Maghreb Lyon

The role of Paris and Marseille in the production of North African music in France is well documented: less so that of France's third city, Lyon. This compilation by the hard-working Frémeaux brothers begins to remedy the situation for the outside world, at least for the period between 1972 and 1998. And, in particular, the booming recording scene centred round the city's Place du Pont, where producers like Merabet, Bouarfa and El Bahia churned out hundreds of cassettes for the patrons of the dozens of little workers’ cafés and cabarets. The performers consisted of Moroccans, Tunisians, and above all Algerians, usually holding down day jobs as leather workers or railway maintenance staff, and often working under stage names reflecting their origins: Zaid el Batni (from Batna) Samir Staïfi (from Setif) or Omar el Maghrebi, whose geographically ambitious name reflected his relatively major fame. The music on the records is heavy on tinny synthesizers, and backed up by bendir and darbuka percussion, sometimes screeching gasba flutes, and occasionally fiddles or guitars. There's plenty of rai and assorted regional micro-traditional styles, divided thematically across the CDs. One Maghreb Sonny & Cher-style duo named Tazi Boukhari & Aouicha provides a highlight, ‘Comment Faire?’, in which the former bewails his ditching by the latter after he’d left Algeria to follow her, a tale ending in tears, hand-clapping and much ululation to the fade-out.