Pop Raï

Pop raï is the commercial, synthesised form of Algerian raï that carried the music from Oran's cabarets to international charts in the 1980s and 1990s. Traditional raï instruments — gasba flute, gallal drum, violin, accordion — were joined and often replaced by synthesisers, drum machines and electric guitar, and the rough cabaret singing of the cheikhs gave way to the young chebs: *Khaled*, *Cheb Mami*, *Cheb Hasni* and later *Faudel*. Songs of love, exile and forbidden pleasure, sung in Algerian Arabic mixed with French, made pop raï the defining sound of Maghrebi youth and of the Algerian diaspora in France.