108-494: Rachid Taha ( Arabic : رشيد طه , Rashīd Ṭāhā , [raʃiːd tˤaːhaː] ; 18 September 1958 – 12 September 2018) was an Algerian singer and activist based in France described as "sonically adventurous". His music was influenced by many different styles including rock , electronic , punk and raï . Taha was born on 18 September 1958 in Sig , Mascara Province , Algeria , although
216-466: A BBC critic to describe him as a "shit-disturbing artist who risks challenging his own culture as undemocratic." A report in The Guardian suggested that Taha had achieved a cult status in pop music. Taha's breakthrough album as a solo artist was his bestseller Diwân , featuring remakes of songs from Algerian and Arab traditions. The album featured traditional instruments like the oud but with
324-580: A "contemporary veneer of programmed percussion and samples added in." Taha mixed the oud with strings using a contemporary beat along with guitar work, according to one account. Taha's album Tékitoi , produced by Steve Hillage and released in 2004, brought acclaim and recognition from other rock musicians. The title track is "street slang" meaning, roughly, Who the Hell Are You? (from the French Tu es qui, toi ? shortened into T'es qui, toi ? ) and
432-882: A "full and varied instrumental palette" along with "a dizzying vocal facility that transcends whatever style he's plugged." The album was recorded in Paris, New Orleans , and London with input from the American jam band Galactic . Taha saw parallels between African and American music and said "New Orleans is like Algiers ... They were both French colonies at one time, and there's even an area there called Algiers ," and he noted that Louisiana Zydeco drum patterns were similar to raï music. Made in Medina combined Algerian roots, techno , pop music, and early rock and punk influences with "remarkable consistency" with previous works, according to Hillage. There were elements of political protest in his music leading
540-562: A collection of related dialects that constitute the precursor of Arabic, first emerged during the Iron Age . Previously, the earliest attestation of Old Arabic was thought to be a single 1st century CE inscription in Sabaic script at Qaryat al-Faw , in southern present-day Saudi Arabia. However, this inscription does not participate in several of the key innovations of the Arabic language group, such as
648-435: A corpus of poetic texts, in addition to Qur'an usage and Bedouin informants whom he considered to be reliable speakers of the ʿarabiyya . Arabic spread with the spread of Islam . Following the early Muslim conquests , Arabic gained vocabulary from Middle Persian and Turkish . In the early Abbasid period , many Classical Greek terms entered Arabic through translations carried out at Baghdad's House of Wisdom . By
756-1077: A dialect of Arabic and written in the Latin alphabet . The Balkan languages, including Albanian, Greek , Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian , have also acquired many words of Arabic origin, mainly through direct contact with Ottoman Turkish . Arabic has influenced languages across the globe throughout its history, especially languages where Islam is the predominant religion and in countries that were conquered by Muslims. The most markedly influenced languages are Persian , Turkish , Hindustani ( Hindi and Urdu ), Kashmiri , Kurdish , Bosnian , Kazakh , Bengali , Malay ( Indonesian and Malaysian ), Maldivian , Pashto , Punjabi , Albanian , Armenian , Azerbaijani , Sicilian, Spanish, Greek, Bulgarian, Tagalog , Sindhi , Odia , Hebrew and African languages such as Hausa , Amharic , Tigrinya , Somali , Tamazight , and Swahili . Conversely, Arabic has borrowed some words (mostly nouns) from other languages, including its sister-language Aramaic, Persian, Greek, and Latin and to
864-657: A drunk on stage. While these are the symptoms of Arnold Chiari disease. I'm stumbling because I'm losing my balance. I'm wavering. It generates a disruption in the body." Taha died from a heart attack in his sleep on 12 September 2018, six days before his 60th birthday. A posthumous album, Je suis Africain , previously finished before his death, was released on September 20, 2019. Arabic language Arabic (endonym: اَلْعَرَبِيَّةُ , romanized : al-ʿarabiyyah , pronounced [al ʕaraˈbijːa] , or عَرَبِيّ , ʿarabīy , pronounced [ˈʕarabiː] or [ʕaraˈbij] )
972-698: A few months later, I heard Rock the Casbah." He cackles mischievously. "Maybe they did hear it after all." The incident has since gone down in French rock legend. – report in The Guardian , 2007 Taha believed his early recordings helped to inspire The Clash to create the song " Rock the Casbah ". A New York Times music reporter wrote of Taha's cover version of the Clash's hit song probably influenced by his earlier work: Is "Rock El Casbah", with its images of sheiks gusting through
1080-561: A front-page story that Taha was Egyptian rather than Algerian, but later posted a correction. Later, in 2007, Taha-as-an-immigrant was mentioned in France's National Center of the History of Immigration. When performing live, Taha wore various outfits, including at one point a leather fedora hat, then later a red cowboy hat . The band's second and last LP entitled Ramsa (Five) was released in 1986. The band dissolved in 1989. In 1989, Taha moved to Paris to launch his solo career. At one point he
1188-520: A kind of conformism. You have to be adventurous." Taha was not fond of contemporary French cinema and said "I'd much rather watch some dumb Hollywood movie than another haute bourgeois auteurist piece of crap." He was a critic of the Bush administration although he made comments favoring a bombing raid on Iran , and said that "Iran shouldn't be allowed to have nukes." Taha suffered from Chiari malformation diagnosed in 1987. "I'm tired of people thinking I'm
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#17328590978261296-483: A lesser extent and more recently from Turkish, English, French, and Italian. Arabic is spoken by as many as 380 million speakers, both native and non-native, in the Arab world, making it the fifth most spoken language in the world, and the fourth most used language on the internet in terms of users. It also serves as the liturgical language of more than 2 billion Muslims . In 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked Arabic
