PRACTICES OF MIGRATION VOICING RISK

Abstract

The recent emergence of raï music among Moroccan immigrants living in Spain marks a new moment in the history of the form. However, it was not altogether unexpected. Since its inception in the cities of Algeria around thirty years ago as a result of increased rural to urban population flows, raï has been a musical form arising from the experience of migration. As such, it opened a space for the articulation of displaced, uprooted North African identities and is marked by traces of difficult and disjunctured encounters with new forms of modernity. Raï, as it is currently being constructed in Barcelona, offers a discourse for immigrant Moroccans living in Spain with which to construct specific transnational and transcultural identities in their new socio-cultural and economic surroundings. This new strand of raï moves beyond lyrics of love to underline the unmistakeably physical risks attendant on illicit migration across the Straits of Gibraltar. It is this overt emphasis on physical risk that specifically distingishes Spanish/Moroccan raï. In recent years, risk as a defining feature of late modernity has been the subject of considerable theoretical exploration. In the light of such theorizations, this essay examines the first raï CD released in Spain, Chab Samir (Afro-Blue Records, 1999 Samir , Chab (1998) Interview , El País de las Tentaciones 25 June 1998: 13 . [Google Scholar]), from the perspective of its music and lyrics, and personal interviews with the lead singer, Samir, and other members of his band.

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