Triumph – Rock & Roll Machine

Glastonbury is perhaps the biggest music festival in the UK and this year U2, Coldplay, Beyonce, Dizzee Rascal, Shakira and Florence and the Machine are just some of the acts to play.

Our monuments to the triumph of the human spirit are grand and bold structures, monoliths that stretch to the heavens just as easily as they crumble to the earth. These are tributes to great people, grand journeys, and the weight of history. In our desire to honor the enormity of humankind, we might forget to also pay appropriate tribute to all the moments that make our lives and those within it beautiful and fantastically surreal. But here, in service of the intrinsic heart and whimsy at the core of the lived-experience of our lives is a trio of expert songwriters, Who Is She?

Delving into the deepest recesses of raï, this compilation serves as a tribute to its roaring years, but also as a rejuvenation of the genre in its sulphurous, subterranean version. It seemed like a good idea to dig into nearly untraceable cassettes, thus confirming it’s in the oldest of Oranese pots that the very best of raï is to be found. Just 50 years ago, no one would have believed even a bit in a genre seemingly bound to forever turn round and round in its native Oran, laying low in one of its many coastal road clubs.