1404-677: A millennium before the modern period . Early lexicographers ( لُغَوِيُّون lughawiyyūn ) sought to explain words in the Quran that were unfamiliar or had a particular contextual meaning, and to identify words of non-Arabic origin that appear in the Quran. They gathered shawāhid ( شَوَاهِد 'instances of attested usage') from poetry and the speech of the Arabs—particularly the Bedouin ʾaʿrāb [ ar ] ( أَعْراب ) who were perceived to speak
1512-548: A new producer, Gaëtan Roussel . Denselow wrote: "The result is an unlikely set in which Taha appears to be deliberately courting a new, wider market by playing down that wild rebel image." Denselow felt the music was more "commercial" and "not his most exciting." It included a "rousing tribute" on his cover song Rock El Casbah to the late Clash guitarist Joe Strummer. In 2010, Taha played in Toronto , Canada to large audiences. Taha performed with Algerian artist Mehdi Haddab who plays
1620-576: A result, many European languages have borrowed words from it. Arabic influence, mainly in vocabulary, is seen in European languages (mainly Spanish and to a lesser extent Portuguese , Catalan , and Sicilian ) owing to the proximity of Europe and the long-lasting Arabic cultural and linguistic presence, mainly in Southern Iberia, during the Al-Andalus era. Maltese is a Semitic language developed from
1728-462: A script derived from ASA attest to a language known as Hasaitic . On the northwestern frontier of Arabia, various languages known to scholars as Thamudic B , Thamudic D, Safaitic , and Hismaic are attested. The last two share important isoglosses with later forms of Arabic, leading scholars to theorize that Safaitic and Hismaic are early forms of Arabic and that they should be considered Old Arabic . Linguists generally believe that "Old Arabic",
1836-531: A second source suggests he was born in the Algerian seacoast city of Oran . This town was the "birthplace of raï" music, and 1958 was a key year in the Algerian struggle for independence against French authority. He began listening to Algerian music in the 1960s, including street-style music called chaabi . Additionally, music from the Maghreb region was part of his upbringing. He moved with his parents to France when he
1944-530: A set of songs that match crunching guitar chords, simple riffs and angry lyrics (in French and Arabic) with subtle, wailing flourishes of North African embellishment. – Robin Denselow, The Guardian , 2007 The thrumming beat in this 21st century Räi piece is ancient and high-tech, showing how gripping a single drum can be, even when we cannot tell whether it is living or looped. The lyrics ricochet back and forth between French and Arabic, and we remember that Räi began in
2052-465: A single language, despite mutual incomprehensibility among differing spoken versions. From a linguistic standpoint, it is often said that the various spoken varieties of Arabic differ among each other collectively about as much as the Romance languages . This is an apt comparison in a number of ways. The period of divergence from a single spoken form is similar—perhaps 1500 years for Arabic, 2000 years for
2160-569: A skinny black suit and plays probably the most exciting guitar he has delivered in years. He and the band are brilliant on Taha's definitive take on "Rock the Casbah", for which the audience goes berserk." They again played Taha's version of the song, "Rock el Casbah", in February 2006, at the France 4 TV show Taratatà. In 2007 at the Barbican, ".... The band were later joined by special guest Mick Jones from
2268-503: A type of Arabic. Cypriot Arabic is recognized as a minority language in Cyprus. The sociolinguistic situation of Arabic in modern times provides a prime example of the linguistic phenomenon of diglossia , which is the normal use of two separate varieties of the same language, usually in different social situations. Tawleed is the process of giving a new shade of meaning to an old classical word. For example, al-hatif lexicographically means
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#17328590978262376-499: A variety of regional vernacular Arabic dialects , which are not necessarily mutually intelligible. Classical Arabic is the language found in the Quran , used from the period of Pre-Islamic Arabia to that of the Abbasid Caliphate . Classical Arabic is prescriptive, according to the syntactic and grammatical norms laid down by classical grammarians (such as Sibawayh ) and the vocabulary defined in classical dictionaries (such as
2484-470: A wider audience." In the wake of the industrial revolution and European hegemony and colonialism , pioneering Arabic presses, such as the Amiri Press established by Muhammad Ali (1819), dramatically changed the diffusion and consumption of Arabic literature and publications. Rifa'a al-Tahtawi proposed the establishment of Madrasat al-Alsun in 1836 and led a translation campaign that highlighted
2592-727: Is a Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world . The ISO assigns language codes to 32 varieties of Arabic , including its standard form of Literary Arabic, known as Modern Standard Arabic , which is derived from Classical Arabic . This distinction exists primarily among Western linguists; Arabic speakers themselves generally do not distinguish between Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic, but rather refer to both as al-ʿarabiyyatu l-fuṣḥā ( اَلعَرَبِيَّةُ ٱلْفُصْحَىٰ "the eloquent Arabic") or simply al-fuṣḥā ( اَلْفُصْحَىٰ ). Arabic
2700-585: Is a minimum level of comprehension between all Arabic dialects, this level can increase or decrease based on geographic proximity: for example, Levantine and Gulf speakers understand each other much better than they do speakers from the Maghreb. The issue of diglossia between spoken and written language is a complicating factor: A single written form, differing sharply from any of the spoken varieties learned natively, unites several sometimes divergent spoken forms. For political reasons, Arabs mostly assert that they all speak
2808-542: Is a sister language rather than their direct ancestor. Arabia had a wide variety of Semitic languages in antiquity. The term "Arab" was initially used to describe those living in the Arabian Peninsula , as perceived by geographers from ancient Greece . In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside the Ancient South Arabian family (e.g. Southern Thamudic) were spoken. It
