There is no border for the culture. We sit down with Samir Inal, founder and percussionist, and Mehdi Chaib, saxophonist and percussionist of the Franco-Algerian brass ensemble Fanfaraï, recorded in partnership with The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. Together, they walk through the roots of North African street music, tracing how traditional Zorna double-reed melodies shifted into full brass arrangements, how forgotten Algerian Raï compositions from Oran carry revolutionary and anti-colonial history, and how sub-Saharan Gnawa and Diwan healing trance rhythms cross the desert to shape regional sounds.
There is no border for the culture. We sit down with Samir Inal, founder and percussionist, and Mehdi Chaib, saxophonist and percussionist of the Franco-Algerian brass ensemble Fanfaraï, recorded in partnership with The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi. Together, they walk through the roots of North African street music, tracing how traditional Zorna double-reed melodies shifted into full brass arrangements, how forgotten Algerian Raï compositions from Oran carry revolutionary and anti-colonial history, and how sub-Saharan Gnawa and Diwan healing trance rhythms cross the desert to shape regional sounds.
00:00 Introduction
01:02 Translating Music Across Borders
06:28 Deconstructing the Zorna and Double-Reed Heritage
09:12 Street Music, Brotherhoods, and Ceremonial Traditions
16:30 Evolving from Brass Ensemble to Stage Band
18:39 Chaabi Rhythms and the Concept of Borderless Culture
26:38 The Intersections of Raï, Brass, and Afro-Cuban Sounds
32:25 Festival Energies and Censorship in Performance
34:50 Trance Rhythms, Healing, and Sub-Saharan Roots
43:59 Preparing for the Abu Dhabi Stage
Fanfaraï offers a truly human, musical, and cultural experience. These nine musicians of various cultural backgrounds revisit, in their own ways, the tradition of festive wanderings. This original band, born in 2005 and based in France, plays North African music by blending skillfully traditional percussions, brass, Arab-Berber, Afro-Cuban, Latin, and Jazz sounds. From the street to the stage, there is just one step for this colorful orchestra, which offers a very festive and generous show. Fanfaraï emerged in 2005 under the direction of Samir Inal. After creating Ziyara, a traditional Algerian street band in 2000, he met with musicians coming from jazz and salsa bands and decided to reconfigure with them the traditional and popular repertoire of a brass band. Fanfaraï goes along the same line as the tradition of these street orchestras, called 'Idbalen' or 'Zernadjia', that animated rituals and feasts in Algeria from the beginning of the century till the 1970s. The band's third album Raï is not dead! was released in 2018. The leitmotif of the band is 'to learn from one another and to share with all.'
Connect with Fanfaraï 👉 https://instagram.com/fanfarai_big_band