LOUNIS AIT MENGUELLET

Presented by: SIROCCO RECORDS - Licence N° PLATESV-D-2025-003009

Lounis Aït Menguellet is a Kabyle singer born on 17 January 1950 in Ighil Bouammas (" the middle hill"), a small village nestling in the Djurdjura mountains near Tizi Ouzou in Greater Kabylia (Algeria).

Lounis Aït Menguellet is undoubtedly one of the most popular and engaging artists of contemporary Kabyle song, a poet who has become a symbol of Berber identity.

Lounis Aït Menguellet's career can be divided into two parts, depending on the themes he deals with: the first, more sentimental part of his early career, with shorter songs, and the second, more political and philosophical, characterised by longer songs that require a more in-depth interpretation and reading of the lyrics. Ahkim ur nsaa ara ahkim (Power without counter-power), Idul sanga anruh (The road is long), Nekni swarach n ldzayer (We, the children of Algeria): in his recent concerts, Aït Menguellet has deliberately chosen to sing these longer, more composed poems as an invitation to his audience to reflect and discover.

Neither a philosopher nor a thinker, just a poet ("people tell me that so often that I'm beginning to believe it"), Lounis refrains from giving lessons in his songs. "I only make observations. It can be right or wrong. My words are not general truths. But when I say them, it makes me feel good". With simple words, he recounts the lives of the simple people he comes into contact with, and knows how to convey an emotion that touches the ever-growing audiences who flock to his concerts. And, with modesty, he adds: "I'm an ordinary man, more ordinary than ordinary".

Lounis Aït Menguellet's deep, haunting voice carries a song that comes from the depths of the ages; it is that of the troubadours of the Middle Ages, that of the traditional musicians of all peoples who have managed to preserve their soul. The magic of this warm voice transports listeners to the heart of Kabylia. A troubadour and singer-songwriter, Aït Menguellet perpetuates the oral tradition of the Kabyle mountains, which the great poet Si Mohand, who died in 1906, highlighted so well before him, and which was sung by Marguerite Taos Amrouche, sister of the poet Jean Amrouche, who died in exile in Tunisia.

The power of Lounis's songs lies in the quality of his lyrics, the strength of his words: "Peace requires words: I am forced to abandon you, country for whom my soul is in pain / They love me by comparing me to a partridge / Beautiful when I serve them as a feast...", says one of his lyrics. Or another: "We sang of the stars, but they are beyond our reach / We sang of freedom, but it is as far away as the stars".

Aware of the essential role played by song in maintaining and safeguarding the Kabyle language, Lounis Aït Menguellet's songs - in which text and language play a key role - are a veritable work of remembrance for his mother tongue. Defending his language is one of his reasons for living: "Song has always carried the Kabyle soul, the Algerian essence, at arm's length. There are plenty of Kabyles who have learnt their language through song". The words of Kabyle speak to him and he continues to discover them: "The language is the mother, the earth".