Cheikha Rimitti, who popularized a taboo-defying form of Algerian pop music called rai and sang boldly of sexuality, alcoholism and oppression, died May 15 in Paris of heart failure. She was 83.

Two days before she died, she gave a performance at the Zenith concert hall in the French capital, her home for the last 28 years of her life.

“We are losing a doyenne of rai, a fascinating voice, a free woman, rebel, often provocative, whose work was deeply marked by a life that was often very difficult,” Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres said in tribute.

Born in rural Algeria in 1923 and orphaned at an early age, Rimitti had a troubled childhood and became a troubadour with a traveling musical group at age 20.

“It was misfortune that guided me,” she once said. Her supporters called her always politically incorrect.

Illiterate, she memorized her songs. “Songs walk through my head and I retain them in my memory. No need for paper or pen,” she said.

She helped pioneer rai music in the 1940s, singing about sexuality, alcoholism, colonial oppression and other taboos. Rai, pronounced “rye,” means opinion in Arabic.

The Algerian government banned her songs in the 1960s,but rai music circulated in bootleg recordings. She finally emigrated to France in 1978.

She recorded her first album in 1952, and her most recent one, “N’Ta Goudami,” was released in November on the Because record label.

Her birth name was Saadia, which means joyful. Cheikha Rimitti was her stage name.

World music aficionados rediscovered her in the 1990s, and in 1994 she released an album with Robert Fripp, from and Flea, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.