Cheb Mami’s name may not be on the tip of your tongue, but odds are his music is. Over the past decade, this Algerian native has skyrocketed to the top of the world’s Arabic rai (pronounced “rye”) ...

Algeria is positioned at an unusual juncture with respect to both geography and history. As a Mediterranean state, it's been immersed for centuries in a wash of influences from all over Europe and ...

“World music” is an impossibly vague and imprecise term that raises more questions than it answers. But for vocalist, keyboardist and producer Lamine Fellah, “world music” neatly sums up the ...

For the Algerian band Democratoz, getting audience members up and dancing isn’t the only goal. They want a revolution. Known for their eclectic mix of Algerian rai, rock and reggae, the seven members ...

Cheikha Rimitti, a pioneer of the rebellious Algerian pop called rai, died May 15 in Paris, where she had lived since 1978. She was 83. Cheikha Rimitti was considered the queen of rai (RYE or rah-AY), ...

Cheikha Rimitti helped put raï music on the map–a cool, groovy style that originated in the Algerian port city of Oran in the 1920s, a mix of Bedouin folk music, French, Spanish, African and Arabic ...

Rai, an Algerian musical genre newly registered by the UN agency as part of the world's 'intangible cultural heritage', has accompanied the country's social changes for a century Cheb Khaled played a ...

PARIS - When Cheb Mami started singing as a boy in Algeria, rai music was banned from the radio because of its irreverent lyrics about desire, politics and the problems of everyday life. So Mami sang ...

Embed <iframe src="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1135764/135764" width="100%" height="290" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" title="NPR embedded audio player"> NPR's ...