Cheikha Rimitti Scopitone!

 

Watch it here.

 This is courtesy the FaceBook page (which I hope you can access) of the Archives Numérique du Cinéma Algérien, who say about it:

"Alors voici un document extrêmement rare et inédit sur internet: il s'agit d'un large extrait d'un scopitone de Cheikha Remitti tourné très probablement au début des années 1970 et dans lequel elle interprète le morceau "Aïn Kahla".

Nous sommes très heureux de partager avec vous ce document qui nous parait tout à fait exceptionnel.

Si vous reconnaissez le lieu de tournage n'hésitez pas à nous l'indiquer. S'agit-il de l'ouest algérien, d'un village du nord marocain, difficile à dire...

 

MAJ 22h08 : le film aurait été tourné à Debdou à l'est du Maroc, un grand merci à Nehams Ta pour la recherche

Un grand merci à la cinémathèque de Saint-Etienne de nous avoir permis de numériser ce scopitone au format super 8mm issu de notre collection."

 

For those of you who don't know French, the key points: it's an extract of a Cheikh Remitti scopitone, probably shot in the beginning of the 1970s, a segment of her song "Aïn Kahla." Filmed in the town of Debdou in eastern Morocco. (My guess is that the Algerian government would not have allowed, or made it very difficult, to film a Scopitone there.)

Some Cheikha Rimitti 45 RPM Record Jackets

This is one of Rimitti's earliest recordings, if not the earliest (and I have the good luck to own this one). One of the tracks, "Erraï Arraï, was, according to Andy Morgan, her first recording, in 1952, for the French Pathé label. But on a 78 rpm, so I'm not sure when this 45 rpm version was pressed. (It was made in France.) Note she was known at this time as Elrelizania (al-Relizania), due to the fact that she grew up in the town of Rélizane (Ghalīzān in Arabic) in Western Algeria. Side A: "Erraï Arraï" (in Arabic al-ray ya al-ray, or "rai o rai."), may be one of the earliest songs in the tradition with "rai" in the title. (Sorry, I'm not able to translate the lyrics.) The genre in which Rimitti performed at the time, however, was not known as rai but as "al-klām al-hazl" or “light, amusing, trifling, playful speech.” 

The reverse side of the jacket describes the tracks as "Chant Oranais avec flûte." The photo on the jacket suggests "folklore." Side B, "Kheira Sali Anbi" (Khayra Salli ‘Ala al-Nabi) -- I'm not sure how to translate the title. Salli ‘Ala al-Nabi means "prayers on the prophet," but what "khayra" (good, choice) means in this phrase, I do not know. 

But note, however, that this is, at some level, a "religious" song, challenging the notion that became prevalent in the late eighties that rai was quintessentially secular. (The work of Marie Virolle is an excellent guide to the place of religion in rai lyrics of artists like Rimitti.) Both these tracks can be found on the CD, Aux Sources du Rai: Les Cheikhat.

The cover of this 45 also indicates "folklore," and this is how Algerian labels had to market the music post-independence, in the puritanical Boumedienne era, which lasted until 1978. This Rimitti record was put out by Triomphe Musique, based in France. This is not Rimitti's photo on the cover. I've seen no Rimitti release with her own photo on it prior to the late eighties, when she became a star on the rai scene, particularly in France, where she had resided since 1978.

This is a release from the Algerian label El Feth, under the rubric "Chants Folkloriques Oranais." I find curious the decision to use a picture of Djoser's Step Pyramid at Sakkara in Egypt on the cover, rather than a scene of Algeria. Side B, "Touche Mami," is a well-known Rimitti song, and it seems sexually suggestive: "touche mami touche, à droite, à gauche." Which is why the label "folklore" was necessary as a kind of cover for music that was considered vulgar by official state culture.

 

This one is from the French label, La Voix De La Jeunesse, and although the disc itself contains the rubric, "Folklore Oranais," by the time this comes out it seems that the folklore marketed is much more sexualized than that sold under the name Rimitti (or Remitti) in previous years. 

This one is from Voix Nouvelle, a French label that specialized in North African music. When rai cassettes began to be released, it was pretty common for European women to be the face on the cover of releases from female rai singers, the chabas. I've found no links to any recordings of these two songs or any mention of them except for on discogs.com.

I don't know anything about Atlas Records. This seems to be a re-release of "Errai Arrai," from the 1950s. I've not found a version of "Hak Tachroub Hak" anywhere.

This one is really eye-opening, eh? This is apparently from 1980, since it is called "Nouveauté Folk 80." When rai was being marketed as something sexy and outré. I don't find these two tracks anywhere either.

Very cool Cheikha Rimitti 45" jacket

Isn't this great? First off, in Arabic the cover says al-Cheikh al-Rimitti, that is, the male form, and not Cheikha. And in Latin script, it says only "Rimitti." Now, it's not as if the record company (Oasis, based in Algiers) who put out this 45" didn't know who the artist was. The record itself says Cheikha Rimitti.

