Raï rock

Raï راي
Cover arts of Raï albums of the 1980s
Stylistic origins	Bedouin music malhun wahrani
Cultural origins	Early 20th century in the Oranie region, Algeria
Typical instruments	Accordion bass guitar bendir darbuka drum machine electric guitar ney saxophone synthesizer trumpet violin
Fusion genres
Raï'n'B
Local scenes
Aïn Témouchent Mascara Oran Relizane Saïda Sidi Bel Abbès
Other topics
Music of Algeria

Raï (IPA: [rɑi]; Arabic: راي‎‎), sometimes written rai, is a form of Algerian folk music that which dates back to the 1920s. Singers of Raï are called cheb (Arabic: شاب) (or shabab, i.e. young) as opposed to sheikh (Arabic: شيخ) (shaykh, i.e. old), the name given to Chaabi singers. The tradition arose in cities like Oran, Relizane, Mostaganem, Chlef, Aïn Témouchent and Sidi-Bel-Abbès, primarily among the poor. Traditionally sung by men, by the end of the 20th century, female singers had become common. The lyrics of Raï have concerned social issues such as disease and the policing of European colonies that affected native populations.

Raï is a type of Algerian popular music that arose in the 1920s in the port city of Oran and that self-consciously ran counter to accepted artistic and social mores. It appealed to young people who sought to modernize the traditional Islamic values and attitudes. Regional, secular, and religious drum patterns, melodies, and instruments were blended with Western electric instrumentation. Raï emerged as a major world-music genre in the late 1980s.

In the years just following World War I, the Algerian city of Oran—known as “little Paris”—was a melting pot of various cultures, full of nightclubs and cabarets; it was the place to go for a bawdy good time. Out of this milieu arose a group of male and female Muslim singers called chioukhs and cheikhates, who rejected the refined, classical poetry of traditional Algerian music. Instead, to the accompaniment of pottery drums and end-blown flutes, they sang about the adversity of urban life in a raw, gritty, sometimes vulgar, and inevitably controversial language that appealed especially to the socially and economically disadvantaged. The cheikhates further departed from tradition in that they performed not only for women but also and especially for men.