The rise and fall of electro-chaabi, the best thing you’ve never heard
I grew up in the 90s in a wealthy white family in the south of France. I lived in a big house, went to good schools, and had friends called Camille, Guillaume, and Gaëtan. One year, for my birthday, my parents gave me what would become one of my most prized possessions: a portable stereo. Although it was very small and simple, I could tune in to the radio, listen to CDs, and read and record cassettes. A whole new world had opened its doors to me, leading me to discover things I would probably not have otherwise. In a comfy corner of my room, I spent hours listening to radio programmes. For someone who had almost no access to popular culture and wasn’t allowed to watch many things on television, I felt for once like a normal kid from my generation, connected to thousands of others who’d probably had a much different life, but to whom I could relate nonetheless. This little stereo came to radically change my life.
