Tag: algeria

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El Gusto: Algerian chaabi masters regroup

Damon Albarn (of Britpop bands Blur and Gorillaz fame) is producing a kind of Buena Vista Social Club album, instead of Cuban masters you have Algerian chaabi masters: Once more, with El Gusto.

Luc Cherki is a big man. Carrying his guitar, he approaches the microphone with the swagger of Johnny Cash and sings a folk ballad about the dispossessed worthy of the Man in Black that elicits whoops of recognition from his audience. But this is Marseilles, not San Quentin, and Cherki is French. His song, Je suis un pied-noir, tells of having to leave Algeria for France 45 years ago, thus becoming an emigré in his own country.

Accompanying him are the El Gusto Orchestra, veterans of Algerian music’s postwar golden age, when the sound of chaabi united the streets. When the war of independence (1954-62) tore apart the French colony it ripped the heart out of the musical community. For many of those onstage in Marseilles El Gusto is the first time they have seen each other in 45 years.

Now the old friends’ schedules includes a film, a tour by the orchestra, which reaches the Barbican in London on October 10 as part of its annual Ramadan Nights season, and an album, produced by Damon Albarn and released on his label, Honest Jons. “I didn’t know chaabi before I became involved,” Albarn admits. “But after I got the call asking me to contribute to this project I made sure I was well-versed before I got here. Then all I needed to do was to put microphones in the right places and try to capture the rawness of the music. I just told them they were the maestros and let them get on with it.”

Concerts in London and Paris for those lucky enough to make it, and the album of the recording will come out on October 15. Also see this story in Le Monde.

Al Qaeda in the Maghreb recruits among teenagers

Le Monde.fr : En Algérie, des adolescents sont les proies des recruteurs d’Al-Qaida:

Treize adolescents algériens ont été condamnés le 23 septembre à trois ans de prison avec sursis pour avoir entretenu des contacts avec Al-Qaida au Maghreb islamique, l’ex-Groupe salafiste pour la prédication et le combat (GSPC). Un suivi psychologique a été ordonné, et leurs parents se sont engagés à les surveiller de près.

Arrêtés en juin à Thénia, dans la préfecture de Boumerdès, région où le groupe islamiste armé est très actif, trois d’entre eux avaient été placés sous mandat de dépôt alors que les dix autres, des collégiens âgés entre 14 et 16 ans, avaient été laissés en liberté provisoire. Selon la police, ces jeunes avaient commencé à recevoir, dans les maquis environnants, des entraînements au maniement des armes et au transport de bombes. Certains avaient été gratifiés de noms de guerre. Des disques compacts avec des cours d’entraînement au combat avaient été découverts à leur domicile.

Conspiracy theory du jour

Bizarre little story in today’s Le Monde: last Friday 12 swimmers drowned on a beach in northern Algeria after a giant wave suddenly appeared on a beach near Mostaganem, in Western Algeria. No one knows what caused the wave, which only appeared at that particular beach and was not part of a larger tsunami or other natural event. One theory advanced by a astronomer/planetologist is that the wave was the result of a scientific experiment conducted by a northern Mediterranean country (Spain, France or Italy), probably involving conventional weapons of some sort. The story in full:

La protection civile algérienne a annoncé, mercredi 8 août, la mort de douze baigneurs emportés par une vague géante sur une plage de Mostaganem, dans l’ouest algérien, vendredi. L’origine de la vague est inconnue et nourrit les débats des scientifiques et de la population locale.

L’hypothèse d’un essai scientifique en Méditerranée effectué par des pays de l’autre rive, comme l’Espagne, l’Italie ou la France est avancée. “On peut supposer qu’il s’agit d’une expérience scientifique d’armes conventionnelles”, explique le professeur Loth Bonatiro, spécialiste d’astronomie et de planétologie au Centre algérien de recherche en astronomie, astrophysique et géophysique (Craag), cité dans les colonnes du quotidien algérien L’Expression.

L’hypothèse d’un mini-tsunami avancée par les habitants semblait peu plausible, dans la mesure où la vague n’a touché qu’une seule plage, celle dite du Petit-Port.

