Hasna El Becharia, the Algerian “desert rocker”, has died

Nicknamed “the rocker of the desert,” Algerian artist Hasna El Becharia, considered a pioneer of diwan music, died at the age of 74, Algerian national television announced Wednesday.

Real name Hasnia Hasni, this Sahrawi icon known in particular in France or Canada, was one of the kingpins of the Lemma Becharia group founded with Souad Asla in 2015. Entirely made up of women, the troupe had toured Europe with its repertoire traditional. Hasnia El Becharia gave a remarkable concert in February in Paris at the start of a European tour. She gave a major concert in September during the Arabesque Festival in Montpellier, in the south-east of France.

Born in Béchar, in the south of Algeria, in 1950, the city which inspired her artist name, she was the first woman to play the guembri, a type of North African three-string guitar, formerly forbidden to women . Diwane or Gnawa music is inspired by secular and sacred traditions inherited from former sub-Saharan slaves in North Africa.

Hasna El Becharia had lived in Paris for 8 years and had published her most famous album L'Algérie est un jewel in 2009. She had been introduced to music from a very young age, her father already leading a Gnaoua group and her grandfather -father having been a musician. She was the subject of a documentary in 2019 entitled The Rocker of the Desert by Canadian-Algerian director Sara Nacer, for whom the musician had brought about both “a musical and moral revolution”.