As does the reverse side of the record jacket.

Was the record company trying to entice buyers by tricking them into thinking the recording was by a male singer? Who knows?

(The source for the cover is here, from Jeremy Phillips, who made a shopping trip for vinyl in Morocco in 2014, and posted a mix based on his findings on Psych Funk. You can listen to the B-Side of the Rimitti release, "Zoubida Tendmi." It's straight-up Algerian cheikha music, known at the time as elklâm elhezal.)

The other cool thing about the cover is that the illustration is a cartoon, not a photo. I've not seen a Cheikha Rimitti record jacket with a cartoon on it before, nor do I recall in fact other rai recordings or for that matter, other Algerian recordings with a cartoon. Other Cheikha Rimitti record jackets I've seen have photos, and with possibly one exception, photos that are not of the Cheikha but of another woman, usually blonde and Western. Like this one (from the Casaphone label, based in Casablanca and Paris).

I did also find this recording, which features a drawing and not a photo. It's the jacket for "Ya Ouled El Djazaïr," also from Oasis -- but it's not a cartoon. This release, celebrating Algeria's independence, is from shortly after the FLN tossed out the French from Algeria, during the brief period of revolutionary ferment, when female artists like Cheikha Rimitti were not considered unrespectable, a period which ended in 1965 when Boumedienne toppled Ben Bella. You can listen to one version here, another here. I've no idea whether either of these are the original recording.

I posted about the "Balek Balek" record and someone commented that they had seen record jackets with the name "Cheikha Remettez" -- the spelling based on the story about how the cheikha got her name, ordering another drink at a saint's festival sometime in the 1940s. "Remettez la tournée," give me another drink. I'd love to see these.

And just for the record, I came across another photo of the Cheikha. She is the one with the tambourine. (I have to say, based on other photos I've seen, I'm not certain it is her.) The source is this blog post.

The 'rai rebel' Cheikha Rimitti was also a 'hadja'

The typical bio of the great rai artist Cheikha Rimitti will almost invariably label her as a "rebel," as the well-informed music journalist John Pareles does in his New York Times obituary of May 28, 2006. Also typical is an account of how she got her name -- which had to do with drinking -- and how, in a song recorded in 1954, Rimitti challenged sexual taboos regarding virginity for unmarried women. Pareles raises these two issues, as does almost everyone else. In an earlier post, I've tried to problematize, or at least complicate, both these stories.

The discourse surrounding Rimitti is consistent with the usual world music accounts of rai music, which stress its "rebel" quality and tend to emphasize the antagonism between the rai rebels and Islam.

To his credit, Pareles' obit does (as do many other accounts) acknowledge that Rimitti made the hajj to Mecca in 1976 (some say 1975) and that as a consequence she gave up drinking and smoking. She did not, however, give up performing, and her songs continued to be "edgy" when it came to the subjects of women and sex. I do not have the space to elaborate here, but it should be asserted that there is no necessary inherent contradiction between being a believing Muslim and singing in public about women's issues, including sexuality. (Unless, of course, one believes that salafist Wahhabis get to define what "real" Islam is.) The key source to consult on these issues, when it comes to rai, is Marie Virolle's La chanson raï.

When I visited the Barbès district of Paris in summer 1992, I found this cassette in one of the many cassette shops selling vast quantities of rai tapes. It's the only recording I've ever seen where Rimitti is called "Hadja" rather than "Cheikha."

The tracks are: "Sidi Bouabdala" (I presume this is the name of a saint); "Ya Mohamed Ya Rassoul" (O Mohamed O Prophet); "Sinia Halouha"; Hamra Ou Baida (Red and White); "Haoulih Ya Zerga"; and "Ya Oulidi Ouankhaf Aalik."

As far as I can tell "Ya Mohamed Ya Rassoul" is the only track that is unambiguously "religious," but of course, to do such a set of songs and include a song in praise of the Prophet Mohamed was a way of making the other material (if it does indeed deal with "secular" concerns like male-female relations) socially acceptable. (Virolle has written about how [Cheb] Khaled has used the same mechanism as a strategy. He typically used the song "Salu' 'ala al-Nabi" (Praise the Prophet) to open or close concerts in Algeria during the eighties, as a means of making his other material, dealing with, say, alcohol and dancing, acceptable.)

Cheikha (rai) 45" record jackets

Several writers on rai have observed that it was common practice in the '80s for the jackets of rai cassettes of the chabas (female rai singers of the "pop-rai" era) to feature European-looking models or a picturesque view of the Algerian countryside, while photos of the chebs (male singers) themselves adorned their cassettes. When I was combing through rai cassettes in the Barbès district of Paris in summer 1992, I saw dozens of examples, but unfortunately I don't think I bought any (or if I did I can't locate any) and I can't find any online. (You'll just have to believe me).

