Grinning and unshaven, he strutted around the stage, sang in a knowing growl and cued his band for extended, hard-grooving versions of songs using fuzz-toned guitar riffs over a dance beat.
Rachid Taha, the Algerian rock star, with his band at Central Park SummerStage on Saturday wore a leather fedora, then switched to a red cowboy hat. He dumped a bottle of water onto audience members -- redundant, since it was raining -- and onto his own head. He twirled his microphone on its cord, joked about Ecstasy and cocaine and was less than reverent when handed a flag. For his encore the band vamped and chanted, “Get up, get up," and the star declaimed, “My name is James Brown! My name is Marvin Gaye!" But his other songs were serious: reflections on exile and cultural strife.
The star was Rachid Taha, an Algerian now based in France. Mr. Taha is the most rock-influenced of Algerian rai singers, who mix Arabic and North African elements with Western ones; he has collaborated with British musicians including Brian Eno, Steve Hillage and Robert Plant. At SummerStage his songs dipped into hard rock, reggae, rumba-pop and Bo Diddley, but often they used Arabic-style beats defined by the hand drum called a darbuka, and Mr. Taha's voice was answered by oud solos.
Rai's blunt lyrics have made it both popular and persecuted in Algeria, while in France the music has become a voice for Arab-speaking immigrants. (Mr. Taha had a band in the 1980s called Carte de Sjour, or “residence permit.") One of Mr. Taha's hits, and an extended centerpiece at his SummerStage show, was “Ya Rayah" ("Party"), an old Algerian song about emigration and the longing for home, which began with an unmetered, tradition-tinged introduction before the beat kicked in.
