Sofiane Saidi & Mazalda

O Sofiane Saidi & Mazalda

A new electro-Maghreb vision of that genre by Sofiane Saidi, called sometimes "the Prince of Raï 2.0". 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. An amalgam of local Algerian and Western popular-music styles, raï emerged as a major world music genre in the late 1980s. A new electro-Maghreb vision of that genre by Sofiane Saidi, called sometimes "the Prince of Raï 2.0", blends oriental science and contemporary urgency with the vivid and colourful sound of Mazalda: analogue synthesizers, saz and horns accompanied by phrases from the mezoued, the gazbah and an ultra-danceable rhythm articulated around the percussionist depths of raï.