We cannot but find strange Cherif Kheddam’s life trajectory! Born an aristocrat cut out for handing down the scholarly Koranic tradition, he has become the undisputed master of modern Kabyle song. Cherif was born in 1927 at Ait Bou Messaoud in Grand Kabylia. First he attended a local Koranic school, then a Zawia in Boudjelil (Lesser Kabylia). In 1947 he left Algeria for France where, until the end of Algeria’s War of Independence, he earned his living in smelting works and other factories.

It was as an immigrant in France he began to compose and sing. Published at author’s expense, his first song Yellis n tmurt iw (girl of my native country) was considered as a masterpiece by the public. In spite of difficulties of all sorts he decided to go on, encouraged as he was by such friends as Mrs Sauviat, a record-dealer particularly interested in Oriental songs. Thanks to her he came in touch with Pathé Marconi. He met also Ahmed Hachlef who was going to play an important part in the artist’s career. His homesickness as well as the difficulties he met with during the War of Independence induced him to retire within himself and devote himself to music.

A first success as a singer did not put an end to the hard life of a young man who had great difficulties in earning his living and wanted to master artistic creation at the same time. In spite of his musical shortcomings at the outset, he decided, notwithstanding his age, he would learn sol-fa, harmony and more about singing so as to acquire a real musical culture.

Fully aware that a musical heritage fenced in petrified traditions must sooner or later become anaemic, he has always tried to enrich and revive it without defacing its century old specificity. He is to be thanked for opening a field for modernity, yet he has always insisted upon the necessity of meeting strict requirements in the process of creation, an approach he instilled into the mind of the many young singers he has formed. A number of the singers who presently sing modern songs have been taught by him and are proud to be considered his disciples. Some of them are known for singing those amazigh songs that fight for certain ideas: the Yugurten ensemble, Ferhat Imazighen Imoula, Idir, Ait Menguellet, Malika Doumrane, Nouara, Ahcen Abassi…

In his songs, words and music are closely linked. Forgetting about the mournfulness common in songs of yesteryear, he has imagined, and methodically explored, all new poetic and musical ways. It is easy to detect the revolutionary themes in the more than one hundred songs he is known to have written.

His work is grounded on four main themes closely linked in the poet’s mind: love, the native land, social changes and the promoting of Kabyle particularism. One might have expected that since he was born in a traditional family, he would keep to conventional songs with moral and religious connotations. Now it so happens that the poet has ventured beyond the traditional ways, transgressing century old tabooes. To him there are no forbidden subjects any longer. Either sticking to tradition, or following modern trends, Cherif Kheddam has innovated all his life. In combining tradition and modernity he has gradually achieved a meaningful coherence, his specific creation. Thus, in his lifetime, Cherif Kheddam has already become one of the great ancestors whose office it was, on the one side to hand down the musical heritage, and on the other side to venture beyond it to find new ways.

Short version of a text written by Tassadit Yacine with the collaboration of Taher Boudjelli, December 1995. Translated by M. Stoffel.

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