Very popular all over the world, protest rock has never really had its place on the North African music scene. Back on a missed meeting between the public and the rock stars.
In 1977 the punk movement was born. And with him punk rock, a more dissenting derivative of rock from the early 1970s. A phenomenon that affected the whole planet, or almost. France, West Germany, Nordic countries, New Zealand or even Japan… After being born in Anglo-Saxon countries such as England, the United States and Australia, punk is sowing seeds everywhere in the world, conveyed by protesting and revolutionary spirits ... But while decolonizations took place fifteen years earlier, Africa, and more particularly that of the North, remains hermetic to the movement. It was not until the 1980s that “Arab rock” was born. A relatively discreet movement. Because today, the Maghreb youths have, for the most part, forgotten rock as a tool of protest to turn to rap.
Rock influences in Casablanca
“Arab rock” was born under the leadership of Carte de séjour, Rachid Taha's group. An Arab rock, therefore, but also French. Because the pioneers of this style are therefore children of immigrants, who have never really cut ties with their country of origin. But before Taha and his friends plug in the electric guitars, it is in Morocco that the members of Carte de séjour learned about rock. Mohamed Amini, guitarist of the group, says: “When I returned to Morocco every summer to see the family again in Casablanca, I found my cousins who were trendy guys. In my family there are both rural and town people, civil servants, executives; so their children had access to certain things. And I in Rillieux had another life: it was immigration and work. These stays with the cousins opened me up culturally. For example the film Tommy des Who, I saw it in Morocco, Woodstock too. Lots of stuff that I would never have been to see in France ”.
But while we qualify Carte de séjour as being an “Arab rock group” or a “Arab group”, its founders prefer to say that they do “French rock”. But in the Carte de séjour albums, we find fragments of “raïté”, but also of punk, reggae or new wave. In certain pieces, certain North African instruments, such as the oud, the bendir or the darbouka, give all its specificity to the Carte de séjour repertoire. The name “Arab rock” also comes from a decision by Rachid Taha to sing in Arabic. If he prefers to write his texts in French, the author will mainly use Algerian Darja, dialect Arabic, but also Oran expressions. We remember “Rock el Casbah”, inspired by The Clash. "Rachid developed a few ideas in French that we discussed, and we got help from Arabic-speaking students who were asked to transcribe them by making them more poetic," says Mohamed Amini. The protest was directed against French policies, against racism or against the Israeli occupation. This rock was therefore effectively more universal than simply Arabic. And the name of the group proves it.
Algerian student rockers
And in the Maghreb, then, did rock even exist one day? In the 1970s, the world of music saw a few scraps of rock appear… At the time, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and other groups were increasingly successful worldwide. In Algeria, rock will make a nice breakthrough, especially in student circles. T34 will be one of the pioneers of rock in Algiers. The group then makes noise in its university city of Ben Aknoun. Timlilit, Khinjar, Metro and even Afous scour the university stages to distill their rock. But we are far from the protest rock of the late 1970s. Today, the Algerian rock scene is thin, but real: we can notably quote Baaziz and his “Chaâbi Rock'n Bled”. More cosmopolitan, the gnaoui, of Kabyle origin but also from sub-Saharan Africa, is the Saharan counterpart of African rock. The trend of In Morocco, it is in Casablanca that the rock scene was born in the 1960s. It was only later, in the “years of lead”, that Moroccan rock took a more anti-establishment turn. Without a major stage, Moroccan rockers play in rather confidential places.
It is a little what slowed down the rise of rock. But not only. Because another style of protest has been emulated in the Maghreb, especially in 2011 at the time of the "Arab Spring". The underground scene becomes the flagship of youth. But here it is not a question of punk or rock, it is rap which becomes the main tool of contestation. Artists who become the singers of a rebellious youth. The rockers, them, remain in the minority and are less publicized. The population sees in the electric riffs, in the metal and in the punk, sounds too sulphurous. Rap, always in Darja, becomes the popular art par excellence, while rock is often sung in English. Rap is interested in societal problems where rock contests the politics of the powers that be. It's an undeniable fact: since the 1960s, rock has never really broken through in the Maghreb, where rappers are now rock stars.