Je suis Africain

When Franco-Algerian hellraiser Rachid Taha passed in 2018, days short of his 60th birthday, the world lost a polyglot cultural provocateur par excellence, personifying the punk-rock planet implied once upon a time by The Clash. Black sheep of the Arabic-pop family and a thorn in the side of the “douce France” of Front National types, Taha made marvelous use of the resources his bi-continental identity afforded him, generating raw heat from their underlying frictions. This posthumous album sadly suggest that Taha was nowhere near out of good ideas, but one can find solace in its almost comprehensive summary of his fortes.