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the definitive crossing and the daily problems of the young. “Problem” is a recurring word of Algerian parlance which they pick up on ad nauseam. They recite the Shahada in their concerts and naively confess to not understanding anything about the ploys of politics. Far from being stupid, they are aware that singing has become illicit. They go on singing because they enjoy it, because their public demands it and because, deep down, death means nothing. Once upon a time, during the colonial era, the masters (cheikh and cheikha) of Oranian song, such as cheikh Khaldi, cheikh Hamada, cheikha Rémiti were the keepers of traditional beduin culture whose mode of artistic expression was the poetry called melhoun. They had a double repertory: —The sayable, dealing with didactic and religious matters, questions of love and praise, and with the perpetuation of the group’s unadulterated values. This register was that of the votive feasts of the tribe’s saints, of marriages, circumcisions, etc. It was the site of living memory and of the underground resistance to colonial occupation. There the masters communicated with their audience in shared aesthetic representations; the values remained solid. —The unsayable, the forbidden, the repressed, what is unleashed when language bursts forth raw, brutal and proud of its transgressions. This register was reserved for small, limited audiences and for the places of bad renown. There the innovations were numerous and often illegal in the eyes of the censors. That’s where the roots of raï lie, which will develop in the seventies just as traditional Algerian society starts to disintegrate. “Where does the name ‘raï’ come from?” I had asked the taxi driver on the road from Oran to Mostaganem. The car’s radio-cassette player was blaring. “It makes you lose your head!” he had answered automatically. Châb al bâroud crackled on the player. It didn’t bother the driver. He upped the volume and shook his head as a connoisseur would. Today’s version, sung by cheb Khaled has nothing to do any longer with the nationalist epic of the thirties, which conjures up the “baroudeurs,” the fighters that were the companions of the Emir Abdelkader. Raï is the desire-scream of that which can never be: the searing intensity of the moment that leaves no trace one could contemplate later on in a nostalgic unveiling of the soul. It is an open wound that never scarifies. The most diverse references come together here: a crossbreeding at times successful, often hybrid, but always bearing witness to the disjunctions of an Algerian youth starved for life. Here love walks on the wild side. The brutality of desire lights up the flesh without any other intention than the imperfect jouissance of the occasion (as an example, the famous provocative refrain sung as a duo by Hasni and Zahouania: Derna l’amour fi barraka mranaka / We have made love in a shaky shed). But the lack of manners and of courtesy in no way prevents the total gift of self by the one—boy or girl—who is gripped by love. An unexpected love, defying all efficient planning. How not to be enthralled by the beauty of this plaint: Galbi bgha l’bayda wa zerga ‘lâh djât/ My heart desired the white, why did the blue (black, brown) come? indicating the struck lover’s surprise at the sudden apparition of the unexpected loved one. This simple question unfolds the surprising pain where bad luck pitilessly hammers the disoriented young man. The violence of the scream breaks all chains, all barriers; it scares the thirsty bird above the head. Raï stands solidly on the ground where one has to dance. But already blood and exile call us to other dérives… Translated by Pierre Joris