Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Cheb Mami | Douni El Bladi



Listen to the title track

Get it all here

This 1996 CD from early in the Prince of Rai's career completely blew my head off the first time I heard it after plucking it from the now-gone Princess Music electronics and Arabic music store on 5th Avenue in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge.

Shockingly, in 2009, the wildly popular singer was sentenced to five years in a French prison for allegedly forcing a former lover to undergo an abortion. (He was released on parole in March of this year.)

His last CD was released five years ago, in 2006; he says he plans to continue performing and recording, though I don't know whether he's begun to do so yet and/or how audiences will respond to him today.

2 comments:

  1. Well, I made the mistake of reading the linked article. Ugh.

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  2. Yeah, I know; it's awful. I really hope he didn't do this, but it looks like he probably did, which is horrifying, if so.

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