Record covers of previously obscure recordings are much more readily available these days, due to various sources: discogs.com, ebay auctions, and FaceBook groups. This was vinyl single from pop-rai singer Boussouar El Maghnaoui was recently auctioned on ebay. Unfortunately I was not able to secure it -- such recordings, from Algeria in the seventies, when pop-rai was being invented, have become eminently collectible.
Boussouar El Maghnaoui was a second-tier figure in the pop-rai scene that developed in western Algeria from the mid to late 1970s, less well remembered than figures like Messaoud Bellemou, Belkacem Bouteldja, or Boutaïba Sghir. On his recordings he was usually backed by Groupe El Azhar, from Oran. Other lesser (but nonetheless important) lights backed up on pop-rai recordings during this period include Gana El Maghnaoui, Hocine Chabatti (AKA Cheb Hocine), Boutaïba Sghir's brother Afif Bashir and Mohamed Mazouzi. El Maghnaoui hailed from Oujda in eastern Morocco, symptomatic of the substantial cultural contact across the border between the east of Morocco and the west of Algeria. (During the colonial period many Moroccans migrated to work in western Algeria during grape harvest season.)
I don't have access to these two songs from El Maghnaoui, but there are several that you can find on YouTube, including this one.
It is very much in the mode of the pop-rai produced in the same period by Bellemou and his group, based in Aïn Témouchent, and my guess would be that Bellemou set the standard which others then imitated. According to maghrebunion, who posted the video, it features Ghana El Maghnaoui on trumpet (playing Bellemou style) and "Kassem" from Oran on saxophone.
Check these out as well, courtesy the blog Phocéephone.
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