알제리 민족음악 담론과 라이

National Music Discourse of Algeria and the Raï

Algerian new government had to build the unity of the country from an ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity, linking the past interrupted by colonization to the present. For this, Andalusian traditional noble music was promoted as a music model serving as a source for the Algerian identity. Many researchers have tried to reconstruct the history of Andalusian music to justify its antiquity by proving the continuity. However, the raï, marginalized from its beginnings, becomes a world music and symbol of Algeria. In fact, raï did not originally fit the criteria of tradition. When the raï was a great success, the government, which needed to legitimize it, tried to give it some desirable attributes. Many studies of raï tried to go as far as possible in search of it’s origin and to link it with chaâbi, derived genre from Andalusian music. The raï phenomenon reveals that Algeria s unidimensional identity was based simply on an imaginary.