Chaabi (Algeria)

{{Short description|Algerian music genre}}

{{Hatnote|Not to be confused with Moroccan Chaabi.}}

{{Infobox music genre

| name = Chaabi

| native_name = الشعبي əš-šaʿabī

| image = Orchester El Gusto 23.jpg

| caption = The chaabi orchestra El Gusto in 2018

| stylistic_origins = Arab-Andalusian music

| cultural_origins = Algiers (Algeria)

| instruments = {{hlist|Algerian mandole|Banjo|f'hal|kemandja|piano|qanun|snîtra|târ}}

| other_topics =

}}

{{Culture of Algeria}}

Chaabi ({{langx|ar|شعبي|lit=folk}}) is a traditional music of Algiers (Algeria), formalized by El Hadj M'Hamed El Anka.

Originally from the Casbah, the music known as chaabi belongs to a recent tradition. It emerged during the 1930s, and has remained popular to this day.{{cite book|author=International Musicological Society. Congress|title=Actas del XV Congreso de la Sociedad Internacional de Musicología: culturas musicales de Mediterraneo y sus ramificaciónes, Madrid/3-10/IV/1992|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V-pLAAAAYAAJ|year=1993|publisher=La Sociedad|page=1242}} Inspired by vocal traditions of Andalusi music, such as muwashshah, using its modes and rhythm. Chaabi means 'of the people', and it is very definitely the people's music, even in a country where raï rules.{{cite book|author1=Simon Broughton|author2=Mark Ellingham|author3=Jon Lusk|title=The Rough Guide to World Music: Africa & Middle East|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kbc7AQAAIAAJ|year=2006|publisher=Rough Guides|isbn=978-1-84353-551-5|page=7}}

A typical song features mournful, Arabic/Berber vocals, set against an orchestral backdrop of a dozen musicians, with violins and mandolins swelling and falling to a piano melody and the clap of percussion beats. Chaabi is part of a deeply conservative tradition and its lyrics often carrying a strong moral message.{{citation needed|date=October 2019}}

At first Chaabi remained a scandalous genre, thriving behind closed doors or in specific locations called "Mahchachat" (cannabis dens),{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8wJzqz7F4KsC&q=Mahchachat&pg=PA216 |title=Music and Gender |date= 2003-06-15|access-date=2013-09-13|isbn=9780226501666 |last1=Magrini |first1=Tullia |publisher=University of Chicago Press }} where the admirer of this music would go to drink coffee, tea or smoke. By the late 1950s, however, it had become the people's music, played at weddings and religious festivals. Its main exponents included Oran-based singer {{ill|Lili Labassi|fr}}, El Hadj M'Hamed El Anka, the father of Chaabi, and Dahmane El Harrachi, composer of the classic tale of emigration "Ya Rayah".{{cite book|author1=David Horn|author2=Dave Laing|title=Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Part 2 Locations (5 Vol Set): Volumes III to VII|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jhUKAQAAMAAJ|date=18 April 2005|publisher=Bloomsbury Academic|isbn=978-0-8264-7436-0|page=65}}

In 2011, Safinez Bousbia directed a documentary on chaabi music. It took over seven years to make, facilitate and track the reunion of the Jewish and Muslim members of a chaabi group from colonial Algiers known as El Gusto.{{cite book|author=Patrick Crowley|title=Algeria: Nation, Culture and Transnationalism, 1988-2013|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sIQ8DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA75|date=17 July 2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-1-78694-021-6|page=75}}