Rachid Baba Ali Ahmed

Rachid Baba Ali Ahmed or Raschid Baba Ahmed ( Arabic رشيد بابا أحمد; * August 20, 1946 in Tlemcen ; † February 15, 1995 in Oran , Algeria ), was an Algerian musician and record producer .

Together with his brother Fethi, he was the most important producer and arranger of the Algerian Raï . The brothers, who took their first musical steps in a beat band in the 1960s, almost single-handedly created the pop Raï phenomenon of the late 1970s and early 1980s. They were the first to record the Raï with synthesizers in their own 24-track recording studio (the only one in Algeria ) and worked with all the major Raï artists. A production by Rachid Baba Ali Ahmed was an automatic hit and many of the great hits of the early days of pop raï were written by him.

Rachid Baba Ali Ahmed was murdered in Oran on February 15, 1995 in his car with gunfire from a submachine gun. Like Cheb Hasni , he was a victim of the Algerian civil war . His murder led to the founding of the movement “L'Algerie, la vie!”.