Algiers (EFE) X century, very popular in the Maghreb country.
Andalusian music is intensely present during Ramadan evenings since “it contains poems related to religious praise, which connects well with the holy month,” Mohamed Rouane, a 54-year-old Algerian musician, explains to EFE that based on this music, flamenco interpretations and the strings of the mandola has created its own style, known as “Casbah Jazz”.
During this month, which is coming to an end, he is one of the musicians who delights the Algerians after the days of fasting that break at sunset on Andalusian musical tours, very popular in Algeria where they refined, with local poems, literary texts and melodies that came from the Iberian Peninsula.
Popular in Algeria
Lovers of this type of music, capable of educating and refining the soul, had an appointment this month with “Sanaa”, “Gharnati” and “Maluf”, the three famous schools that exist in Algeria.
Located by origin in Algiers, Tlemcen (west) and Constantine (east) attracted dedicated audiences, while the Mahieddine Bachtarzi National Theater of Algeria (TNA) paid tribute this month to this illustrious artist (1897-1986) with a program that ranged from between theater and Andalusian music.
In addition, the Algiers Opera and its Andalusian troupe dedicated the last week of Ramadan to this genre in which the echo of the banjo and the qanun made room for themselves among the mandola, an instrument widely used in Algeria and through which the artist Rouane learned reinvent their own “spiritual” music.
His “Casbah Jazz” style is a mixture of authentic chabi and Andalusian music, among others, he explains to EFE at the Instituto de Cervantes in Algiers and recalls that the mandola existed before in Spain, introduced both in Andalusian music and in another genre of the peninsula.
For the spiritual music artist who “interprets what he feels with a specific theme” and who has performed in several European countries, the Andalusian music “is a music of history and also of escape; the common thread that begins with an introduction to the “msadar”, “insiraf”, “mjilas” and “la nuba” (musical form): a beautiful story to tell”, he considers.
Algerian schools
Algeria is the North African country that currently has the largest number of cultural associations for Andalusian music, said Lila Borsali, a famous Algerian performer of Arabic-Andalusian music.
Tlemcen, known as “the Granada of Africa”, is considered the first city that embraced this art and preserved its heritage until today as the capital of Algerian Andalusian music with “Al Matruz” and “Al Hawzi” among its popular genres from violin, flute and qanun.
This school developed around Ramadan by presenting their compositions during the nights of the holy month and with references to repentance before the Creator.
In Constantine, the school of “Al Maluf” (means faithful to tradition), and sings to nature and love on a base of instruments made of animal skins, also includes strings such as the lute.
While “al Sanaa, the music of the capital, combines full outbursts, blows and popular and religious references. This art was originally established and practiced in the main cities in the north of the country: Algiers, or neighboring Blida and Cherchell, Mostaganem, as well as in Bejaia.