WOMAD

Orchestre National de Barbès

From Algeria, France, Morocco

ONB: twelve groovy guys
The venue, in the working-class area of Arcueil, a suburb to the south of Paris, had been named "L'usine" (The Factory) and off the assembly line rolled music to the beat of "galsa" or "basta" (parties involving interactive rituals). For ten years, this venue haunted by phantoms of rock, such as Trust, and the binary demons, alongside African djinns, was the backdrop for the Orchestre National de Barbès and a good many artist friends who entered into trances which could last until dawn. Before finally handing the keys back (at the end of the lease), the ONB took the time to record their third opus there, live, as they had done with such resounding success in 1997, with the release of their stellar debut album, recorded during an outstanding performance at the Agora in Evry, a town south-east of Paris. Youcef Boukella, one of the pivots of the Franco-North-African group, explained: "We had made a few attempts in the studio, but were not satisfied with the results". "Poulina", their second official recording, was certainly an achievement in terms of production and sound, but did not truly reflect the band's hectic nature. Founded in 1995 by musicians from a variety of horizons (Algeria, Morocco and various cities and suburbs in France), the ONB first made a name for itself on stage where their group energy and repertory, with its savvy blend of colourful and melodious rhythms, caught the imagination of the punters. All this energy just had to find its way onto a record.
This is now the case with "Alik", meaning "watch out" (a term used by rai enthusiasts), an album demonstrating both maturity and mutation. Apart from the time spent on stage and some collaborations with other singers and groups (Idir, No One is Innocent etc.) over the past eight years, the ONB had never let up honing their project and had tried several times to cut the work. During this long gestation period they had ample opportunity to plunge once again into the "culture of exile" and to get back to their respective roots. Youcef Boukella, playing a bewitching bass, cut his teeth in jazz and rock formations (including the celebrated T34) in Algiers, the capital of chaâbi (popular casbah music); Kamel Tenfiche's heritage is reggae, hip hop and raggamuffin, having also bathed in Kabyle melodies from an early age; the immediately identifiable Tewfik Mimouni, on the synthesiser, knows his Moroccan classics; and Mehdi Askeur, The Voice, brought up on "trab" (traditional rai, with a ring of the steppes and the heady vineyards of the Oran plains) recalls a devilish sequence by Johnny Hallyday at the Oran Casino. These are the main composers of the album, but the ONB being a proper band, we have to point out that it is really a set of twelve brilliant individuals brought up on rai, rock, gnawa, and great groove in general. Let's try to name them all: Fatah Benlala, for chaâbi and Kabyle vocals, Fathellah Ghoggal and his Knopfler-inspired guitar, Khlif Miziallaoua playing more in Clapton style, Ahmed Bensidhoum who ranks with the great rai percussionists from the "shiouk" (master) era, Michel Petry packing a punch on the drums and Mustapha Mataoui, whose keyboard echoes with the sound of the savannah. All these guys have one thing in common: an undiminished joy of playing, obviously, but also a love of rock, the real, primitive stuff as dished up by the Rolling Stones, because they all know about the Stones/Beatles rivalry.
"Alik" gives this pride of place without neglecting the fundamentals. They pay a triple tribute to three great Algerian singers: Mohamed Larbi, aka Cheikh Mamachi (who died in 1988), one of the greatest Algerian-Bedouin singer-songwriters and the progenitor of trab, Slimane Azem (1918-1983), a kind of Kabyle Aesop, whose political commitments earned him banishment and death in exile, and Mohamed Mazouni, a dandy immigrant from the Sixties, who penned insolent French pop lyrics. The album opens with the ONB adaptation of a Larbi track, "Civilizi Oki", so good you can't tell whether it's rai that rocks or rock that rai-ses the roof. The bold Azem piece, "Résidence 2", with rhythms hovering between zouk and rumba, evokes the hot topic of the immigrant as eternal scapegoat, and the third track, a cover of Mazouni's "Lila", boasts the charm of these traditional melodies akin to the faded colours an old MGM movie. The rest of the songs, most of which were written by the four musketeers mentioned above, often feature chipper choirs and instinctive, spontaneous accents, various hints and references to gnawa tempo, "ay son" or accordion waltzes, like pirates of… Paris, mostly sung in French.
Some might say that "with a few exceptions, it really rocks!" And so what? We told you that these twelve guys not only had an oral heritage, but also a pop-rock background, by dint of seeing each and every Elvis Presley movie dozens of times over and listening to classics like "2000 Motels" featuring Frank Zappa and "Woodstock", collecting vinyls by Led Zeppelin, Bill Haley, Ten Years After and Deep Purple, analysing Cream and King Crimson LPs, or head banging in nightclubs in Algiers, Oran, Casablanca, Marseille and Paris to the cream of metal. At any rate, it was no accident that the ONB covered the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil", even if they did it their way (how else?). Remember that Brian Jones had recorded the Moroccan Rif group Jahjouka, in cahoots with Robert Palmer, and that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, who sometimes play an extract from the ONB's "Alaoua" in their concerts, brought Jahjouka back on the scene by covering one of their tracks, "Continental Drift". Whatever, like the ONB, let's not bother with categories, academic pronouncements, frontiers and DNA testing.
You won't find any guest stars to dazzle the punters or soothe the guys in Marketing on this album, but it does feature what we think matters most: a hot and varied beat with a truly authentic ring. With the ONB, there's no warm-up time, we get to sweatin' in no time.

(Biography written by Rabah Mezouane 2011)

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