Abdel Hadi Halo and The El Gusto Orchestra Of Algires

In Autumn 2006, Honest Jon's production team (Yucef Adel, Mark Ainley, Damon Albarn and Alan Scholefield) traveled to Algeria to set up their recording equipment in the Conservatoire d'Algiers, in front of an orchestra of thirty-one local musicians. The popular music they played - Chaabi - is unique to Algeria and to the cosmopolitan community that flourished in the post-WWII Casbah of its capital city. Though its roots reach back more than 450 years, to the Andalusian music of Moorish Spain, Chaabi also takes in the contemporary soundtrack of the era - chanson, some Jazz, snatches of Tango, a little boogie-woogie - and the result is a swirling and improvisatory sound, surging from the haunted to the bluesy, the devotional to the knees-up. Honest Jon's. 2007.