In my larger work, I locate Idir’s music at the confluence of various “branching interconnections” or branchements, a term introduced by anthropologist Jean-Loup Amselle. What were the ideological and cultural atmospheres in which the two artists were working in the late 1960s and early 1970s? Cultural pathways We worked through the songs line by line and word by word.Īnd I asked Idir and Ben to tell me about what had inspired them to work with village women’s songs in the first place. Ben, too, was inspired by a recording of traditional songs that an old woman in his village had made for him. I also spoke at length with the poet with whom Idir collaborated in the early years, Mohamed Benhamadouche (better known as Ben Mohamed). Working with older women singers, I sought to understand how Idir had reconstituted their songs for wider audiences: what he had retained and what he had transformed? I followed Idir’s songs back to his home village At Lahcène (At Yenni) in the Djurdjura mountains. What propelled Idir – who in the early 1970s was an Algerian geology student with little musical training – to worldwide acclaim? To find out I went back to his roots. His hit song A Vava Inouva (Oh My Father) had launched his international career in 1973, one that would see seven major recordings. Idir cloaked these songs in western harmonies, arranged them for guitar and other contemporary instruments, and brought them to audiences across North Africa and Europe. He told me that he was inspired by the songs that he grew up hearing his grandmother sing while she was weaving, churning butter, rocking a child to sleep, or praising a new bridegroom. Idir is widely recognised as among the originators of this new musical genre. Today, Imazighen constitute North Africa’s largest minority, identified by their language and vibrant cultural traditions.
Kabyles are one of North Africa’s indigenous Amazigh or Berber populations.
I was doing research on what by then was called New Kabyle Song ( la nouvelle chanson Kabyle). We chatted for several hours in a café outside the Berber Cultural Association in Paris. In the 1990s I had the good fortune to meet with the late Algerian singing star Idir (Hamid Cheriet 1949-2020).
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