2916-469: Is believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages (non-Central Semitic languages) were spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hejaz , Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages. In Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested. In eastern Arabia, inscriptions in
3024-408: Is credited with establishing the rules of Arabic prosody . Al-Jahiz (776–868) proposed to Al-Akhfash al-Akbar an overhaul of the grammar of Arabic, but it would not come to pass for two centuries. The standardization of Arabic reached completion around the end of the 8th century. The first comprehensive description of the ʿarabiyya "Arabic", Sībawayhi's al - Kitāb , is based first of all upon
3132-468: Is credited with standardizing Arabic grammar , or an-naḥw ( النَّحو "the way" ), and pioneering a system of diacritics to differentiate consonants ( نقط الإعجام nuqaṭu‿l-i'jām "pointing for non-Arabs") and indicate vocalization ( التشكيل at-tashkīl ). Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi (718–786) compiled the first Arabic dictionary, Kitāb al-'Ayn ( كتاب العين "The Book of the Letter ع "), and
3240-566: Is not present in the spoken varieties, but deletes Classical words that sound obsolete in MSA. In addition, MSA has borrowed or coined many terms for concepts that did not exist in Quranic times, and MSA continues to evolve. Some words have been borrowed from other languages—notice that transliteration mainly indicates spelling and not real pronunciation (e.g., فِلْم film 'film' or ديمقراطية dīmuqrāṭiyyah 'democracy'). The current preference
3348-439: Is obscured by a veiled camouflage hat. The reason for this is that Jones was in a bad mood during the film shoot. Jones' face remains hidden until the final 30 seconds of the clip, when Strummer pulls the hat off at the "he thinks it's not kosher!" line. Topper Headon left the band because of a drug problem before the song was released at the beginning of the band’s Combat Rock tour, and was replaced by Terry Chimes, who appears in
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3456-836: Is official in Mali and recognized as a minority language in Morocco, while the Senegalese government adopted the Latin script to write it. Maltese is official in (predominantly Catholic ) Malta and written with the Latin script . Linguists agree that it is a variety of spoken Arabic, descended from Siculo-Arabic , though it has experienced extensive changes as a result of sustained and intensive contact with Italo-Romance varieties, and more recently also with English. Due to "a mix of social, cultural, historical, political, and indeed linguistic factors", many Maltese people today consider their language Semitic but not
3564-559: Is the third most widespread official language after English and French, one of six official languages of the United Nations , and the liturgical language of Islam . Arabic is widely taught in schools and universities around the world and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, governments and the media. During the Middle Ages , Arabic was a major vehicle of culture and learning, especially in science, mathematics and philosophy. As
3672-584: Is the variety used in most current, printed Arabic publications, spoken by some of the Arabic media across North Africa and the Middle East, and understood by most educated Arabic speakers. "Literary Arabic" and "Standard Arabic" ( فُصْحَى fuṣḥá ) are less strictly defined terms that may refer to Modern Standard Arabic or Classical Arabic. Some of the differences between Classical Arabic (CA) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) are as follows: MSA uses much Classical vocabulary (e.g., dhahaba 'to go') that
3780-413: Is to avoid direct borrowings, preferring to either use loan translations (e.g., فرع farʻ 'branch', also used for the branch of a company or organization; جناح janāḥ 'wing', is also used for the wing of an airplane, building, air force, etc.), or to coin new words using forms within existing roots ( استماتة istimātah ' apoptosis ', using the root موت m/w/t 'death' put into
3888-516: Is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the industrial and post-industrial era , especially in modern times. Due to its grounding in Classical Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic is removed over a millennium from everyday speech, which is construed as a multitude of dialects of this language. These dialects and Modern Standard Arabic are described by some scholars as not mutually comprehensible. The former are usually acquired in families, while
3996-445: The Lisān al-ʻArab ). Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) largely follows the grammatical standards of Classical Arabic and uses much of the same vocabulary. However, it has discarded some grammatical constructions and vocabulary that no longer have any counterpart in the spoken varieties and has adopted certain new constructions and vocabulary from the spoken varieties. Much of the new vocabulary
4104-566: The 1953 coup d'état —which overthrew the democratically elected leader Mohammad Mosaddegh —to the Islamic Revolution of 1979 , which resulted in overthrowing the rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi , king of the Imperial State of Iran , and the hostage crisis at the U.S. embassy in Tehran , rupturing their diplomatic relations —followed by Jimmy Carter , who was criticized for the way he handled
4212-696: The Joe Strummer – Mick Jones songwriting partnership. Upon entering the studio to hear Headon's recording, the other Clash members were impressed with his creation, stating that they felt the instrumental track was essentially complete. From this point, relatively minor overdubs were added, such as guitars and percussion. However, Strummer was not impressed by the page of suggested lyrics that Headon gave him. According to Clash guitar technician Digby Cleaver, they were "a soppy set of lyrics about how much he missed his girlfriend". "Strummer just took one look at these words and said, 'How incredibly interesting!', screwed
4320-561: The Xth form , or جامعة jāmiʻah 'university', based on جمع jamaʻa 'to gather, unite'; جمهورية jumhūriyyah 'republic', based on جمهور jumhūr 'multitude'). An earlier tendency was to redefine an older word although this has fallen into disuse (e.g., هاتف hātif 'telephone' < 'invisible caller (in Sufism)'; جريدة jarīdah 'newspaper' < 'palm-leaf stalk'). Colloquial or dialectal Arabic refers to
