Todays' Favorite Person: Cheb Khaled

Why aren't there more people like this on earth? Look how FULL OF JOY he is:
I've been watching and reading about him since 1991 and he's always like this. In pictures, in videos, in TV interviews, in random outtakes recorded on people's cell phones he's like this: Huge sweet smile huge sweet smile huge sweet smile HUGE! And this is a guy who had to flee his native country, Algeria, because Islamic fundamentalists threatened to kill him.

Video: Khaled, "Aicha"
We should all have to flee our native countries and take refuge in Paris, but still, that's got to be scary. This video and this record cover illustrate better than words could why fundamentalists threatened his life--because he made happy, loving, sexy music and played it for mixed-gender crowds. So he's like early Elvis, but with death threats.

And here's another video illustrating Khaled's greatness and the larger greatness of which he--and the woman singing with him, Asala Nasri--are a part: the greatness of people who go ahead and do exactly what they're on earth to do, despite pressure to the contrary from every direction--pressure from fundamentalists trying to kill them (apparently fun, beauty and love are sins); pressure from fearful folk who wish they'd do something more practical; pressure from serious-minded people who think there are far more important things to do than sing great songs.

Video: Cheb Khaled and Asala Nasri, title unknown

I find this simultaneously tragic and inspiring: there are people like this in the Middle East, and there are even outlets for their work in certain parts of the Middle East--that's inspiring. The tragic part is the same tragedy visited on--for example--gay teenagers in Armpit, Kentucky: what happens to the people like this who don't make it out? What happens to you when every native inclination in you is rejected by everyone around you? Watch the amazing autobiographical movie Persepolis to see what I mean: at the end you rejoice when the heroine makes it out of Iran and (like Khaled) becomes a refugee in Paris, but you also wonder, oh my god, how many people like her never got out?

But still: Khaled is today's favorite person, because he got out with his joy intact. And because he's being broadcast (openly or surreptitiously) all over the Middle East, reminding the next generation of people like him not to lay down and die. And speaking of the next generation, one of my favorite Khaled-related memories is this: I went to see him at a nightclub in Toulouse, France, and this nightclub contained not just the normal hip young concert crowd but also entire Algerian families, kids included, dressed to the nines to see their homeboy--the families had gotten there hours in advance with picnic baskets to feast outside, it was like a national holiday. But the coolest part was during the concert when I spun around dancing and saw a little Algerian boy, four years old at the most, all spiffy in his black suit, dress shoes and red bowtie, dancing his ass off beside his father and mother. Ahh, life is good.