Less than five seconds after playing the song, the crowd loudly cheers and begins to repeatedly sing ‘Aicha’. Cheb Khaled, who is dressed in the same shirt worn on his ‘Nssi Nssi’ album cover, warmly smiles, and then looks out into the distance to begin singing one of the most memorable lines in music: “Comme si, je n’existais pas”. It was 1997, and the world was still grappling with the aftermaths of post-apartheid South Africa. The voices of the anti-racist movement in Europe were growing to become much louder than ever before, and in the same year, the Treaty of Amsterdam gave the European Union a legal base on which to develop ‘appropriate measures to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief’. But, behind the smoke of all of these events, there were artists that inclined the ears of people’s hearts with their multicultural sounds and tunes from North Africa. ‘Aicha’ was Khaled’s first song to hit number one in France in 1996, earning him the Victoire de la Musique for the best French song of the year. The massive global success of the song…
How Cheb Khaled’s Music Rose as a Force Against Racism and Cultural Homogenization
May 10, 2022