4428-494: The northern Hejaz . These features are evidence of common descent from a hypothetical ancestor , Proto-Arabic . The following features of Proto-Arabic can be reconstructed with confidence: On the other hand, several Arabic varieties are closer to other Semitic languages and maintain features not found in Classical Arabic, indicating that these varieties cannot have developed from Classical Arabic. Thus, Arabic vernaculars do not descend from Classical Arabic: Classical Arabic
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4536-592: The oud . Taha's song "Habina" was featured in the 2010 film, It's Kind of a Funny Story . Guitarist Carlos Santana recorded his song Migra which went on to sell over 25 million copies. In recent years, Taha toured nations including the United States and Dubai . In 2013 Taha released the Zoom album, which was produced by guitarist Justin Adams and featured guests Mick Jones and Brian Eno;. Jones toured with Taha as part of
4644-419: The "learned" tradition (Classical Arabic). This variety and both its classicizing and "lay" iterations have been termed Middle Arabic in the past, but they are thought to continue an Old Higazi register. It is clear that the orthography of the Quran was not developed for the standardized form of Classical Arabic; rather, it shows the attempt on the part of writers to record an archaic form of Old Higazi. In
4752-694: The "purest," most eloquent form of Arabic—initiating a process of jamʿu‿l-luɣah ( جمع اللغة 'compiling the language') which took place over the 8th and early 9th centuries. Kitāb al-'Ayn ( c. 8th century ), attributed to Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidi , is considered the first lexicon to include all Arabic roots ; it sought to exhaust all possible root permutations —later called taqālīb ( تقاليب ) — calling those that are actually used mustaʿmal ( مستعمَل ) and those that are not used muhmal ( مُهمَل ). Lisān al-ʿArab (1290) by Ibn Manzur gives 9,273 roots, while Tāj al-ʿArūs (1774) by Murtada az-Zabidi gives 11,978 roots. Rock
4860-454: The 11th and 12th centuries in al-Andalus , the zajal and muwashah poetry forms developed in the dialectical Arabic of Cordoba and the Maghreb. The Nahda was a cultural and especially literary renaissance of the 19th century in which writers sought "to fuse Arabic and European forms of expression." According to James L. Gelvin , " Nahda writers attempted to simplify the Arabic language and script so that it might be accessible to
4968-562: The 4th to the 6th centuries, the Nabataean script evolved into the Arabic script recognizable from the early Islamic era. There are inscriptions in an undotted, 17-letter Arabic script dating to the 6th century CE, found at four locations in Syria ( Zabad , Jebel Usays , Harran , Umm el-Jimal ). The oldest surviving papyrus in Arabic dates to 643 CE, and it uses dots to produce the modern 28-letter Arabic alphabet. The language of that papyrus and of
5076-812: The 8th century, knowledge of Classical Arabic had become an essential prerequisite for rising into the higher classes throughout the Islamic world, both for Muslims and non-Muslims. For example, Maimonides , the Andalusi Jewish philosopher, authored works in Judeo-Arabic —Arabic written in Hebrew script . Ibn Jinni of Mosul , a pioneer in phonology , wrote prolifically in the 10th century on Arabic morphology and phonology in works such as Kitāb Al-Munṣif , Kitāb Al-Muḥtasab , and Kitāb Al-Khaṣāʾiṣ [ ar ] . Ibn Mada' of Cordoba (1116–1196) realized
5184-555: The Casbah " Rock the Casbah " is a song by the English punk rock band The Clash , released in 1982 as the second single from their fifth album, Combat Rock . It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US (their only top 10 single in that country) and, along with the track "Mustapha Dance", it also reached number eight on the dance chart. The music for "Rock the Casbah"
5292-417: The Clash (with Terry Chimes on the drums) miming a performance of the song, with a storyline depicting two characters travelling together throughout Texas. The video depicts a Muslim hitchhiker (played by actor Titos Menchaca) and a Hasidic Jewish limo driver (Dennis Razze) befriending each other on the road and skanking together through the streets to a Clash concert at Austin's City Coliseum. Throughout
5400-399: The Clash as spokesfolk for adventurism in the Middle East might have been enough to bring Joe Strummer back from the dead." Vulture writer Bill Wyman in 2017 ranked the song number ten of all the band's 139 songs, calling it "one of the greatest rock singles of all time." Wyman further wrote, "Like other Clash songs, this song requires some historical context" about Iran , starting from
5508-570: The Indian musical style known for its length and complexity). Strummer later returned to his room at the Iroquois Hotel in New York City and wrote the opening lines to the song: "The King told the boogie-men 'you have to let that rāga drop.'" The song gives a fabulist account of a ban on Western rock music by a Middle Eastern king . The lyrics describe the king's efforts to enforce and justify
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#17328590978265616-412: The Middle East and North Africa have become a badge of sophistication and modernity and ... feigning, or asserting, weakness or lack of facility in Arabic is sometimes paraded as a sign of status, class, and perversely, even education through a mélange of code-switching practises." Arabic has been taught worldwide in many elementary and secondary schools, especially Muslim schools. Universities around
5724-672: The Qur'an is referred to by linguists as "Quranic Arabic", as distinct from its codification soon thereafter into " Classical Arabic ". In late pre-Islamic times, a transdialectal and transcommunal variety of Arabic emerged in the Hejaz , which continued living its parallel life after literary Arabic had been institutionally standardized in the 2nd and 3rd century of the Hijra , most strongly in Judeo-Christian texts, keeping alive ancient features eliminated from
5832-512: The Romance languages. Also, while it is comprehensible to people from the Maghreb , a linguistically innovative variety such as Moroccan Arabic is essentially incomprehensible to Arabs from the Mashriq , much as French is incomprehensible to Spanish or Italian speakers but relatively easily learned by them. This suggests that the spoken varieties may linguistically be considered separate languages. With
