In a 21st-century Europe increasingly grappling with the assimilation of Third World immigrants, first- and second-generation immigrants have also been busy forging their own creative assimilation of rock 'n' roll. Over the past three years, Prague's Alliance Francais and Goethe Institute have leveraged funds made available by the German-French Friendship Treaty to promote France and Germany's unique and influential music scenes on Prague stages. Whereas previous years have focused on chanson, jazz and electronic music, this year's Prague-Paris-Berlin event will be headlined by a hard rock band that sings in Arabic.

At first glance, the French group Les Boukakes looks like any other rock band. But if you listen closely to the buzzing guitar riffs and backbeat, a core of North African vocal color and rhythmic ornamentation emerges. Although the blending of Afro-Arabic musical wellsprings on European soil has a long legacy, Les Boukakes percussionist Imed Alibi is likely correct when he says, "I think Rai was one of the first successes of Maghreb art in modern Europe."

Rai, with its foot-propelling beat, is a pop music form that jumped from a solid fan base among urban North African youth to a nearly universal popularity among European Arab immigrants in the '80s. By the '90s Rai stood next to Juju, Highlife and the myriad forms of world music that rode Santana's and reggae's coattails onto the global airwaves.

"People have ignored many aspects of North African culture," says Alibi, a European-born son of North African parents. "But Rai, even though not the only [non-Western] musical style to be shared in France, is one of the most successful."

Although the music of Les Boukakes is sometimes referred to as Rai-rock, there are generational and geographic differences. As Alibi explains, "Les Boukakes is another expression of this bridge linking the two sides. The first Rai singers were expressing the North African culture in Europe, presenting the issues and personalities of immigrants who weren't born in France." Of his band, which includes French-born members of Occitan and Arabic ancestry, Alibi says, We represent France as it is now."

No less a composite of global reality is Culcha Candela, the band selected by the Goethe Institute to represent urban Germany. Singing in English, German and Spanish, Culcha includes members from Korea, Uganda, Columbia, Poland and Germany who forge a new common identity via an expansive rap and reggae repertoire. Prague's emerging cosmopolitan music scene will also get a nod, courtesy of a Czech DJ who performs under the name Yokimura, spinning a set bound to include some samples of both local and global Euro-Asian sounds.