rai
/rʌɪ
/noun [mass noun]
A style of music fusing Arabic and Algerian folk elements with Western rock: [as modifier]: Algeria’s rai music...
- With unparalleled vocal skills and musical imagination, Khaled was the man who took Algerian rai music into the mainstream.
- By the time of Hasni's death, rai music was a major front in the confrontation between Algerian Islamism and the secular forces it sought to overcome.
- Satire, political cartoons, rai music, and a rich political slang in dialectical Arabic provide outlets for political sentiment.
Origin
1980s: perhaps from Arabic ha er-ray, literally 'that's the thinking, here is the view', a phrase frequently found in the songs.