5940-432: The United States, possibly because Americans were not keen on Arabic-sounding music during the time of the first Gulf War . In 1993, Taha again worked with Hillage who helped produce his second solo album, the self-titled Rachid Taha and helped him achieve "the kind of clubland-raï synthesis". Hillage worked on nine solo Taha albums from 1993 to 2006, helping Taha return to his "north African roots". In 1995, he released
6048-522: The Zoom project. The album included a new recording of "Voilà, Voilà". Taha also recorded " Now or Never " (words and music by Aaron Schroeder / Wally Gold and previously recorded by Elvis Presley ), which features Jeanne Added singing in English. The song '"Barra Barra'" from his album Made in Medina was featured in the 2001 film Black Hawk Down as well as in the Games Convention 2008 trailer of
6156-488: The album entitled Olé Olé with Taha looking like an "Aryan androgyne" with dyed blond hair and blue contact lenses, to make a point about anti-Arab bigotry and at the "homophobia of North African culture." Valencia features the singing of Kirsty Hawkshaw . In 1997, his song " Ya Rayah " became a hit. He performed in the Canary Islands . In 2001, Taha released Made in Medina , and a music critic commented that he used
6264-535: The album version of the song. Rather, it features a remix by Mick Jones and Bob Clearmountain with a "murkier" sound, more pronounced guitar and piano, more prominent sound effects, and the toy synth sound of the third verse turned down. The single has several issues, all with different cover, format and B-side (see the table below). The music video for "Rock the Casbah" was filmed in Austin, Texas by director Don Letts on 8 and 9 June 1982. It intermixes footage of
6372-407: The ban, and the populace's protests against it by holding rock concerts in temples and squares ("rocking the casbah"). This culminates in the king ordering his military's fighter jets to bomb the protestors; however, after taking off, the pilots ignore his orders and instead play rock music on their cockpit radios, joining the protest and implying the loss of the king's power. The events depicted in
6480-420: The casbah!" Not hearing Strummer properly, Dogg thought that Strummer had been shouting at him to "stop, you cadger!" Further inspiration for the lyrics of "Rock the Casbah" originated from Strummer observing the band's manager Bernie Rhodes moaning about The Clash's increasing tendency to perform lengthy songs. Rhodes asked the band facetiously "does everything have to be as long as this rāga ?" (referring to
6588-414: The city of Oran , whose windows are supposed to face away from the sea to gaze only on the desert sand. – Dwight Garner, The New York Times , 2008 Taha was described as "gregarious" and "quick with a smile." A person who liked to party throughout the night, he also had a cosmopolitan group of friends. Taha was quoted as saying "I've never wanted to just stay in my own neighborhood, my own community ... It's
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#17328590978266696-665: The composer duo Sanjeev–Darshan for their song "Kali Nagin Ke Jaisi" in the soundtrack of the bollywood film Mann ( transl. The Psyche). Some critics attribute Taha's unique sound to his use of the mandolute , a mixture of the traditional oud with European fretted instruments. One critic described his arrangements as "no less bombastic" since they mixed North African rhythms and "string orchestra flourishes" with "pummeling big-beat techno, distorted electric guitars, snatches of Bo Diddley , Led Zeppelin and other macho sounds." Taha's blend of anger and angst has been distilled into
6804-772: The confidence to do the same with whatever music they were into. In some ways, they introduced us to the world. – Rachid Taha, in The Guardian , 2007 Taha met members of the group The Clash in Paris: It was September 1981, and Taha bumped into all four members of the band just before they were due to play at the Théâtre Mogador in Paris . Taha gave them a copy of a demo tape by his band, Carte de Séjour (Residence Permit), an outfit from Lyon who combined Algerian raï with funk and punk rock. "They looked interested," remembers Taha, "but when they didn't get in touch, I thought nothing of it. Then,
6912-567: The conversion of Semitic mimation to nunation in the singular. It is best reassessed as a separate language on the Central Semitic dialect continuum. It was also thought that Old Arabic coexisted alongside—and then gradually displaced— epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA), which was theorized to have been the regional tongue for many centuries. ANA, despite its name, was considered a very distinct language, and mutually unintelligible, from "Arabic". Scholars named its variant dialects after
7020-674: The desert in Cadillacs and cracking down on 'degenerate' disco dancers, an indictment of the oil-choked, religiously fanatical Arab world, or a wry comment on the West's cartoonish vision of the region? No listener to the recording can doubt that it is both, or that in Mr. Taha, a rumpled North African with a buzz saw voice, the Clash has an unlikely heir. – Jody Rosen , 2005 These were difficult years since record stores often refused to stock their records "because they didn't want Arabs coming into their shops". There
7128-577: The emergence of Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include: There are several features which Classical Arabic, the modern Arabic varieties, as well as the Safaitic and Hismaic inscriptions share which are unattested in any other Central Semitic language variety, including the Dadanitic and Taymanitic languages of
7236-728: The eve of the conquests: Northern and Central (Al-Jallad 2009). The modern dialects emerged from a new contact situation produced following the conquests. Instead of the emergence of a single or multiple koines, the dialects contain several sedimentary layers of borrowed and areal features, which they absorbed at different points in their linguistic histories. According to Veersteegh and Bickerton, colloquial Arabic dialects arose from pidginized Arabic formed from contact between Arabs and conquered peoples. Pidginization and subsequent creolization among Arabs and arabized peoples could explain relative morphological and phonological simplicity of vernacular Arabic compared to Classical and MSA. In around