Lately I've been checking out vintage recordings of songs by cheikhas, the female singers of rai who preceded the chabas, and notice something interesting -- that the practice of decorating the chaba cassettes in this manner was probably simply a continuation of the way in which 45" cheikha record jackets were decorated. Check these out, for instance. (I can't source all of these, some are from Youtube videos, and some from this great website, Mes 45 Tours, and some from Toukadime's instagram site. Check both out for more fabulous record jackets.)

What is interesting here is that whereas the chabas were doing numbers of a decidedly "modern" character (with Western instruments and all), the recordings of the cheikhas are all backed by simply gasba (reed flute) and guellal (hand-held frame drum) and are much more "folkloric." (The cheikhas however were entirely the product of "modern" processes, in particular, the dispossession of the Algerian peasantry, and the subjects of their songs equally "modern": love, the problems of marginal women, drinking, migration, etc. In any case, the apparent discrepancy between the covers of these 45's and the "sound" of the music is quite remarkable. (And hopefully someone who reads this will have something more to say on the subject.)  

Cheikha Yamina el-Abbasia (the Abbasia refers to Sidi-Bel-Abbès). I don't have even any rudimentary information about her.

 

Cheikha Habiba Labassia was a star of the sixties. I'm fairly certain this is not a photo of her. It shows that not all jackets depicted Europeans, but this gallery demonstrates that it was pretty routine.

Another Cheikha Habiba Labassia (Abbassia) cover.

And one more. Super song.

Cheikha Habiba Saghira ("Little" Habiba, in reference to the "big" or original Habiba, Habiba Labassia), who was a star of the seventies and eighties. Another cover that does not feature a European, but it is a young and glamorous girl who is no doubt not the cheikha.)

Another Habiba Saghira. This is a great song, "Yasker ou Yebki," (He drinks and cries)

Cheikha Zallamite (or, Zalamite), from Saïda. I can't find this song, but check out this.

Cheikha Djenia (1954-2004) was born in Marhoum, a village close to Saïda, and her career lasted from 1970 until her death. Read more about her here. Here's one of her "folkloric" recordings.

And with Djenia we actually have a recording with a picture of the star in question. And as you can see from this video her performing live, you'll note that she eventually went electric.

Chaba Zoulikha. This is interesting because (1) it's possibly a photo of Zoulikha herself and (2) Zoulikha (1957-94) was not a rai chaba, but a Berber singer of chaoui music from the Aurès in Eastern Algeria. Check out the video of her live performance of the song "Soba Rach Rach" (in Berber song, not Arabic). I don't know why she is advertised here as though she was a rai singer, as she is almost always referred to as simply Zoulikha.

And of course the most famous of the cheikhas, Cheikha Remitti (more commonly spelled Rimitti). A great recording from the sixties.

And another one from Remitti. Great song.

And this is a photo of Rimitti that probably dates from before she became famous in the world music scene, in the late eighties.

Cheikha Rimitti, Charrak Gataa‘

I previously posted on this song (usually translated as "Tear, Cut" or "Tear, Lacerate,") recorded in 1954, arguing that the claim that the song was an unambiguous call on young Algerian women to abandon their virginity.

I've been searching for (a) a good transcription of the lyrics and (b) a translation. I went back to the task today and discovered that there are (at least) two versions of the song.

First, there is this version, released on Pathé in 1954, which is 6:07 long.

And, there is this version, which is 3:42 long.

The shorter version is one found on this CD, released by L'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, from a series of concerts Rimitti gave at the IMA in February 1994.

I found this translation here, which I've fixed just a bit, but it still doesn't make sense in a lot of places. It's a bit of a mess in fact. I will come back to it shortly, I hope, but in the meantime inshallah someone will see this and help me out!

Lacère, déchire 

lacère, déchire 

lacère, déchire  

la figure Rimitti revient

lacère, déchire 

j'ai déchirer droit sur le coté

la la la la la la

la route de Blida est loin

et nous prenons une taxi

route de Blida route de Blida

regardez moi ils m'ont demander de payer

lacère, déchire 

la figure de Rimitti est de retour

fais comme ci comme ça comme hier a l'hotel

comme hier sur le lit (bis) 

Ya ya ya

l'amour dans nos yeux chez les faikine

l'amour ya l'amour l'amour

retournade retournade retournade

retournade retournade fait le fort a celui qui le desir

l'amour ya l'amour l'amour

dix bagards est compagnon me devore

faiseur d'histoire nous envoyer des belle colombe

lacère, déchire lacère, déchire lacère, déchire 

lacère, déchire l'ombre de Rimitti reapparait

More later...