Algerian artist Kamel El Harrachi signs his second international album: “Nouara”. © Laurent Hermouet
Kamel El Harrachi, son of the huge Dahmane El Harrachi, creator of 130 titles including Ya Rayah, a globally danced chaabi hit, signs Nouara’s second international album. This collection of 11 titles that gives pride to the pieces to his deceased father, that is, nine titles rearranged at the moment and the son’s two compositions.
Camel El Harrachi is from the “73rd generation”, as he calls it. The expression is enough to geo-locate his birth on the other side of the Mediterranean, “in Algiers” he comforts. He will later explain that he officially started music in the 90’s. “Officially” means for him to enter music through the front door; but as for the small doors, hidden or not, and other windows that put you in touch with this art of several forms, one might think that Camel borrowed them from an early age.
Being the son of Dahmane El Harrachi is like the lock on a magic door. If she could obviously facilitate the openings for him, she might as well keep it irrevocably closed by placing a sort of statue of a master behind her back that darkens every gesture when it is easy you need. Being the son of … not only has benefits.
My father, this icon of chaâbi
In any case, it is to the caring father that he finally knew a little about because of his concerts that he promises his fidelity. A father to whom the son remains tied to the point of sharing his artist name.
Dahmane El Harrachi is appreciated and danced at Dahmane El Harrachi, sung by an entire generation and respected as one of the masters of chaâbi, an Algerian music genre that has spread across the country and even beyond its natural borders, from the Maghreb to the countries of emigration. continents since Rachid Taha went global in 1997 wrote his Ya Rayah and composed the year of Camel’s birth (“Generation 73” he said).
It is to this father and to the chaâbi where he grew up, in this parallel story of Algiers that we are used to saying, that Kamel Amrani finds his way since his very first opus was published in his beginnings in Algeria, then on Ghana Fenou, his first international album released (2009) or on this brand new opus titled Nouara.
Writer, composer, singer and mandola player
Camel El Harrachi has been installed in France for almost 25 years and lives in Paris. “When I arrived, like all the elderly, I performed in the back rooms of cafes where the immigrant populations were met by affinities or geographical origins,” recalls Kamel El Harrachi.
This musician, writer, composer and mandola player, his father’s favorite instrument, traveled some time before, in the early 90’s, all the Wilayas (regions) in Algeria, from concert to concert and performed at the biggest festivals in the country.
In addition to the attraction of the father’s songs that he picks up, adapt with care and respect; his general already appreciated, also his songs, those that the son had written in a style, it is true close to the father, songs that so often in chaâbi (words meaning “popular”) tell in Arabic about the street so that everyone understands people’s lives; songs that were his, his.
“Like my father who left me a treasure, I am attached to the social chronicle, to the real things in life. My father was a kind of Algerian Brassens” specifies the one who enjoys love songs, as evidenced by many titles from this new album : Mahalak Nouara (one of his own two titles), Bacherni Bel Khir, Ana Loughram…. “We need it right now,” he slips.
A body, a face, a look and a voice
Among the usual points he shares with his father, in addition to the physical resemblance, this lean body, this exhausted face, this penetrating gaze and his voice that over time gradually approaches his father’s rocky grain, Kamel wants to leave his mark on chaâbi, a mark with clear lines.
“As for my father, the fact that I lived in France with other musicians, nourishes me, inevitably inspires me,” says the one who did not hesitate to invite, for example, during the recording sessions Philippe Soriano and his double bass. “Even when I resume these songs, I am free, free to change key, free to speed up or slow down, to accentuate the percussionist’s strike,” he comments wisely.
Inflections that only specialists in the genre can notice and appreciate. For everyone else. Nouara is a chaâbi album, a less popular “chouya” genre today.
Kamel El Harrachi Nouara (Kamiyad) 2021
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