7344-593: The fact that they participate in the innovations common to all forms of Arabic. The earliest attestation of continuous Arabic text in an ancestor of the modern Arabic script are three lines of poetry by a man named Garm(')allāhe found in En Avdat, Israel , and dated to around 125 CE. This is followed by the Namara inscription , an epitaph of the Lakhmid king Imru' al-Qays bar 'Amro, dating to 328 CE, found at Namaraa, Syria. From
7452-403: The fourth most useful language for business, after English, Mandarin Chinese , and French. Arabic is written with the Arabic alphabet , an abjad script that is written from right to left . Arabic is usually classified as a Central Semitic language . Linguists still differ as to the best classification of Semitic language sub-groups. The Semitic languages changed between Proto-Semitic and
7560-414: The game Far Cry 2 . It was also featured in the 2007 film The Hunting Party . His song "Garab" from Made in Medina was used in the movie The Truth About Charlie in 2002, and also in Blood and Chocolate in 2007. His song " Ya Rayah " from his album Carte Blanche (Rachid Taha album) was used in the movie Something New (film) (2006) [1] "Ya Rayah" was also allegedly plagiarized by
7668-432: The girls in the casbah danced to the blocked trumpet. Then Taha fell on his ass. – Montreal Gazette , 2007 In 2008 he performed with the band Dengue Fever . He was described as a ""wild Algerian punk fan" performing among a lineup which read like a "Who's Who of West African music ", and was part of "Africa Express", a response to the lack of African musicians at Bob Geldof 's Live 8 musical extravaganza. In 2008, Taha
7776-694: The help of British guitarist Steve Hillage , the group achieved a "sharp, driving sound" which played well on the radio, and the LP was entitled Rhoromanie . In his songwriting, Taha wrote about living in exile and the cultural strife associated with being an Algerian immigrant in France. In 1986, his "sneering punk-rock cover of 'Douce France'" was seen as an "unmistakable protest against the nation's treatment of its immigrant underclass", and caused consternation in French political circles. His song "Voilà, Voilà" protested racism. Taha had to cope with anti-Arab sentiment and confusion; for example, The New York Times stated in
7884-679: The hostage crisis, losing the 1980 U.S. presidential election to Ronald Reagan . Algerian rock singer Rachid Taha covered the song (in Algerian Arabic and the chorus in English) on his 2004 album Tékitoi . On 27 November 2005 at the Astoria, London, during the Stop the War Coalition Benefit Concert , "...for the night's grandstanding conclusion, the Clash legend Mick Jones strides on in
7992-579: The inclusion of new words into their published standard dictionaries. They also publish old and historical Arabic manuscripts. In 1997, a bureau of Arabization standardization was added to the Educational, Cultural, and Scientific Organization of the Arab League . These academies and organizations have worked toward the Arabization of the sciences, creating terms in Arabic to describe new concepts, toward
8100-608: The language. Software and books with tapes are an important part of Arabic learning, as many of Arabic learners may live in places where there are no academic or Arabic language school classes available. Radio series of Arabic language classes are also provided from some radio stations. A number of websites on the Internet provide online classes for all levels as a means of distance education; most teach Modern Standard Arabic, but some teach regional varieties from numerous countries. The tradition of Arabic lexicography extended for about
8208-401: The late 1970s, Taha founded the nightclub called The Rejects or, in French, Les Refoulés , where he would spin mashups of Arabic pop classics over Led Zeppelin , Bo Diddley and Kraftwerk backbeats . In the 1980s, Algeria's indigenous pop music known as raï began to achieve international attention. Originally raï music was based on "city slickers adapting music from the sticks" and
8316-599: The late 6th century AD, a relatively uniform intertribal "poetic koine" distinct from the spoken vernaculars developed based on the Bedouin dialects of Najd , probably in connection with the court of al-Ḥīra . During the first Islamic century, the majority of Arabic poets and Arabic-writing persons spoke Arabic as their mother tongue. Their texts, although mainly preserved in far later manuscripts, contain traces of non-standardized Classical Arabic elements in morphology and syntax. Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali ( c. 603 –689)
8424-420: The latter is taught in formal education settings. However, there have been studies reporting some degree of comprehension of stories told in the standard variety among preschool-aged children. The relation between Modern Standard Arabic and these dialects is sometimes compared to that of Classical Latin and Vulgar Latin vernaculars (which became Romance languages ) in medieval and early modern Europe. MSA
8532-883: The many national or regional varieties which constitute the everyday spoken language. Colloquial Arabic has many regional variants; geographically distant varieties usually differ enough to be mutually unintelligible , and some linguists consider them distinct languages. However, research indicates a high degree of mutual intelligibility between closely related Arabic variants for native speakers listening to words, sentences, and texts; and between more distantly related dialects in interactional situations. The varieties are typically unwritten. They are often used in informal spoken media, such as soap operas and talk shows , as well as occasionally in certain forms of written media such as poetry and printed advertising. Hassaniya Arabic , Maltese , and Cypriot Arabic are only varieties of modern Arabic to have acquired official recognition. Hassaniya
8640-461: The mic stand. The percussion undulated in, the trumpet and keys re-creating a North African swirl. Ste. Catherine St. was a sea of clapping hands. Some fans tried to get an Algerian flag waving and abandoned it to dance. Taha brought the crowd down and then back up for coute-moi camarade, an irresistible bounce about female treachery from the Diwan 2 album. But given there is always a subtext to Taha's music,
