I posted earlier about Wahrani Rai music. Music and food are a part of culture. And culture cannot be understood without discussing the historical threads that make up the ever-weaving web. I found this article about the Music of Algeria by Dwight Reynolds, University of California-Santa Barbara.
ALGERIA HOLDS a singular place for Arab culture as a region in which the musical traditions of Islamic Spain, the Ottoman Empire, the eastern Arab countries (the Mashriq), Saharan and West African, Berbers, Bedouin and Europe have all interacted to various degrees. Morocco to the west was never directly exposed to Ottoman and eastern Arab musical traditions; Tunisia and Libya to the east have had far less contact with sub-Saharan and West African musics and far more direct contact with the musics of the their eastern neighbors.
Algerian musical influences can be applied to culinary influences as well. To simplify I'll break it down into five groups.
1) Berber and Saharan.
2) The Arabs.
3) Andalusian or Hispano-Arab, Moors/Moriscos.
4) Ottoman Turks.
5) French colonials.
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