Algerian singer Idir, one of the main ambassadors of Kabyle song around the world and the interpreter of the famous "A Vava Inouva", died Saturday night in Paris at the age of 70, announced his family. "We regret to announce the death of our father (to all), Idir, on Saturday May 2 at 9:30 pm. Rest in peace dad," said a message posted on the singer's official Facebook page, based in France. The family, contacted by AFP, did not wish to speak.
"I learned with immense sadness the news of the death" of Idir, "an icon of Algerian art", greeted in a tweet the Algerian president Abdelmadjid Tebboune. "With its disappearance, Algeria loses one of its monuments".
Unexpected success
From his real name Hamid Cheriet, Idir was born on October 25, 1949 in Aït Lahcène, near Tizi-Ouzou, capital of Grande-Kabylie. While he intended to be a geologist, a passage in 1973 on Radio Alger changed the course of his life: he replaced at short notice the singer Nouara, and her song in Berber language "A Vava Inouva", which evokes the evenings in Kabyle villages, goes around the world without his knowledge while he is doing his military service. "I arrived at the right time, with the right songs", told AFP Idir in 2013, imbued with childhood songs that punctuated all the moments of everyday life. He joined Paris in 1975 to produce his first album, also entitled "A Vava Inouva".
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He disappeared from the scene for ten years, from 1981 to 1991, but his career was then relaunched. In the fall of 1999, taking advantage of the momentum given by his compatriots Cheb Mami and Khaled, he signed his discographic return with the album "Identités", where he offered a mixture of "Chââbi", Algerian music, and rhythms borrowed from western genres. Like his desire to mix cultures, he sang there with musicians from different cultural, musical or geographic horizons, such as Manu Chao, Dan Ar Braz, Zebda, Maxime Le Forestier or Gnawa Diffusion, Gilles Servat, Geoffrey Oryema and the National Orchestra of Barbès.
"France of colors"
In 2007, he had published the album "La France des couleurs", in the middle of the campaign for the French presidential election marked by debates on immigration and identity. In January 2018, the singer - who campaigned for the recognition of the cultural identity of Kabylia - returned to sing in Algiers for the Berber New Year "Yennayer" after an absence of 38 years.
In an interview with the Sunday Journal , in April 2019, he spoke of the popular demonstrations in Algeria and the departure of Abdelaziz Bouteflika. "I loved everything about these events: the intelligence of this youth, their humor, their determination to remain peaceful (...) I admit to having lived these moments of grace since February 22 like breaths of oxygen. I have pulmonary fibrosis, I know what I'm talking about, "he said. "In any case, we are doomed to succeed. So let's continue to think in terms of the Algerian nation towards progress. If we remain united, nothing and no one can defeat us." Idir, who had been hospitalized Friday in Paris, succumbed to a pulmonary disease and should be buried in the Paris region, according to his close entourage.