8748-500: The music had "echoes of Joe Strummer", according to a review in The Observer . In 2005 Taha performed with Robert Plant , Patti Smith and Brian Eno . He covered The Clash song " Rock the Casbah " which he retitled with the Arabic name of "Rock El Casbah". This song appeared in the 2007 film about Clash frontman Joe Strummer entitled The Future Is Unwritten . The song suggested rock music as "banned but unstoppable". Taha performed
8856-768: The need for a lexical injection in Arabic, to suit concepts of the industrial and post-industrial age (such as sayyārah سَيَّارَة 'automobile' or bākhirah باخِرة 'steamship'). In response, a number of Arabic academies modeled after the Académie française were established with the aim of developing standardized additions to the Arabic lexicon to suit these transformations, first in Damascus (1919), then in Cairo (1932), Baghdad (1948), Rabat (1960), Amman (1977), Khartum [ ar ] (1993), and Tunis (1993). They review language development, monitor new words and approve
8964-424: The one whose sound is heard but whose person remains unseen. Now the term al-hatif is used for a telephone. Therefore, the process of tawleed can express the needs of modern civilization in a manner that would appear to be originally Arabic. In the case of Arabic, educated Arabs of any nationality can be assumed to speak both their school-taught Standard Arabic as well as their native dialects, which depending on
9072-549: The overhaul of Arabic grammar first proposed by Al-Jahiz 200 years prior. The Maghrebi lexicographer Ibn Manzur compiled Lisān al-ʿArab ( لسان العرب , "Tongue of Arabs"), a major reference dictionary of Arabic, in 1290. Charles Ferguson 's koine theory claims that the modern Arabic dialects collectively descend from a single military koine that sprang up during the Islamic conquests; this view has been challenged in recent times. Ahmad al-Jallad proposes that there were at least two considerably distinct types of Arabic on
9180-427: The piece of paper into a ball and chucked it backwards over his head." Strummer had been developing a set of lyrical ideas that he was looking to match with an appropriate tune. Before hearing Headon's music, Strummer had already come up with the phrases "rock the casbah" and "you'll have to let that raga drop", as lyrical ideas that he was considering for future songs. After hearing Headon's music, Strummer went into
9288-410: The region may be mutually unintelligible. Some of these dialects can be considered to constitute separate languages which may have "sub-dialects" of their own. When educated Arabs of different dialects engage in conversation (for example, a Moroccan speaking with a Lebanese), many speakers code-switch back and forth between the dialectal and standard varieties of the language, sometimes even within
9396-458: The same sentence. The issue of whether Arabic is one language or many languages is politically charged, in the same way it is for the varieties of Chinese , Hindi and Urdu , Serbian and Croatian , Scots and English, etc. In contrast to speakers of Hindi and Urdu who claim they cannot understand each other even when they can, speakers of the varieties of Arabic will claim they can all understand each other even when they cannot. While there
9504-399: The service covering the area during Operation Desert Storm . In one of the campfire scenes late in the 2007 documentary Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten , a friend states that Strummer wept when he heard that the phrase "Rock the Casbah" was written on an American bomb that was to be detonated on Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Following the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 ,
9612-458: The sole example of Medieval linguist Abu Hayyan al-Gharnati – who, while a scholar of the Arabic language, was not ethnically Arab – Medieval scholars of the Arabic language made no efforts at studying comparative linguistics, considering all other languages inferior. In modern times, the educated upper classes in the Arab world have taken a nearly opposite view. Yasir Suleiman wrote in 2011 that "studying and knowing English or French in most of
9720-548: The song along with The Clash musician Mick Jones . The Guardian selected "Rock El Casbah" as one of the top 50 cover songs. Taha played in Morocco in 2006. In 2007, Taha performed in Canada and a reporter from the Montreal Gazette described his performance while wearing a "pewter pimp suit" which was "stunning": Rachid Taha did not disappoint. ... Taha leaned into his cheerfully louche street persona. Taha dropped his hat on
9828-831: The song are similar to an actual ban on Western music, including rock music, enforced in Iran since the Iranian Revolution . Though classical music and public concerts were briefly permitted in the 1980s and 1990s, the ban was reinstated in 2005, and has remained in force ever since. Western music is still distributed in Iran through black markets, and Iranian rock music artists are forced to record in secret, under threat of arrest. The song's lyrics feature various Arabic , Hebrew , Turkish , and Sanskrit loan-words, such as " sharif ", " bedouin ", " sheikh ", " kosher ", " rāga ", " muezzin ", " minaret ", and " casbah ". The single does not contain
9936-642: The song was placed on the list of post-9/11 inappropriate titles distributed by Clear Channel . In 2006, the conservative National Review released their list of the top 50 "Conservative Rock Songs", with "Rock the Casbah" at number 20, noting the Clear Channel list as well as frequent requests to the British Forces Broadcasting Service during the Iraq War . Cultural reviewer and political analyst Charlie Pierce commented that "the notion of
10044-556: The standardization of these new terms throughout the Arabic-speaking world, and toward the development of Arabic as a world language . This gave rise to what Western scholars call Modern Standard Arabic. From the 1950s, Arabization became a postcolonial nationalist policy in countries such as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Sudan. Arabic usually refers to Standard Arabic, which Western linguists divide into Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. It could also refer to any of
10152-408: The studio's bathroom and wrote lyrics to match the song's melody. The version of the song on Combat Rock , as well as many other Clash compilations, features an electronic sound effect beginning at the 1:52-minute point of the song. This noise is a monophonic version of the song " Dixie ". The sound effect source was generated by the alarm from a digital wristwatch that Mick Jones owned, and
