Cheikh Hamada (Arabic: الشيخ حمادة), born in 1889 in Touahria, near Mostaganem in Algeria, is an Algerian singer. Some consider him one of the founders of the Raï music movement, its history and its complex influences, drawing in particular on the poems of the Zenet, Berber and Jewish tribes of Algeria and the rest of the Maghreb. He initiated the urbanization of traditional Bedouin songs, a revolution in the musical tradition in this genre. Oran Bedoui or Bedoui Wahrani (in Arabic: البدوي الوهراني), also called gharbi, is a rural Algerian poetic-musical genre from the Oranie region, it is based on the poetry of Melhoun. Cheikh Hamada died on April 9, 1968.