Cheikh Hasnaoui, born Mohammed Khelouat (1910-2002). One of Algeria's great chaabi singers, from a small town near Tizi Ouzou in Kabylia. Much of his career was spent in France, from 1938, and he is considered one of the great Algerian singers of the exile experience. He recorded in both Arabic and Berber, and is regarded as both a great master of chaabi and one of the originators of modern Kabyle music.
I've been blogging about the film El Gusto ever since I met the director, Safinez Bousbia, in Essaouira in November 2007. The film was released in France, finally, a little less than a year ago. Elaine Sciolino gave the film, and the tour of the El Gusto orchestra, a very nice plug in the New York Times on Friday. The film screened at the 5th Panorama of the European Film festival in Cairo on October 8, and given that the film is about the reunion of Algerian Muslim and Jewish chaabi musicians, I'm quite impressed. Hani Mustafa gave the film a nice review in alahram.online. One thing I learned from Mustafa's review is about the 1995 Tunisian film, Habiba M'sika, a documentary about a Tunisian-Jewish singer of the same name.
I've not yet seen El Gusto myself, and who knows when I'll have the chance to. In the meantime, the album El Gusto is terrific -- but seemingly only available in the US as a download.
And here's the trailer for the film. Let's all cross our fingers that both the Orchestra and the film will be touring extensively in the US, and soon. And let's play for El Gusto's pianist, Maurice El Medioni, who was hospitalized with a stroke in August.
In the Sunday NYT today, this item, reproduced below, from critic Ben Ratliff's review of new/interesting releases (in Playlist, a weekly and invaluable Sunday Times feature). I blogged about this recording and film earlier, here and here. It's nice to see the NYT finally catch up!
Check out this wonderful performance of the El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers, from the BBC2 program, Later...with Jools Holland. Preceded by a nice intro from Damon Albarn. Unfortunately, Maurice El Medioni, who appears in the film (but not the recording), is not on piano in this clip.
Abdel Hadi Halo & the El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers
Connected to “El Gusto,” a documentary film by Safinez Bousbia to be released later this year, this piece of audio vérité documents the reconvening of an old Algerian band that included both Jewish and Muslim musicians. And there’s your movie, of course, but the album stands on its own merits. The music is chaabi, a long-lost alloy of North African, Andalusian and Middle Eastern sources; its high period was in the bars of Algiers after World War II. The orchestra has banjos, lutes, mandolins and violins, playing unison lines; it’s led by a pianist, and it moves along on a bed of percussion, thundering and then turning romantic and vulnerable. This recording, recently released by the British label Honest Jon’s, represents an incomplete version of the band that will be seen in the movie. (It has none of the older Jewish musicians, who relocated to France in 1962, when Algeria became a Muslim-ruled state. In 2006, when this recording was made, they were still afraid to return to Algiers. The orchestra later staged a full reunion, its first gig in more than 45 years, in September in Marseilles, France.) It’s a bewitching record anyway, with gorgeous natural-room sound and powerful, guttural singing.
You would think that by now, I would have had time to produce a blog about my recent trip to Morocco to attend the Festival des Andalousies Atlantiques in Essaouira. Somehow, moving my home office out of the living room and into a newly-vacated room in the back of the house has eaten up all my spare time.
In the meantime, please check out this report on the Algerian chaabi band El Gusto. I met Safinez Bousbia, the director of the documentary "El Gusto: The Good Feeling," in Essaouira, as well as one of the Jewish-Arab members of El Gusto, the grand master of the pianoriental, Maurice El Medioni. (Go here to see a photo of us.) Here's another good article about the El Gusto project. I was told that El Gusto (the film and the group) will be touring the US in summer '08. Stay tuned!
The album, Abdel Hadi Halo & The El Gusto Orchestra of Algiers, which features only the Muslim Algerian members of El Gusto, is as yet only available as an import. It was released by Damon Albarn's label, Honest Jon's Records. (I posted about the record previously here.)
To get a flavor of the Essaouira festival, see my photos here.
Professor of Anthropology, University of Arkansas. Author of Memories of Revolt: The 1936-39 Rebellion and the Palestinian National Past. Co-editor of Palestine, Israel and the Politics of Popular Culture and of Displacement, Diaspora, and Geographies of Identity.