10260-494: The three of them, along with Djamel Dif and Eric Vaquer, would soon form a band. In 1982, Taha was the lead vocalist for the Arab-language rock group which they named Carte de Sejour , meaning Green Card or Residence Permit depending on the translation. He sang in both French and Arabic , but usually in Arabic. Taha was inspired by the group The Clash : The Clash were militant and hedonistic in equal measure ... And that
10368-501: The towns where the inscriptions were discovered (Dadanitic, Taymanitic, Hismaic, Safaitic). However, most arguments for a single ANA language or language family were based on the shape of the definite article, a prefixed h-. It has been argued that the h- is an archaism and not a shared innovation, and thus unsuitable for language classification, rendering the hypothesis of an ANA language family untenable. Safaitic and Hismaic, previously considered ANA, should be considered Old Arabic due to
10476-468: The video, an armadillo appears at points. At one point they are seen eating hamburgers in front of a Burger King restaurant. At another point, the Muslim character is seen drinking a beer; Letts stated that all that imagery was "about breaking taboos." The Clash is shown miming a performance of the song in front of a pumpjack in a Texas oil field. For most of the video clip, guitarist Mick Jones 's face
10584-451: The world have classes that teach Arabic as part of their foreign languages , Middle Eastern studies , and religious studies courses. Arabic language schools exist to assist students to learn Arabic outside the academic world. There are many Arabic language schools in the Arab world and other Muslim countries. Because the Quran is written in Arabic and all Islamic terms are in Arabic, millions of Muslims (both Arab and non-Arab) study
10692-530: The “Rock the Casbah” video. Headon was extensively interviewed for the Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten documentary film about the late Clash frontman, which was released in 2007. Headon related his experiences during this period, how he became addicted to heroin and how there were problems before his dismissal. The song was chosen by Armed Forces Radio to be the first song broadcast on
10800-408: Was banned from French radio. The "acerbic" song created a "splash", nevertheless, and won Taha some recognition as a serious artist. The group never achieved much commercial success and, as a result, Taha had to work a series of day jobs in a factory, then as a house painter, a dishwasher, and later as an encyclopedia salesman. They recorded their first maxi album Carte De Séjour in 1983. In 1984, with
10908-421: Was composed by the band's drummer Topper Headon , based on a piano part that he had been toying with. Finding himself in the studio without his three bandmates, Headon progressively taped the drum, piano and bass parts, recording the bulk of the song's musical instrumentation himself. This origin makes "Rock the Casbah" different from the majority of Clash songs, which tended to originate with music written by
11016-657: Was described as ribald, but it became more of a medium for political protest when young people in the 1960s and 1970s used it to "express their anger and desires." Taha suggested that Algerian musical styles and rock are "closely linked". Taha was influenced by the Moroccan chaâbi band Nass El Ghiwane which has been described as " Morocco 's answer to the Beatles or the Stones." In 1981, while living in Lyon , Taha met Mohammed and Mokhtar Amini and
11124-414: Was exciting to me. You could be a rebel and be in the biggest rock'n' roll band in the world! It was also clear that they loved music. Joe Strummer had nothing to do with that terrible punk cynicism. By the time of Mogador '81 they weren't just a rock'n'roll band, they were doing hip-hop , reggae , ska , country and western , disco, but making it sound their own. I think that's what gave French musicians
11232-589: Was growing increasingly prominent, with greater audiences in places such as Canada, although there were reports that his music had "trouble getting airplay " in France. He performed with Nigerian artists Femi Kuti and Seun Kuti in Lagos at a "Felabration" of the music of their late father Fela Kuti , as well as with Brian Eno in an anti-war concert in London. In 2009, Taha released Bonjour which The Guardian music critic Robin Denselow described as "calmed down" under
11340-538: Was intentionally added to the recording by Jones. Algerian rock singer Rachid Taha believes that an early demo tape of his, which he gave to The Clash in 1981, helped inspire the original song. Joe Strummer had been toying with the phrase "rock the casbah " prior to hearing Topper Headon's musical track that would form the basis of the song. This phrase had originated during a jam session with Strummer's violinist friend Tymon Dogg . Dogg began playing Eastern scales with his violin and Strummer started shouting "rock
11448-481: Was invited to Los Angeles to record with musician Don Was , who had been a producer associated with the Rolling Stones . Taha mixed a variety of instruments and styles for his sound. With a drum instrument called a doumbek or darbuka , his new group played Arabic-style beats. It appeared at one point that Taha might become an "overnight success", but after the release of the album Barbès , sales were disappointing in
11556-476: Was little money; the band performed in suburbs of Lyon. Taha took a standard patriotic French song entitled "Sweet France" (in French: Douce France ) which had originally been recorded by Charles Trenet in the 1940s, kept the lyrics, but sang it with "furious irony" which irritated many French listeners, particularly coming from a "scruffy, bohemian-looking Arabic singer", to the point where Taha's version
11664-484: Was ten years old, settling in an immigrant community around the French city of Lyon in 1968. His father was a textile factory worker, with long hours and low pay, such that his life was compared to that of a "modern slave", according to one account. Aged 17, Taha worked during the day at a central heating plant, described as a "menial job", and hated this work, but at night worked as a club DJ playing Arabic music, rap, salsa, funk and "anything else that took his fancy." In
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