SOFIANE SAIDI & MAZALDA: First American Tour

01.10 @ Tropicalia, Washington D.C.
01.11 @ Secret Planet – Drom, New York City
01.12 @ globalFest @ Copacabana Time Square,  New York City
01.13 @ Kennedy Center, Wahington D.C.

A feverish dive into the raï of the eighties, with dramatic synthesizers, psychedelic groove and the gravelly, rough, abrasive and warm voice of Sofiane Saidi.” Anne Berthod ­ Télérama

… this year I stumbled upon Sofiane Saidi, a singer from Sidi Bel Abbès, who blew me away. I find that he has the freshness of the cassettes of the past. (…) He is undeniably an artist to follow.” Martin Messonnier

Algerian singer Sofiane Saidi and his cohorts in Mazalda reinvent a new, funky version of 1980’s Raï, with analog synths, saz, North-African percussion and trance-inducing vocals.

Algerian Rai came to prominence in the late 80¹s and in the span of a couple of years, managed to grow from a lo-fi, cassette-only, genre to the overproduced mega-hits of the early 90¹s. The beautiful collaboration between Algerian Singer Sofiane Saidi and the lyonnais group Mazalda is a daring re-invention that looks back to the early history of Raï but seeks to meld a vintage approach with an adventurous edge. Sofiane¹s singing possesses all the lyrical qualities of the best of Oran¹s singers, while the arrangements rely both on a sense of groove and an audible joy in unexpected sonic detours. While Sofiane was born near Oran and soaked in the roots raï culture as a teenager, he spent most of his adult years in France collaborating with more electronic minded outfits – Acid Arab and Natacha Atlas among others.

Mazalda started out as an experimental outfit, with projects ranging from a street brass band to quirky sound installations. Both Mazalda and Sofiane held a fascination for early raï music which led to this collaboration and a true re-invention of a genre that, until then, had seemed to have lost the ability to reinvent itself.

Their debut album received a tremendous reception in Europe and in the Arab world and their live shows have taken them all over Europe as well as United Kingdom, Danemark, France, Spain, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, Poland, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria and a host of new places for 2020.

ALBUM EL NDJOUM (©Airfono) : https://sofianesaidimazalda.bandcamp.com/album/el-ndjoum
Live @ RadioNova El Ndjoum : https://youtu.be/-r-SSbUr_GA
Live @ RadioNova La Classe Fi Las Vegas : https://youtu.be/yCxYlsCrdHs
Live @ Womex : https://youtu.be/bkISLGyPs-I
Live @ Jazz à Vienne : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xF_LCElsATE&t=1683s
Clip El Ndjoum : https://youtu.be/HM6BGVLVeQc
Clip Gasbah Trisinti : https://youtu.be/SuadZ80h4hI