Translated by Chrysalide from french source
Music lovers know that Hadj Mhamed El Anka is to chaabi what Louis Armstrong is to jazz, what John Lee Hooker is to blues and Amalia Rodriguez to fado, among other poems of hypnosis. Three universal musical genres producing ecstasy like the chaâbi ankaoui.
Nirvana that the Arabs call the “tarab”. A deep communion of senses on which every musical note and vocal intonation plays as if they were percussion instruments! An aesthetic emotion that the ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget calls “profane trance”.
This is the “tarab” of Hajj Mhamed El Anka which appeals to a broad emotional spectrum: pleasure, delight, pleasure of mind, soul accord, emotional shock, rapture, elation and ecstasy. Music lovers, you go through this whole palette that plunges you into the “wajd”, the religious trance linked to the spiritual inspiration of El Anka, especially when you listen or re-listen “Lahmam”, its emblematic title on the habit of love and the wounds of separation.
We therefore know a little the great imam of chaabi, interpreter of nearly 360 poems (qassaid) and author of 130 records in half a century of career. We also know that he was a virtuoso of the mandola, that Algerian cousin with plucked strings of the mandolin. We also know that the author of “Lahmam” had his own mandola, “sculpted” for his evil fingers, that is to say to the extent of his specific playing and more in accordance with his magical inspiration.
Chiseled by Spanish blackfoot maker-luthier Jean Bellido, who redesigned his half-mandolin in 1932. The result will result in the typical Algerian mandola that we know today. We also know that the artistic sphinx was a polychrome instrumentalist, equally at ease with a lute, a guitar, a tar or a violin. As has been noted, he was likewise a lyricist of rich poetic density. And such is, my faith, the case of “Lahmam”, marvelous monosyllabic poem embroidered by El Anka in 1937.
This mythical poem, which greatly contributed to the artistic glory of Mhamed Idir Aït Ouarab, alias Halo, is the subject of enduring legends. Indeed, the story of the sublime “Lahmam” is part of what Arab grammarians call “established mistakes that become truths.” So he said to himself that he would have written and composed this song for his eldest son Mustapha who would have left him for exile in France. As he repeats on the other hand that he would have created it to deplore the fact that his disciples Hadj Mrizek and Hadj Mnaouer would have abandoned him by showing ingratitude to their master.
But artistic history, with a capital H, is ultimately not one of those little stories that die hard. It is, however, based on a tangible fact of the ordinary life of the Chaabi Buddha, and which reveals of his beautiful aesthetic soul an unrecognized but very amiable human aspect. And it is his eldest son who recounts it in an interview on Algerian public television.
Mustapha El Anka, singer and actor, therefore indicates that his father had asked him one day in 1937, when he was eleven years old and was not yet old enough to go into exile, to “go to Ammi Dahmene, get a object in safe deposit at his home ”. Mustapha then goes to his father’s friend who gave him two small wood pigeons. El Hadj Mhamed, who quickly brooded over these two particularly affectionate wood pigeons, had become accustomed to talking to them and sometimes to singing in front of them a “mssedar” or an “insiraf” from a nouba sika of good quality.
He also relates that one summer day, around the family table topped with a “tbeykha”, a famous dish of beans and p’tits peas from Algiers, he saw the graceful wood pigeons approaching the sea. his father’s plate, which let them eat there. A way of emphasizing the affectionate communion between the artist and the piafs.
But, another day, attracted by a flight of pigeons around, the tame birds took flight never to return to the El Anka house. The Cardinal was therefore quite affected, but hoped all the same to see them again soon. After a few days of vain waiting, one evening, El Hadj, melancholy at will, took his finest pen, lover of muses and inspired rhapsode, to compose a poem of about fifty lines: “Lahmam”.
Lahmam ”, a title that is certainly evocative but deliciously equivocal. The ambiguity being based here on the use of the wood pigeon as a semantic parable and object of intense love. A passion that first evokes love for a beautiful woman whose sudden separation is a source of torment for the loving lover. And so it is that the composer of this ode to the glory of two cooing columba palumbus, who deliberately allowed the legends around the story of his favorite song to live, turned out to be, in this case , a simple pigeon fancier.
To the delight of the “ankaouiphiles”, including your modest columnist, nostalgic for “Qahwet Laârich”, a singing café emblematic of the Kasbah of Algiers frequented by the legendary author of “Lehmam”.
By Nadji Azouz jeune.independant.net
Posted on Sep 16, 2021
