All Around This World’s “During Dinner Playlists” introduce you to a different country each week, proving just enough music for your family to enjoy during family-dinner. During Dinner Playlists are available through the “Public Playlists” tab on AATW’s Spotify page.
Each week there is a new During Dinner playlist, consisting of about an hour of recommended songs, to provide musical context for that week’s Explore Everywhere content.
Most recent: THE MUSIC OF ALGERIA
Some Algerian history:
For several thousand years Algeria’s indigenous multi-lingual, multifaceted “Berber” population, living either nomadically or in small communities in Algeria’s vast Saharan desert, in the Atlas mountains or along the Mediterranean, fought back invasions by Phoenicians, Romans and Byzantines — most didn’t make it any further than the coast. [BERBER/KABILYE MUSIC] Eventually the Romans did take charge, bringing early Christianity, but they had declined by the 8th century arrival of Arabs and Islam, opening up trade routes not only with the East but with Islamic lands in in Andalusia, southern Spain. [MALOUF] By the 16th and 17th centuries Spanish Christians had “reconquered” the land and pushed out most Muslims. The Spanish developed enclaves in Northern Africa [CHAABI] and their ships fought Berber (“Barbary”) pirates along the coast, so much that though the Ottomans (Turks) ruled Algeria for three hundred years, from the mid-1500s to the mid 1800s, the Turks didn’t develop a firm hold. The French invaded and took Algeria in 1830.
France ruled Algeria until 1962 when Algerian nationalists won a brutal war and were granted independence. A series of Algerian governments followed, including authoritarian military leadership, and civil wars between secular and Islamic forces, causing musicians who criticized the powerful on either side to live in exlie, mainly in France. [RAI]
Today Algerians have developed a more stable parliamentary approach to dealing with secular/religious conflict and a marginal amount of dissent is tolerated. Still, many Algerians, including artists and musicians, live in French-speaking nations abroad, becoming more international by the day. [RAI/ROCK/ELECTRONICA/PUNK, ALGERIAN R&B/POP] Other socially critical musicians have maintained more of a foothold in Algeria but have adopted [RAP AND HIP HOP] as a way to forcefully tell their stories. Algerian-based MBS and Intik, whose members rap in French and Darija, are among the most popular.
Musicians listed in order they appear in the playlist.
Hadj Mohamed Tahar Fergani is an Algerian violinist, composer and singer most known for performing malouf, a genre of Arabic classical music popular in North Africa. Malouf, a term that means “familiar” or “customary,” is performed by small orchestras composed of violins drums, sitars and flutes. Musicologists believe it originated in Baghdad in the 9th century but traveled westward with its founder, a famed court musician — and astronomer, geographer, meteorologist, botanist and chef — nicknamed Ziryab (“nightingale”) when he fell out of favor in the Baghdadi court and moved to Andalusia, in Spain.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Hadj Mohamed Tahar Fergani’s malouf” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— El Hachemi Guerouabi:
Respected Algerian performer of Algerian chaabi, an Arabic/Berber form of North African music that first appeared in the 19th century, mixing Berber and Andalusian (Spanish) lyrical themes and scales.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: El Hachem Guerouabi” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— Zaho:
Zaho (Zehira Darabid) is an R&B/pop singer who was born and raised in Algeria, where she became a devoted fan of Bob-Dylan-inspired Algerian folk singer-songwriter Francis Cabrel. When she was 18 she emigrated to Montreal and has become one of the most prominent Algerian-Canadian musicians.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Zaho” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— Souad Massi:
Massi is an Algerian singer/songwriter and activist based in France. As a youth she studied Arabic-Andalusian classical music but first became known for performing all over Algeria with a Kabyle (Berber) hard rock band, Atakor. After her socially conscious, anti-fundamenalist music drew the ire of local religious leaders she relocated to Paris where she has continued both her performing and her activism.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Souad Massi” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— Khaled:
Khaled Hadj Ibrahim, aka “Khaled,” is known worldwide as the “King of Rai.” Born in 1960 and raised in the Oran province of Algeria, Khaled hit his musical stride in the 1980s as a leading pioneer of modern Rai music. He became a global artist in 1993 when his song “Didi” became a massive international hit, inspiring remakes in dozens of languages. He has since sold over 80 million albums. That’s a lot!
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Khaled” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
Rachid Taha is an Algerian-born rai/rock/electronica/punk artist who adventurously fuses many styles of music to create a French-Arabic-North African global sound.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Ya Rayah” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— Takfarinas is the stage name of Ḥsen [Hassen] Zermani, an Alerigan/Berber “Yal” artist currently based in France. Zerman’s main traditional instruments, beyond his flexible voice, is the “takfa,” a lute that he has modified by adding a second fretboard (neck). “Takfarinas” is the name of an ancient Berber warrior (Tacfarinas) who fought the Romans when they had a presence North Africa.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Takfarinas” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
Menguellet is an Algerian Berber singer-songwriter whose Kabyle-language songs have become increasingly more socially conscious as Berber/Kabyle people in Algeria have become more unified in their struggle for cultural and political recognition.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Ait Manguellet” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— Houria Aichi
Aichi is a Berber-Chaouia musician from the North-Eastern Algerian Aurès plateau. Based in France, she performs traditional Berber music and often accompanies herself on a bendir. Read an interview with Aichi in which she explains how and why women have become primary culture-bearers in Berber Algeria.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Houria Aichi” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— Kamel Messaoudi
An Algerian Berber artist born in 1961 and raised in a suburb of Algiers, Messauodi was a popular chaabi artist at the time of the 1998 car accident that took his life.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Kamel Messaoudi (the pace picks up at about 3:00)” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— El Hadj Mohamed El Anka
El Anka was a grand master of Andalusian-Arabic classical music and a pioneer of Algerian chaabi. Over the several decades of his mid-20th century career he wrote and recorded hundreds of songs that became popular in Northern Africa through newly available media of records and radio.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: El hadj Mohamed El Anka” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
— Idir
Born Hamid Cheriet, the Algerian-Berber composer known by the stage name “Idir” is a beloved Kabyle musician and activist. He has recorded with, and written songs that have been popularized by, internationally known artists like Kahled, Zaho and Manu Chao.
[wpspoiler name=”Teach Kids About Algeria: Idir” open=”true” style=”aatw-video”][/wpspoiler]
Past playlists:
— AFRICAN FLUTES, XYLOPHONES AND STRING INSTRUMENTS
