brother’s youngest son, and a year elder to me ) won a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/489\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beatzo.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}