Pleasures of the Hello Kitty Boom Box - Chaâbi Khadija

Well look what I found inside the Hello Kitty Boom Box - it's a cassette on the Anzaha imprint out of Rabat! I've shared one other Anzaha cassette here, and it was a good one!

I haven't been able to identify the singer featured on this tape. During the faux-live-audience opening banter at the beginning of track 5, I hear what sounds like the crowd chanting "Kha-di-ja, Kha-di-ja". She doesn't sound like Khadija al Bidaouia or Khadija Margoum. Sounds a bit like Khadija Laboat Al Atlas, but I haven't found any recordings of her that sound quite like this one. Please let me know if any of you can identify her.

Whoever this chaâbi-singing Khadija is, this is a jamming cassette in the Casa style with riffy viola, plinky banjo-keyboard, and driving varied percussion section throughout (some darbuka, some taârija, some bendir, and some live and/or programmed drum kit. I'd place it around the mid-aughts - the faux-live-audience, the keyboard sounds, and the absence of autotuned voices remind me of Daoudi cassettes from around '04.

Enjoy!

PS, yes, I have a Hello Kitty Boom Box.








Châabi cassette featuring singer Khadija (Anzaha cassette)

Track 5 (of 5) 

Get it all here.

El Bhiri - Chaâbi from Casa, yeah!

Instead of poring through the Lomax collection yesterday, I decided to pore through a stash of about 75 cassettes I inherited from a friend recently. Separated out the Maghrebi music tapes from the Middle Eastern ones and the Islamic lectures. I was still jonesing for some chaâbi, and scored with a swell tape of El Bhiri. Yala.fm describes him as a chaâbi artist from Casablanca. The tracks here stay mostly to the aita side of the chaâbi field, with the exception of track 5, which is more of a call-response percussion band-style rave-up.

The tape is missing the first couple minutes of track 3, where someone inadvertently (or advertently?) taped some interesting but completely non-sequitur Middle Atlas tamazight song on top.

Here's El Bhiri on TV:


Get it here.