Perhaps the most important festival of African pop music, the Raï Festival celebrates the music of the plains and mountains of Algeria. With names like Cheb Sahraoui, Hakim Salhi, Cheb Fati and Cheb Tarik, this year's line-up featured many of the leading exponents of the genre, and the six thousand enthusiasts who made the trip from all over North Africa cannot have been disappointed either with the music or with the sound. EVI Audio's partners in Tunisia, World Technology Access, had made Cobra-4 and Cobra-2 systems the centrepiece of their sound reinforcement concept, and the results were so impressive they were immediately rehired for the Festival Latino at the beginning of September. With these high-calibre references under their belts - and the Cobra in their armoury - Karim Ben Nasr, the proprietor of World Technology Access, and managing director Karim Azzouz are seeing their engagements calendar fill up rapidly: "Everyone here was totally convinced by the system," Azzouz told us. "The Cobra has a great future in Africa."
Tabarka, in North Tunisia, has for decades been known to music lovers for its jazz festival held in July, which has drawn stars of the calibre of Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie and Nina Simone, but the Raï and Latino festivals in June and September are fast gaining ground. Raï, which blends the traditional music of Algeria with elements of rock, funk, reggae and soul, is popular not only in North Africa but in America and France as well, where concerts by the likes of Khaled and Cheb Mami regularly sell out.
(Lee Baldock)
