Songs of Aurès

Liner Notes

If the Berber song from northern North Africa was a flavor, it would probably be anise. Whether in Morocco or Algeria, this vocal tradition of the age-old leaves the same sensation refreshing and unheard of at the same time. The dry mass of the Aures in eastern Algeria is the bastion of the communities chaouies. In Khenchela there are still various regional songs performed in the local Berber and Arabic languages: abdaoui, sraoui, mejani, garbate or rakrouki, also known as rokroky. Genres that share with the ahidous of the Middle Atlas of the fraternal resemblances: vocalises stripped, weak ambitus, instrumental preliminary tesriha or the slow choreography of the trig esaf, the feminine dance associated with chaouie.

Demanding vocal art, chaoui singing requires both a bantering and an acute falsetto tone. Undoubtedly, the venerable Ali El-Khencheli, who disappeared in 2004 at the age of ninety, was his last great memory. His repertoire mixes songs of independence supporters, dance tunes and former successes in Arabic like, Kharjat men hammam , dating back to his first recording in 1949, Hezzi ayounek, Man lezbek men lahrir , and Ajbouni ramgat ghzali . This alternation of pieces removed, of hammering of the bendir and of slow asides breaks the apparent monotony of the repeated short themes. Ayache a memmi is, for example, a melancholy complaint in Berber addressed to a young resistant. The severe beats of the bendir punctuate the text and lead to the dance. All the art of the singer is precisely to renew the short subjects, in spite of the narrow ambitus, by their respective intonation and syncopation. El-Bahri jebba , Assalah ou'ami , for example, constitute treasures of minimalism.

Like the processional genres, Lali abar wa yessir and El Hwa wa dhrar form responsive responsive movements, semi-rapid dance tunes, plunging the listener into the frenzy of a village round. El-Khencheli is accompanied here by a duo of flutes gasba, which intone in unison each theme in an instrumental tesriha . Then the violent rhythmic accompaniment of the gasba ( Lali abar wa yessir, Maaraka, Ajbouni ramgat ghzali) and their revolving themes ( El-Bahri jebba ) evoke surprisingly those of the Kurdish shemshal (Iran) or the kasaba of zabid Yemen).

The singing, the twirling flutes, the breathless scansion, the bendir jolting, everything, in this taking without net, recreates the heated atmosphere of a wedding party in the Aurès where one takes to see waving with the same movement the rank among the villagers on a step of nonchalant dance. Ali El Kencheli was fond of the most festive style of the Aures, mixing the sacred and the profane, the rokroky.