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Cheikha Rimitti and the Sexual Voice of Working-Class Women in Algeria

August 1, 2025

  She was first named Saadia, meaning “the happy one” in Arabic. Then she became known as Cheikha Remitti, a title in Algeria often used for women seen as defiant and sexually rebellious. Later, she was called Oum Raï, the Mother of Raï, and then, almost paradoxically, Hadja, a name reserved for women who are pious and religious.  Cheikha Remitti, the legendary Algerian raï singer, was a woman of many identities, many lives, and many voices. Yet at her core, she was always the girl from a small, humble village in Western Algeria. She carried her hometown with her, wherever she traveled, always seen in traditional Bedouin Algerian dresses, adorned with gold jewelry and henna staining both palms.  She was a woman who could be unapologetically sexually expressive, yet deeply rooted in local traditions, all while being introspective and poetic in her lyrics. For her, being a woman was never a role shaped by society. Womanhood, to her, was her own story, her own evolving journey, shifting and turning in ways only she could define. Born in 1923, Rimitti was orphaned at a young age and forced into child labor…


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