Sheik Hamada

Sheik Hamada is a singer Algerian, native of Blad Touahria close to Mostaganem, born in 1889 and dead on April 9th, 1968.

It can appear one of the founders of the movement of music Raï. But it would be simplistic to think that. It would be necessary to go back to the history of the tribes Zenétes, Berbères and Juives which populated the Algérie well before the conquest of the Turks and the French Colonisation and the Décret Crémieux, then.

In fact, Sheik Hamada is the cantor eternal of the Bedouin song. He belonged to the musical boiling between the two-wars (since the fate of Algeria was related to that of France which hardly recovered from the First World War. This poet out-par engaged the citadinisation of the traditional Bedouin. Major phenomenon in the Maghrebian music.

It will have had of alive sound revolutionized with him only the musical tradition in the Bedouin kind and this, while succeeding in a masterly way brushing town poetry between Hadri , Haouzi and Aroubi .

In its compositions, the Gasba will be altered and to which it will bring a key suitable to him for the area of the Dahra, thus influencing the repertory Chaâbi which enters under its cane, in the mode Bédoui.

Close friend of Hadj Me hamed El Anka, another Algerian artist of reference, they had as a practice, at the time of philosophical dinners with the poets, the musicians like Hadj Lazoughli, Hachemi Bensmir, Abdelkader El Khaldi, to exchange, work together of the Qaçayds (poems).

Sheik Hamada will be also a Master for the young generations. He will receive in his house several artists like Maâzouz Bouadjadj, explaining to them, sometimes, during long hours, a tonality, a stanza, the hidden direction of a word, worms, a Qasida.

He made known this music based on poetries ancestral Bedouins and a harmonic judéo-Arabic influence by bringing closer the countryside and the city. He thus widened the movement on all Algeria and across the borders.

Contrary to much of Européens at the time, which made fun openly (still nowadays) of this musical type because Modal and not Tonal, Béla Bartók was extremely touched by it at the time of a voyage in two year old Algeria (1913-1915). That will inspire a few pieces.

It made its first recording in 1920 and thereafter, it continued to make discs in Algeria, with Paris and Berlin, until its death.

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