For his 2005 release, La Kahena, Algerian born Cheb i Sabbah returned to his North African roots. Collaborating with a wide variety of North African female singers, Sabbah created contemporary folklore, rich with the authenticity of trance ceremonies filtered through the magic of his trademark production skills. Now, the morphing and mixing continues as Sabbah has personally selected a team of eleven remixers to further evolve and transform the music on La Kahena. The result is La Ghriba: La Kahena Remixed, a landmark in today's electronica movement.

Cheb i Sabbah left his native Algeria in the 1960s, and has made a career out of blending music from all over the world into kaleidoscopic, dance-floor mixes ever since. His first three masterful albums for Six Degrees Records, Shri Durga (1999), MahaMaya - Shri Durga ReMixed (2000), and Krishna Lila (2002), are cult classics in which India's time-honored traditions merge with the universe of possibilities afforded by contemporary recording technology. This trilogy established him as a unique artist who creates bridges between cultures with a deeply moving sound drawn from DJ wizardry and world music aesthetics. His fourth release was a continuous DJ mix entitled AS FAR AS, on which the traditions of Asia, Arabia and Africa, Sabbah's main sources of inspiration, are all represented as if the listener were attending one of his renowned live sets. From here he turned his attention to North Africa with La Kahena.

Just as MahaMaya transformed the music on Shri Durga, La Ghriba puts a new spin on La Kahena. La Kahena was a global adventure and a personal journey for Sabbah, but when it came to remixing, he wanted fresh ears involved in the project. "When you make a record like La Kahena," he said, "there's no way you could say, 'I want to make one track that's drum-and-bass, then I'm going to make one dub thing, one trance thing, one hip hop thing.' I don't think like that. I just do the songs, and the way they come out, that's what they are. So if you want go to the next step, if you ask eleven different people, you're going to get eleven different creative vibes. The idea of remixes is to push it, make it more club-oriented, usually with less lyrics, and more emphasis on the beats and on the dance, rather than the original song." Sabbah began by calling people he knew, both the famous and the not-so-famous.

Sandeep Kumar, whose cool, clubby remix of the hook-laden "Toura Toura" leads off, is a young bhangra DJ living in Southern California. Kumar had opened up club shows for Sabbah, who "liked his energy." Kumar's first full-blown remix is the picture of simplicity. For Sabbah the track is a great example of the maxim he heard often from his mentor, Don Cherry: "Simplicity is very hard to achieve."

Sabbah recorded source material for La Kahena in Morocco, and while in Marrakech his rapper son, Elijah Opium, befriended a local rap group called Fnaïre. It didn't take long to learn that Fnaïre was one of the most happening rap acts in the country. Fnaïre shared the stage with Sabbah at the 2005 Gnawa Festival in Essouira, and on La Ghriba they remixed the song "Sadats" with deep swing and spiritual, chant-like rapping. Two other Moroccan acts contribute to La Ghriba as well. Tahar and Farid from the London-based Moroccan group MoMo offer a completely different take on "Sadats: The Sufi Sonic Mix." This time, a roots feeling pervades with Tahar adding his own, thrumming guimbri track. Veterans of modern Moroccan music, Adberrahim Akkaoui and Pat Jabbar surprised Sabbah by picking what he considered one of the most difficult tracks on La Kahena to tackle. Currently billed as Dar Beida 04, Akkaoui and Jabbar spin out a dizzying fury of percussion on "Alla Al 'Hbab: The Hydrophobia Mix." The bass growls, women wail, and a scratchy violin loops as this track winds up to full-out club frenzy.

Sabbah brought Japan into the mix when he reached out to Makyo a "zen dub" DJ who's been spinning since 1993. Sabbah had long corresponded and exchanged music with Makyo a.k.a. Gio. Makyo layers a funky 4/4 groove with a synth-bass line in 6/8, recasting the African music's polyrhythms in techno-space before slotting in rich acoustic sounds: women ululating and singing, and a deep-toned nay (flute).

Sabbah called on another old friend via cyberspace, Yossi Fine, bassist, producer and mastermind of Ex-Centric Sound System, a group that threads together African music from all over the world with techno-beats and electronica. The two finally met face to face last year and Sabbah gave Fine a copy of La Kahena. The result is "Jarat Fil Hub: The Chalice Remix," which artfully interweaves elements from "Toura Toura," while alternating between driving, club trance, and ephemeral passages of riffing violin.

Temple of Sound is the brainchild of Transglobal Underground veterans Neil Sparkes and Count Dubulah. On "Esh 'Dani, Alash Mshit: Ray of Light Club Mix" they create a slow build to ecstasy featuring the incendiary voice of raï legend Cheba Zahouania. Temple of Sound particularly impressed Sabbah by creating not one but four remixes of the song, one of which appears on the Six Degrees annual compilation Traveler '06. On the Temple of Sound remix, Zahouania's chant "Algérie, San Francisco," actually hints at Sabbah's own biography, as the DJ-maestro has spent a good deal of time in California. There are other California connections here as well. On "Alkher Illa Doffor: The Bassnectar Remix," San Francisco Bay Area producer Bassnectar—a.k.a. Lorin Ashton—pushes the rhythm hard to match the energy of the bhangra, raga, and dub that are his stock in trade. The Chakadoons, Marc Cazorla and Alex Stiff who work as remixers for Quincy Jones were intrigued by Cheb i Sabbah's artistry which initiated their reworking of "Toura Toura." This track incorporates Chakadoons' own performances on guitar, bass, and Fender Rhodes, while leaving the song's slinky, Gnawa groove largely intact.

The set ends with work from two of Sabbah's old friends, both seasoned veterans of world music electronica. Bassist, producer and label owner Bill Laswell is a virtual dean of the movement. He gives "Esh 'Dani, Alash Mshit" a subtle treatment here, beginning with elemental sounds—wind and water—and driving the bass hard behind Zahouania's extraordinary vocal. "Bill is so cool, man," said Sabbah, "So low-key. He sent it and I asked if he had a name for it. He said, 'You give it a name.'" For the final track, "Im Ninalou" Sabbah taps Gaurav Raina of the Midival Punditz, also part of the Six Degrees family. Raina's mix is grand and dramatic with weighty bass, snapping percussion and ambient electronica. A fitting exclamation mark at the end of a bold, new work. From the energy of bhangra to Moroccan street rap, from trance to dub, these new collaborations cover the many facets of the outernational dance floor. La Ghriba cements Cheb i Sabbah's legacy as a pioneer artist and visionary producer in the exciting, fast-changing world of trans-global music.