Sunday, April 26, 2009

Rachid Taha at Festival International de Louisiane


We spent the night at the festival grounds yesterday and saw a ton of great music. The evening ended with Rachid Taha. He was fantastic. It is tough to describe a mixture of punk, techno and raï (which is a form of folk music that originated in Oran, Algeria, and then in Oujda from Bedouin shepherds, mixed with Spanish, French, African and Arabic musical forms).

My wife's quote as we left the stage area after one of the last songs was: "Songs like that are why I love festival." She was referring to an awesome drum driven song that whipped the crowd into a frenzy immediately following Taha's cover of The Clash's Roch the Casbah. Clips from the Clash cover and the "drum frenzy" song are below (sound quality is what you would expect from a small digital camera placed in a crowd at a concert). I've also uploaded a few pictures from his performance.

Rock the Casbah Cover:



"...why I love festival":


3 comments:

The Whiskey said...

thank you.

Unknown said...

You're welcome! Come down next year.

The Whiskey said...

Yes, I think I must. I'll have more vacation time coming to me next year, so I hope I can swing it.