“One of the great singers in the world today, at the height of his powers”
THE OBSERVER
“Momentous. North Africa has no bigger star than Khaled... instantly recognisable across the Arab world”
THE INDEPENDENT
“Still irresistible after 17 years”
THE TIMES
Khaled is one of the biggest stars of world music, an Algerian singer who is universally acknowledged as the king of Rai music.
Khaled ignited the modern pop rai explosion in the mid 1970s - a time when singers could not sing openly about women, alcohol, sex, bars or society, and the metaphor reigned supreme. Through rejecting lyrical timidity and hypocrisy he became the musical mouthpiece of a whole generation who were born into the boiling euphoria and ecstatic hope that accompanied independence in 1962. This same generation came of age in the mid to late '70s when that hope and euphoria were already turning rancid and sour. They demanded the freedom to speak out loud about their frustrations, about sex and alcohol, military service, dole and exile. Rai became their vehicle, and Khaled their champion. Direct aggression or confrontation has never been Khaled's style. The secret of his success - and his survival - is that he manages to clothe controversy or conflict in a mile wide grin and a shower of infectious laughter.
Khaled Hadj Brahim was born on 29th February 1960 in Sidi El Houari, the old Spanish dock quarter of Oran. He grew up in Eckmühl, a quiet suburb of old French colonial townhouses, sandwiched between the Presidential Palace and the municipal Bullring. Despite the fact that neither his mother nor his father, who was a police mechanic, was especially musical, Khaled developed an early taste for sounds from Egypt, France, Spain and the USA. Formative idols included the Spanish boy star Joselito, Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel, Johnny Halliday, Elvis and the Beatles, Oum Khalthoum and Abdel Halim Hafez. Meanwhile, local 'wedding' music, especially the rural roots rai of Cheikha Remitti and the poignant songs of Blaoui Houari and Ahmed Wahby, impregnated the water and air that kept every youngster from Oran, including Khaled, alive. At the age of ten he fell under the spell of the radical chaabi band Nass El Ghiwane, from Morocco, whose plain speaking songs about corruption and oppression galvanised the whole of North Africa. This new love inspired Khaled to form his own band, 'Noujoum El Khams', ('The Five Star's'), and he started earning respectable amounts of pocket money at weddings and parties. One night he was spotted by a local producer who invited the 14-year-old into the studio to record his first vinyl 45, 'Trig Lyci', ('The Road to School'). By his late teens, Khaled, whose name had been augmented by the obligatory 'Cheb' prefix which denoted a young and charming rai singer, had already become a local idol and in 1985 he was crowned King of Rai at the Festival of Rai in Oran. But the lack of good studios and producers in Algeria, and the ever-present threat of military service, forced him to look for his future beyond the blue waters of the Mediterranean. In 1986 he was invited to perform at the legendary Rai Festival in Bobigny, a suburb of Paris, and by 1989 he had made France his home. He didn't return to Algeria until 1999 and didn't perform in his native Oran again until 2001. "How can I come and play party music in a country in mourning," was his habitual explanation for this long absence.
In 1991, Khaled signed a deal with Barclay, a venerable French label then owned by Polygram, and recorded 'Didi' with the producer Don Was. The song was a huge international success, and the album that carried it, 'Khaled', has sold just over a million copies worldwide. He followed it with 'N'ssi N'ssi', which became the soundtrack to Bertrand Blier's film 'Un, Deux, Trois, Soleil' and won a César for best soundtrack. In 1995 married the Moroccan beauty Samira Diabi in and was voted Francophone artist of the year at the prestigious Victoires de la Musique. The next year he collaborated with the renowned French songwriter Jean-Jacques Goldman to record 'Aicha', which, with its French lyrics, became the biggest hit of the year in France and brought both Khaled, and rai music, into the mainstream. Khaled had now reached altitudes of fame that no Arabic, let alone North African, musician had ever scaled. Two further albums, 'Sahra' and 'Kenza', both named after Khaled's daughters, cemented this extraordinary success, as did the '1-2-3 Soleil' concert with fellow Algerian stars Faudel and Rachid Taha at Paris' immense Bercy Stadium in 1998, and the subsequent live album and DVD. In a decade in which Algeria slipped and slid to the murderous depths of political and social hell, its most famous son became a global superstar and rai, a music which celebrates life, love and good times above all else became the style most freely associated with Algeria itself. This is just one of the ironies, twists and contradictions at the heart of the rai story.
During this rocket-like rise to fame, Khaled placed his trust in a small team of sympathetic producers like Don Was, Philippe Eidel, Michael Brook and Steve Hillage, to whom he entrusted the job of modernising and internationalising the rai sound, whilst he provided his trouncing soaring vocals and occasional improvised lyrics.
"My politics is making music and making people happy," he says, and adds, with his disarming ear-to-ear grin, "after love comes friendship," a phrase which he seems to be very fond of. Rai is not about Politics or Political rebellion, it is all about partying, conviviality, friendship, family, joy and life, the attributes that define Oran, and Khaled himself.
Khaled recently appeared at Liverpool's Philharmonic Hall at Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival, as part of the programme Liverpool: European Capital of Culture 2008 and continues to draw huge crowds internationally.
