Hasna El Becharia

Hasna el Becharia is an artist native of Béchar (formerly Colomb-Béchar, a garrison town during the time of the French colonization). This large town in the Algerian southwest is the place of a fertile musical practice including Diwan and Foundou as well as the popular haddaoui repertoire animating Arab-Berber weddings of this sub-region.

The sacred runs with the secular. Symbols of the Sidi Bilal brotherhoods, the gumbri and karkabous (two instruments masterfully played by Hasna) are the pillars of North Africa black music. With a powerful and rough gumbri sound and an astonishing sense of rhythm, Hasna recalls the music of the ancient soudanis, those who spoke Hejmi (used today in the Diwans, a Songhaï language mixing Haoussa and Fulani).

Quite naturally the peule flute therefore plays in tune with the sacred repertoire of the Diwan. Moreover, these new versions of "Manandabo" and "Jinger Mama" use the virtuoso techniques of Karkabous from the South-East, the ample and generous chlurs of the South-Sahara and the master techniques of the Western gumbri.

Like numerous Algerian gnawa musicians, Hasna takes her roots in the popular wedding repertoire. She plays electric guitar, oud, derbouka, bendir and even banjo (but never gumbri, an instrument she used to discreetly play behind closed doors in her home). To the polyrhythms of the percussion, we have added the bendir and the Tunisian derbouka more adapted to the powerful Fezzani on tight skins as well as the Moroccan hajouj subtly adapted for accompaniment.

Hasna composed the major part of the recorded songs in France. By no means corrupted by stage or studio performance, she takes advantage of these new experiences to explore the sound of guitars, vocal timbres on different tonalities, to improvise and make new encounters. Hasna's work thus achieves a dimension far beyond the only scope of Algerian music. —Courtesy Calabash Music