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Cheikha Rimitti – Dabri
From N’ta Goudami [Buy]

I’ll never forget the first time I heard Cheikha Rimitti. Our first year ethnomusicology professor chose an 1960s recording of Rimitti’s Dabri as core source material.  I’m sure we were supposed to learn a lot about variegated status of women in society and the liminal role of raï music in 20th Century Algeria. But Cheikha Rimitti’s voice was the one thing that stuck with me from that university course.

Her music almost swung, the gaspa flute whispering an insistent ostinato beneath the powerful voice of a woman who had obviously lived.  One day they’ll make a film of Cheikha Rimitti’s life, and it’ll be just as compelling as the stories of Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf or Judy Garland.

From the 1940s onwards Cheikha Rimitti scandalised conservatives in her native Algeria with songs about war, alcohol and sex. “Remettez-moi ça!” is what you might say to a waiter if you want another drink.  Apparently it’s from this oft-repeated phrase that Rimitti  gained her stage name:  she liked a drink or three.

After Algeria gained independence in 1962, Rimitti lived in effective exile in Paris because the new government banned her music. Here’s a video of her playing with a traditional ensemble at the Institut du Monde Arabe in 1994:

Cheikha Rimitti’s music is easier to find in France than in the UK. I’ve just picked up her final album, N’ta Goudami, recorded in 2005 when Rimitti was 83, a year before her death.  The disc features an updated version of Dabri, the song that first turned me on to her music in the late 1990s.

Rimitti embraced new musical influences as the years passed. The dance-oriented arrangements and modern instrumentation on N’ta Goudami are provided by contemporary Algerian musicians, but the essential power of Rimitti’s voice is undisturbed.  Despite the programmed beats and occasional vocoder, it’s still soul music, make no mistake about that.