15 Facts About Cheikha Rimitti

Cheikha Rimitti, born Saadia El Ghizania, was an Algerian rai female singer.

Cheikha Rimitti was born in Tessala, a small village in western Algeria in 1923.

Cheikha Rimitti is from the major Berber tribe Beni Ouragh.

Cheikha Rimitti had been orphaned as a child due to violent French occupation and began to live rough, earning a few francs working in the fields and doing other manual jobs.

Cheikha Rimitti eventually composed more than 200 songs but remained illiterate all her life.

Cheikha Rimitti's fame spread by word of mouth across Algeria during the Second World War until she was taken under the patronage of a well-known Algerian musician of the time, Cheikh Mohammed Ould Ennems, who took her to Algiers where she made her first radio broadcasts.

Cheikha Rimitti made her first record in 1952, a three-track on Pathe Records under the name Cheikha Remettez Reliziana, which included the famous Er-Rai Er-Rai.

That came two years later when Cheikha Rimitti caused a sensation with the release of Charrak Gatta a daring hit record, which encouraged young women to lose their virginity and which scandalised Muslim orthodoxy.

Cheikha Rimitti stopped smoking and drinking, but continued her singing and dancing, and by the mid-80s, when Rai was becoming established as the rousing dance music of angry young Algerians, Rimitti was being hailed as la mamie du Rai, the grandmother of the style.

Cheikha Rimitti's deep singing voice, in the male tenor range, was recognizable throughout the Algerian community on both sides of the Mediterranean.

In 1978, Cheikha Rimitti moved to Paris, loosening her ties with the Algerian authorities but never cutting herself off from the Algerian people, her first fans.

Cheikha Rimitti's music crossed over to the West and she undertook prestigious concerts in big cities and worldwide capitals as well as collaborating with Robert Fripp and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the "Sidi Mansour" LP in 1994, inaugurating a new electric form of rai.

Cheikha Rimitti's most recent album N'ta Goudami, released in 2006, was a lustful combination of traditional Algerian and modern rock sounds sung in a deep voice of booming energy that belied her 83 years and garnered enthusiastic reviews [2].

For someone who had been officially banned in Algeria, Cheikha Rimitti marked rai history by taking the defiant step of recording her last album at the Boussif Studios in Oran.

Cheikha Rimitti died in Paris from a heart attack on 15 May 2006, aged 83.