Une secousse sismique d’une magnitude de 4,6 sur l’échelle ouverte de Richter avait été enregistrée vendredi à 21 h 08 en plein milieu du bassin méditerranéen par le centre de Strasbourg, mais pas par le Craag, qui évoque un possible problème technique.

Weird. Will feed the conspiracy theories of already paranoid Algerians for weeks, I’m sure.

Algeria attacks Mother of the World

How dare they?

Amine Azaoui outrages Egypt
on Monday, June 25 @ 13:40:53 CDT

The head of the National library , M Amine Zaoui sparked a wave of controversy after his statement to one the Egyptian daily newspapers “Al Watani al yaoum” in which he reconsidered the idea of “Egypt, mother of the world” and the wagon of the Arab world.

M Zaoui went on, in his critics by declaring that the Egyptian cultural week in the event “Algiers , capital of Arab cultures” was the worst one so far. He added that “Egypt was no longer the hub of the Arab culture and that the Egyptian men of culture have no cause to defend, besides, the Arab language in Egypt is clumsy”.

These declarations, outraged many Egyptian literary men , among them the poet, Mohamed Ibrahim Aboussena , who replied to Amine Azaoui in these words” Egypt is still the mainstream , and Amine Azaoui has just to look at the reality”.

As to the Egyptian philosopher, Mahmoud Amine Al Alam, this one declared in response to Azaoui’s statement” Egypt is leading the Arab world in terms of plurality, and the fact of belittling this reality is a lie.”

So troublesome, these Algerians… when they’re not complaining about Egypt’s stranglehold over the Arab League (they are the only other country that seems to take the Arab League seriously) they try to belittle it. La h’shouma.

World’ first Tamazight Quran

Has been made in Algeria:

ALGIERS (Reuters) – Algeria has translated the Koran into the Berber language, Tamazight, for the first time, to promote Islam among a community that has long campaigned for more language and cultural rights, an official said on Monday.

Religious Affairs Ministry spokesman Abdellah Tamine said the ministry had funded the printing this year of 6,000 copies of a full translation carried out by its experts.

Saudi Arabia financed the printing of 5,000 copies of a partial translation last year, he said. All 11,000 copies were distributed free and the ministry planned to print more.

I’m rather curious about how many Algerian or Moroccan Berbers actually read Tamazight. I must admit (and this is awkward to say as an ethnically Arab Moroccan) that I have always been rather skeptical about the need to push for Tamazight text in cultures that are already at least bilingual. Does anyone know exactly how many Tamazight readers there are? Or is it a political issue being driven by a small intellectual elite?

In any case, this particular project seems quite worthy. It’s a surprise it didn’t happen earlier considering the many top Islamist leaders in the Maghreb who are Berbers.

FIS leader’s son “disappears”

Ali Bilhaj, the deputy head of the Algerian Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), called on Algerian security to disclose the whereabouts of his 18-year-old “disappeared” son, in a statement circulated by London-based Islamic Observation Center. The Algerian Islamist complained of security hassles against him and his family, following an anti-Pope protest they attended in front of the Vatican’s Embassy on 22 September.

Bilhaj said his son, Abdel Qahhar, disappeared last Sunday, and held the Algerian authorities responsible for his safety.

More details could be found in the following Arabic statement I received from the IOC…

Related link: Algeria’s secret torture chambers

Recommended Book:
Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam

Bakchich

If you read French, go immediately check out Bakchich, an excellent webzine/blog about sub-Saharan Africa, the Maghreb and the Middle East (but it’s especially good on the Maghreb and Muslim Africa.) They have a handsomely designed PDF magazine (a kind of Canard Enchainé or Private Eye for the region) as well as a blog, and some interesting articles on the security shake-up recently carried by King Muhammad VI in Morocco, Tunisia’s latest attacks on press freedom, and more. Very nice cartoons too, including this one on Tunisia:

Picture 1-2

The caption says: “19 years of happiness: corruption, lockdown on civil liberties, poverty… the happy results on Ben-Alism.”