ALGIERS – A beautiful tribute to the verb and the melody is proposed by Idir in duet with several names of French song in his new opus “Ici et ailleurs”, a dreamlike journey with ancestral content and modern forms.
Released a few weeks ago, “Ici et ailleurs”, distributed in Algeria by IzemPro, embarks the music lovers, almost an hour of time, in a subtly conducted in duet with several renowned singers of the French variety who followed Idir on the winding paths of identity, love, exile, and freedom.
Judiciously chosen, the eleven pieces of this opus with Kabyle sounds, supported by orchestrations full, highlight the arrangements, by a work with fruitful creativity, but always marked with the original imprint and resolutely committed.
In the minor mode, propitious to the expression of nostalgia and lyricism, all the pieces, translated into Tamazight by Ameziane Kezzar and Idir, have been rearranged in ternary rhythms of the Algerian soil with the dominant sounds of the mandolin, The bendir of the banjo and the flute.
The stars of the French song lent themselves to the difficult exercise of interpreting their songs in a language that is foreign to them, ingeniously brought back by the singer of the Kabyle song to his culture. One way for him, he explains, to “raise Tamazight to the rank of universal languages”.
Like Takurida (“The Corrida” by Francis Cabrel), “Imettawen n Imezwura” (The Tears of their Fathers by Patrick Bruel), Charles Aznavour’s “Bohemia” or “Dhi varra I Neguen” The Road Again by Bernard Lavilliers), Idir sings the adret and the ubac in metaphors inviting the listener to “take his look” on new horizons, thanks to a range of open cadences, combining rhythms as different as the Berwali, tergui or Brazilian samba.
On a rich and aerated harmonic support, served by highly professional technical means, the violins, the flute and the banjo close the melodic loop supported by the softness of the female choruses.
Idir, with his real name Hamid Cheriet, had a success in the 1970s with “A Vava Inouva”, a song quickly become a planetary tube, aired in No less than 77 countries and translated into some twenty languages.
With a dozen CD’s, Idir, although reserved, likes to share his space with other artists, such as Alan Stivell with whom he has performed (the Celts) on the album “Les Chasseurs (1993), Dan Ar Braz, Maxime Le Forestier and Gilles Servat in “Identities” (1999), and the slave Grand Corps Malade in “La France des couleurs” (2007).
Announcing a “possible retirement” after some forty years of career, Idir succeeded in betting, with his latest born “Here and there”, to federate around him big names of French song and to make live with them, once More, his mother tongue.
