Martin Evans talks to Steve Chandra Savale about his love of Algerian singer Cheikha El Remitti
By: Jacob Norris
Last updated: Wednesday, 2 December 2020
In 2019 I worked with him on an installation explaining Asian Dub Foundation’s particular sonic and historical journey that fuses punk with elements of dub, jungle and bhangra in a uniquely London way. This installation was a key part of the exhibition Paris-Londres. Music Migrations 1962-1989 which ran at the French National Museum of the History of Immigration in Paris between 12 March 2019 and 5 January 2020 (https://www.palais-portedoree.fr/en/paris-londres (Links to an external site.)). Together we have a shared passion for the remarkable Algerian singer Cheikha El Rimitti whose career, championing Algeria’s poor and dispossessed, began in the late 1930s. Ahead of Sarah El Hamed’s talk on Cheikha Rimitti, Steve explained to me how he fell in love with her music.
"I first heard Cheikha Rimitti walking past a music store in Marseilles in the late 1990’s. I’d heard Algerian Rai music before of course, but not the raw source, and there’s one thing Cheikha is and that’s raw. It’s the sound of a fiercely independent woman defying the expectations of a rural patriarchy and dancing between the hostile camps that are usual legacy of colonialism. Often this meant falling foul authorities of various political hues, proof indeed that her hardcore rural Rai is one of the world’s great rebel musical genres.
The uptempo, pounding guellal drum melded perfectly with Asian Dub Foundation’s predilection for Drum N Bass grooves ,while the haunting split harmonics of the gasba in my mind seem to symbolise a geographical halfway point between India and the UK. Her voice is a rich female tenor that is at once commanding, fearless and transcendental without seeming to try very hard.
I ran into the cassette store and demanded to buy whatever that sound was, and came out with about 10 cassettes and so began an obsession with the music of the region. Thus the band were well prepared when we got the call from Guy Morley of Brighton Festival to re-score the masterpiece that is Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 film Battle of Algiers.
Like so many artists shoehorned into the the belittling “World Music” genre her sound could often be toned down by lightweight “modern” production, though one of the tracks I’ve chosen is a fantastically minimalist Rai/drum machine clash (“Mzinha lil ti Elbareh”) that I think will be filling Western dancefloors in about 20 years from now. It’s THAT good."
Clips of Cheikha El Remitti can be watched here: