Bonjour

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Legendary Algerian-French artist, Rachid Taha continues his music-with-no-boarders exploration. On this, his 8th studio album, Rachid Taha s 'Bonjour' is no ordinary greeting. It is not the standard 'bonjour' uttered reflexively in the street or on the telephone, but a more generous one reflecting Rachid s nature. Rachid has been offering to get acquainted for nearly 30 years now. For all that time, his music has been saying Bonjour, Bongiorno, Hola, Hello, As Salaamu Alaikum, and Guten Tag, greeting others with tireless, friendly enthusiasm. Recorded in Paris and New York City, his landscape continues to broaden from rai to rock and electro to Americana. The America Rachid loves is an idiosyncratic one, gleaned from John Ford westerns, Johnny * s country music and Elvis Presley s rock n roll. Yet on 'Ha baby', Rachid has achieved a perfect blend of country and Alger-style chabi popular music. This mixture of Kenny Rodgers and Farid El Atrache is a love song and jewel among others, with Hakim Hamadouche s Arab lute twinned with Marc Copely s National guitar to produce a set of finery Rachid offers to his beloved. 'Bonjour' sung in Arabic and French with Gatan Roussel, is a wonderful tribute to the French popular genre at its most sincere. Elsewhere, Rachid reflects on the fraternal bond between Jews and Arabs, continually buried under successive layers of hatred and suffering on 'Mabrouk aalik'. The uncompromising 'Mindjey', a hip-hop/jeel-music hybrid whose electro programming (by his son Lyes) forms a stunning alloy when brought into contact with a bewitching oriental scale.