Massi i Stefano

Souad Massi is that rarest of Algerian performers – she doesn't sing rai music. But more than that, she's an accomplished singer/songwriter, a kind of North African Tracy Chapman, although she works in the Maghrebi genre of sha'bi as much as she does in folk music or soft rock. Electric guitars and touches of flamenco, oud, and the Arabic bass gimbri all help bring a real distinctiveness to her sound, which certainly has more in common with many American '60s protest singers than her contemporaries in Africa (indeed, to some she's Joan Baez reborn). Coke's production (he has worked with Ben Harper) is very sympathetic, bringing a live feel to the record ("Matebkiche" is, in fact, completely live). "Bladi" is a perfectly catchy song, its oud line deftly leading into Massi's smoky voice, and "Nekreh El Kelb" has a vital urgency.

Souad Massi - Deb (Heart Broken)
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 307 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Wrasse Records # WRASS 096 | Country/Year: Europe 2003
Genre: Folk, Pop | Style: World, Chanson

The sophomore album from the "Arabic Tracy Chapman." While that would imply a deep folk-guitar base for her music, that's really not the case. What the album is made of is an extremely eclectic mix of sounds. The base for it all is in Algerian and Andalusian musics, with rai, flamenco and Arab classical music being the main keystones. (…) Pick it up for a nice relaxed listen.

Sequana is the tenth album by Franco-Algerian singer-songwriter Souad Massi. If her music was previously coloured with folk and chaabi, the sound palette broadens here as far as the Sahel, the Caribbean and Brazil, with Justin Adams (Rachid Taha, Tinariwen, Robert Plant) on production. Souad Massi continues on her path as a committed, liberated woman singing about the causes close to her heart. Sequana is a collection of ten songs, nine of which were written by her, with the intention of capturing the passage of time and that which we must strive to preserve and pass on. The album draws on a diversity of musical styles – folk, country, rock, calypso, bossa, along with sounds of the Middle East and the Algerian desert.