noun
mass nounA style of music fusing Arabic and Algerian folk elements with Western rock.
as modifier ‘Algeria's rai music’- ‘With unparalleled vocal skills and musical imagination, Khaled was the man who took Algerian rai music into the mainstream.’
- ‘By the time of Hasni's death, rai music was a major front in the confrontation between Algerian Islamism and the secular forces it sought to overcome.’
- ‘Satire, political cartoons, rai music, and a rich political slang in dialectical Arabic provide outlets for political sentiment.’
- ‘Music, of course, is another intensely important arena, particularly so these days in North Africa and France, where rai music has made the pop charts.’
- ‘Rachid Taha's opening track ‘Rock El Casbah’ merges Algerian rai sounds with the famous punk classic.’
Origin
1980s perhaps from Arabic ha er-ray, literally ‘that's the thinking, here is the view’, a phrase frequently found in the songs.
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